论文总字数：32463字

摘 要

在第二语言学习的过程中，语言迁移是个不可逾越的因素。语言迁移分为正迁移和负迁移，正迁移是指源语言和目标语言的规则或模式是相同或相似的，对于中国的英语学习者来说，汉语对英语的正迁移会降低语言的学习难度，提高对英语学习的效率。负迁移则与之相反，负迁移指的是二语习得的过程中母语和目标语在发音和语法规则或者其他方面存在差异，并且在第二语言的学习中将母语的习惯代入到第二语言中，对于中国的英语学习者来说，汉语对英语的负迁移阻碍了对英语的熟练掌握，增加了英语的学习难度。本文主要探讨在英语学习中汉语对语言学习所带来的负迁移。着重探讨负迁移产生的原因，并就如何解决相关问题提出相应的建议和对策。从而达到帮助中国的英文学习者降低英语学习难度的目的。

关键词：二语习得；负迁移；原因; 策略

Contents

1. Introduction………………………...................…………………………………1
2. Literature Review………………….........................……………………………2

2.1 Definition of language transfer……………...................……….....……………...2

2.2 History of language transfer…………....………………....................…………....2

2.3 The study of negative transfer from abroad and home …..................…………...3

1. The Types of Negative Transfer …………............……...................…………...3

3.1 Pronunciation………..........................…………………...................…………….3

3.2 Grammar………………………………….……………....................………........5

3.3 Word…………………………….........................………....................…………...5

3.4 Culture……………...………………………………....................………………..7

1. Strategies to Eliminate Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue in Second Language Acquisition………........................................................…………….8

4.1 Learner should overcome the fear psychology, correctly understand the negative transfer phenomenon……………………………………………………………8

4.2 Learners should establish diversified cultural views and reduce negative transfer of culture………………………………………………………………………8

4.3 Learners should understand the correct meaning of the target language vocabulary………............................................................................…………….9

4.4 Learners should learn English in a comparative study............................……….10

4.5 Learners should emphasize competence training and pragmatic competence training................................................................................................................11

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………12

Works Cited………………………………………………………………………13

1. Introduction

Firstly, transfer appears in psychological research, which means that learners’ existing experience has an impact on the learning of new things when learning new skills and new things. Similarly, language transfer refers to the second language learner’ instinct to learn the target language through their native language cognition and usage habits, which have a positive or negative impact on language transfer. When we are learning a second language, there may be great difficulties. This is because people always compare the second language with first language they already mastered. Our mastery of the mother tongue will always directly or indirectly affect the learning of the second language. Language learners always learn other languages with strong native culture and mother tongue characteristics (Zha 5), this phenomenon is called language transfer. Language transfer includes positive transfer and negative transfer, but this paper focuses on negative transfer. This transfer refers to the transfer phenomenon that difference of different languages and cultures hinder the acquisition of new knowledge and cross-cultural communication. Negative transfer can be divided into two categories: narrow transfer and broad transfer. The narrow sense of negative transfer refers to the negative influence of the phonetic, lexical and syntactic rules of the mother tongue on second language acquisition, which is mainly reflected in the use of phonetic, lexical and grammatical features. In a broad sense, negative transfer refers to the negative influence of source language usage on target language, the language culture of the mother tongue, the way of thinking of the language learner and other factors closely related to language, which also called pragmatic failure. Pragmatic errors are not the errors in the use of language in the general choice of words and sentences, but the errors caused by inappropriate speaking, improper speaking mode expression that cannot achieve the desired effect. This paper starts with the common misuse of English learners who take Chinese as their mother tongue, finds out the language errors caused by negative transfer of mother tongue, analyzes them, and puts forward some suggestions on how to take effective measures against negative transfer of mother tongue and avoid such language errors.

2 Literature Review

This chapter mainly reviews the history and development of language transfer. Firstly, the definition of language transfers. Second, the history of language transfer. Third, the classification of language transfer.

2.1 Definition of language transfer

When learning languages other than the mother tongue, due to the habit of native language rules and structure, Language learners will consciously or unconsciously apply their native language habits to the learning of other languages（Zhang 3）. This is called language transfer. If there are similarities in structure and grammar rules between the native language and the target language, it will facilitate the learning of the target language. Otherwise, it will hinder the learning of the target language. For example, if the pronunciation rules and grammatical structures of Chinese are similar to those of English, it will be much easier for Chinese English learner to learn English. If there are too much difference between English and Chinese, it will be much more difficult to learn.

2.2 History of language transfer

Transfer originated from behaviorism 200 years ago, and language transfer didn’t appear until around 1950. At the beginning, behaviorists held that language transfer was not directly related to foreign language learning. Gradually, researchers began to link language transfer with difficulty in language learning. Comparing mother tongue with target language predicts possible errors and difficulties, which explains why the contrastive analysis hypothesis was the most popular at the time. According to the creative construction theory, learners’ ability and the characteristics of the second language determine the difficulty of second language acquisition, while language transfer has little impact on target language acquisition. Ellis has made further progress in the study of language transfer; he further proved his points that there was close relationship between language transfer and second language acquisition. He tends to attribute all the errors to negative transfer of the mother tongue rather than focusing on the mental process of learning the target language. Then language transfer has been reconfirmed. More and more linguists are starting to pay new attention to the effects of mother tongue on target language from the perspective of cognition rather than simple behaviors (Cen 12).

2.3 The study of negative transfer at abroad and home

For many years, scientists at home and abroad have been studying language transfer continuously. However, the study of language transfer in western countries started earlier and more researchers participated in it. In contrast, Chinese scholars started relatively late in the study of language transfer, and there are few studies on the language transfer between Chinese and English. In the 1950s, comparative analysis began to appear and occupied a place in the research of second language teaching. Under the influence of behaviorism and structuralism, Lado put forward the hypothesis of comparative analysis: language transfer is the main obstacle of language acquisition. Cognitive theory opens up a new perspective for the study of language transfer and expands the research field. After that, Chomsky’s theory triggered a linguistic revolution, pointing out that the main factor affecting second language acquisition is the internal universal grammar rules, rather than the learner’s mother tongue. And put forward the marking theory.

3 The Types of Negative Transfer

The language system includes pronunciation, semantics and grammatical rules, etc., so the negative transfer of language includes a variety of types, shown as follows:

3.1 Pronunciation

As we all know, the Chinese phonetic alphabet education accepted by Chinese students is deeply rooted since childhood. When learning English phonetic alphabet, it is greatly affected by the transfer of Chinese Pinyin. For example, the phonemes and sounds of 20 vowels in English are quite different from those of vowels in Chinese (Yu 6). In English, there are long and short unit sounds, but in Chinese phonetic alphabet, there is no single vowel. As a result, Chinese will affect the English pronunciation of Chinese English learners, hinder the correct grasp of English pronunciation, and produce negative pronunciation transfer.

As a learner of English, we will find that although we speak English fluently, we always inevitably have a Chinese accent. For another example, when foreign friends learn Chinese, they will always reveal some ‘foreign accent’. All these phenomena prove the problem that learners’ mastery of a second language cannot reach the level of their mother tongue. There is an optimal period for learning a foreign language, that is, before the age of 12. People have not fully mastered the structure of their mother tongue before the age of 12, and they are good at memorizing and accepting new things, especially in the aspect of language learning. After the age of 12, we have basically mastered our own native language, and our memory and receptivity are not as good as before. Moreover, from the perspective of phonetics, mandarin pronunciation is generally oral pronunciation, voice is soft. On the other hand, English is delivered by compressed air from the lungs, and the sound is more profound, which makes Chinese people speak English with different effects, and there is always an ‘exotic accent’ in it. This is also a fossilization of cross-language pronunciation features. Moreover, some pronunciation in English seems to be the same as that in Chinese, but there are great differences between them. The phonological differences of these different languages often increase the difficulty of learning a second language, resulting in the negative transfer of the pronunciation of the first language to the second language. There is no such phoneme in some Chinese vocabulary, and many learners will use similar words to replace some pronunciations. For example, we habitually pronounce ‘thank’ as ‘sank’. Consonants in Chinese are always accompanied by vowels. In English phonetics, there are phonetic groups. Chinese English learners habitually add some vowels to these consonants when they read this phonetics. In this way, fly/flai/ is often pronounced as /fulai/. Chinese characters basically end with vowels, while English words end with both vowels and consonants, so many English beginners will pronounce ‘work’ as ‘worker’ and ‘late’ as ‘later’.

3.2 Grammar

Take English syntax as an example. Syntactic negative transfer is common in the basic stage of English learning (Ellis 18). Chinese is a practical language, which has no morphological changes, emphasizes the internal meaning, not subject to the constraints of form, and has a flexible syntactic structure. However, English is a syntactic language with morphological changes, emphasis on sentence form and strict syntactic structure. There are some examples, (1)The use of singular and plural nouns is confusing: the plural none form of English is usually added with ‘s’ or ‘eels’ at the end of the word, but the concept of plural noun is not found in Chinese. As a result, a common mistake made by Chinese English learners is that they often forget to add‘s’ or ‘eels’ at the end of the word. Such as, ‘Do you like mangoes?’ But Chinese learners either say ‘Do you like the mango?’ Or ‘Do you likes mango?’ (2)When learning English, most Chinese English learners know the principle that the tense and subject should be consistent with the predicate. For example, when the subject is singular in the third person, the predicate verb should be changed correspondingly. For us, these rules are very familiar, but since there are no such rules in Chinese, we tend to forget to make corresponding changes in the actual oral expression. Such as: ‘She has an apple’, but Chinese English learners often mistakenly say ‘She has an apple’. (3)There is a certain difference between the way they express things and the correct way they express people and place in the sentence patterns. Such as: ‘There are many students in the classes. Some Chinese English learners express the phrase to ‘the class has many students’. Some expressed it as ‘There has many student in the classes or ‘There have many students in the classes. ‘There has many students in the class.’ is reasonable from the perspective of Chinese. But ‘There are many students in the classes are more close to the target language.

3.3 Word

We usually agree with that there are two ways to learn a language, one is the way we acquire our mother tongue, which is called congenital learning, and the other is called acquired learning. The second language acquisition of Chinese bilingual learners is under the premise that they have mastered the native language system and most of the time it is carried out in the classroom environment. The second language vocabulary memory needs to go through the processing of the mother tongue; in the early stage learners will pay attention to the word on the rigid memory. As a result, in the initial stage of learning a word, mental representation word of is mainly composed of two parts, one part of the word pronunciation and spelling, and another is the meaning of that in mother tongue. When second language learners learn a new target language word, they will firstly consciously or unconsciously look for a word with the same meaning in their mother tongue, and then focus on memorizing words spelling and pronunciation. The understanding of the second language word depends on the mother tongue. For example, in the initial stage of English learning, learners’ mastery of vocabulary is mainly in the literal meaning, including the expression form of words and the corresponding meaning in their mother tongue. When these words are used, them are often used in a rigid combination, which is caused by negative transfer of mother tongue phenomenon.

3.3.1 Grammatical errors in lexical collocation

In the study of vocabulary collocation and application, it is inevitable for learners to use wrong collocation due to the influence of their mother tongue. For example, due to the influence of mother tongue, there are always errors in the use of English word collocation and preposition collocation when learning English. Such as, ‘commit murder’, ‘red tea’, etc. The combination of a noun, verb, or adjective with a preposition, infinitive, or grammatical structure, such as ‘arrive at the airport’, ‘want to drink’, etc. These are all correct expressions. However, in English classes, learners often like to use Chinese-Style combinations, such as ‘eat medicine’. It is obvious that these collocations are based on the thinking of Chinese rather than the grammatical habits of English vocabulary. We can say, ‘big rain’ in Chinese. That"s not what English says. Improper collocation of words will cause the receiver to misunderstand the words, and may even affect the understanding of a sentence or a paragraph.

3.3.2 Incorrect choice of vocabulary

The difficulty for learners to choose the correct vocabulary is mainly reflected in incomplete understanding of the meaning of vocabulary. Since most of the words in the two languages are subordinate to or partially congenial to the concepts, few words have completely congenial meanings. Second language learners acquire the meaning of second language vocabulary through the interpretation of their mother tongue, which makes it impossible for learners to accurately understand the meaning of second language words under the influence of their mother tongue. For example, ‘propaganda’, which means publicity in Chinese, is a neutral word. but it has a negative meaning in English, which is quite different from the context meaning of ‘propaganda’ in Chinese, it refers to advocacy by political groups for their own benefit in English, and some learners are likely to use the two equally under the influence of their mother tongue.

3.4 Culture

There are great differences between Chinese culture and western culture, and different cultures also cause differences in expression. For example, Chinese people like to use four-character idioms to implicitly express our meaning, and the rich cultural connotation can be expressed through vocabulary and sentences, including idioms, proverbs, and mottoes. In this case, English learners often make mistakes inevitably. They will habitually bring Chinese cognition into English learning. Once they encounter cultural differences, they inevitably make mistakes. In English and Chinese, the same thing may have different cultural meanings. For example, dragon is a symbol of power and a positive word in China. In western culture, the dragon represents evil and darkness. Negative transfer of mother tongue culture is most likely to occur in the translation of words with similar literal meanings and widely different connotations.

Cultural transfer is an important part of language transfer. Cultural transfer refers to the influence of different cultures on language learning. The cultural differences behind different languages have positive and negative effects on language acquisition and communication. Chinese English learners should fully understand and attach importance to negative cultural transfer.

4 Strategies to Eliminate Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue in Second Language Acquisition

The transfer of Chinese to English is inevitable for Chinese learners. Therefore, Chinese learners should first and understand language transfer and make use of cultural transfer. Through positive transfer to promote the learning of English by avoiding or reducing the negative transfer of Chinese to English to reduce the difficulty of English learning.

4.1 Learner should overcome the fear psychology, correctly understand the negative transfer phenomenon

Because language transfer will lead to communication barriers, many foreign language learners are afraid of language transfer, or even afraid to communicate with foreigners in English, which is completely unnecessary. Learners must get rid of the fear of making mistakes, so as to help them give full play to their subjective initiative and achieve the best learning effect. By strengthening the understanding and utilization of language transfer, we can reduce the difficulty in English learning and improve the efficiency of mastering the second language. The following are specific suggestions. In the early stage, learners can recite classic literature. This is a good way for learners to learn the grammatical structure of English. For example, the famous scholar GU Hongming recited paradise lost when learning English. Learners can read a lot of articles and try to communicate with people in English after having a certain foundation. If learners can follow this method, they can overcome psychological pressure in a great extent.

4.2 Learners should establish diversified cultural views and reduce negative transfer of culture

Develop a sense of comparison. Mr. Lv Bisong pointed out: ‘the cultural differences among different national languages are regular and can be followed. Only through the comparative study of cultures can it be revealed’. (Lv 15) Cultural learning inevitably involves language knowledge in culture. For example, there are great difference in culture between Chinese and western countries. In Chinese culture, besides ‘good’ and ‘bad’, there are many intermediate evaluations, such as ‘better’, ‘worse’ etc. However, people in western countries usually only divide things into two types, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and Chinese people like euphemisms and ask questions in a tortuous and roundabout way. People in western prefer a straightforward, direct approach.

Develop a sense of wholeness. Language learners should start from the overall perspective, cooperate with the learning of language rules, improve pragmatic ability, set up a macroscopic concept, and scientifically define the content of culture,

Develop a sense of adaptation. For a foreign language learner, their values and ways of thinking are cultivated under the influence of the national culture, and gradually form a fixed pattern. In learning English, we may feel uncomfortable because of the influence of Chinese. Therefore, in the process of English learning, we should cultivate the habit of cultivating learners’ cultural awareness and train students to learn from the perspective of the cultural background of language country.

Reading a lot of literary works and news reports is an important way to understand the cultural customs, values and social relations of the target language. By reading a large number of literatures, foreign language learners can have an in-depth understanding of the western social background while being exposed to the culture of the target language. In the Internet age, the Internet brings us unlimited information. Through the Internet, we can also log on to the British and American websites to learn English while browsing the web. There are also many good English learning materials on the Internet, many of which are culture-related.

4.3 Learners should understand the correct meaning of the target language vocabulary

In the process of learning English, it is far from enough to only remember the surface meaning of English words. The correct use of a word requires putting words into context and situations. The same word may express different meanings in different contexts and may have different parts of speech in different situations. But when we Chinese or other English learners are learning English, they always like to use word books or application software to memorize words independently one by one. First of all, this method is difficult to remember, and the words it has mastered are hard to be used flexibly in actual writing, let alone in oral expression, which will hinder the further study of English. Just like when we first learn Chinese, we seldom remember words one by one independently. Therefore Chinese students should try to put words into context and context when learning English. For example, students can memorize the words in the process of reading the texts, which is not only conducive to the mastery of vocabulary but also can enhance the ability of learning. English learners can learn words by reading western magazines or periodicals. This way of memorizing words has the following advantages; first, it can improve their reading ability. Second, they can master the Standard English grammar structure more skillfully. Moreover, reading western magazines and periodicals is conducive to understanding their local culture, which can help learners reduce the negative transfer of culture.

4.4 Learners should learn English in a comparative study

When learning English, Chinese English learners should learn to use the method of comparison to compare the same and different use of the same word meaning in English and Chinese, and to compare the same and different grammatical structures. Then reduces the English study difficulty, and grasps the English more efficiently. In daily foreign language acquisition, foreign language acquirers can read articles, newspapers, magazines and even original works step by step and watch TV programs to enhance their foreign language literacy. English learners can also improve their foreign language literacy by reciting articles. Quantitative changes can be converted into qualitative changes by accumulating the vocabulary and sentences of articles, so that foreign language learners can use English as easily as their mother tongue. In English and Chinese, there are not many cases in which vocabulary and grammar exactly one to one. Most of the explanations in Chinese-English dictionaries and English-Chinese dictionaries are free translation, which has a negative effect on our real understanding of the meaning of vocabulary when we acquire a foreign language. After further study of foreign languages, the reliance on English-Chinese dictionary as a tool will increase the phenomenon of negative transfer of mother tongue. After learning to a higher level, foreign language learners should use English-English dictionary as a tool, so as to effectively eliminate the phenomenon of negative transfer of mother tongue.

4.5 learners should emphasize competence training and pragmatic competence training

Culture includes language. Due to different cultural backgrounds, different languages have great differences due to different cultures. It is easy for learners to make pragmatic mistakes for their lack of understanding of the cultural background of the target language. Researchers also have different views on the linguistic influence of culture. Some believe that cultural teaching is subordinate to language teaching, some people hold the opinion that cultural learning should be synchronized with language learning, while others attach more importance to cultural learning, they think that language learning should be integrated into cultural learning. The author holds that these three viewpoints are applicable to different learning stages. In cross-cultural communication, if the cultural meaning reflected in the words and deeds cannot be understood, or the understanding is insufficient, it is difficult to make a correct judgment of the context meaning. That is to say, learning and understanding the culture of the target language country is the prerequisite for avoiding misunderstanding and friction and accurate language output.

5. Conclusion

First of all, due to the many differences between China and western countries, it is normal and inevitable to have difficulties in learning English, which is also the reason for writing this paper. Chinese students should understand negative transfer and learn to use corresponding methods to reduce the impact of negative transfer. Second, pay attention to the input and output of the target language. English learners can ensure correct language output (speaking and writing) by listening, reading and multiple exposures to the target language. Through input and output, English learners can further compare the differences between English and Chinese, and predict the possible negative transfer of mother tongue in English learning. In terms of pronunciation, learners should learn the differences between Chinese and English pronunciation, and listen to local radio stations such as BBC and VOA. Watch some classic American TV series and British TV series. If possible, communicate with British and American people. These methods can greatly improve learners’ oral English. In terms of vocabulary, learners should memorize the words in the process of reading and try to memorize the words in the context, then, learning the meaning of words and use them flexibly. In terms of culture, it is also the most difficult problem to solve. Learners can read classic literature to learn about their values and ways of thinking. Learners can read the news to understand the political and cultural trend of western countries. These methods can solve many problems in English learning. I hope English learners in China can make use of it.

Works Cited

Benson, Cathy. Transfer: Cross-linguistic influence. ELT Journal, 2002.

Brown H D. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. NJ: Prentice Hall Regents, 2016.

Krashen. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Press, 1986

Moon, R. Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003

Ordsh ，J．1anguage learners and Their Errors[M]．London：The Macmillan Press，1983．

Slinker，L.International Review of Applied Linguistics，1972，10／3：201—31．

Alva. Influence of Chinese Language Transfer on English Vocabulary Learning, 2017.

岑运 :《语言学基础理论》.北京师范大学出版社,2005

[Cenyun. “Basic theory of linguistics”. Beijing: Beijing normal university press, 2005]

吕必松:《外语学习中的迁移》：外国语文双月刊,1986

[Lv Bisong. “Transfer in foreign language learning”. Shanghai: Foreign language and Literature. 1986]

查爱霞:《普通话和方言对英语语音的迁移作用》：外语天地，2002.

[Zha Aixia. “The transfer effect of Putonghua and dialect on English pronunciation”. Foreign language world, 2002.]

张灿灿.《二语习得中的母语迁移现象》. 吉首大学学报：社会科学版, 2008.

[Zhang Cancan. “Mother tongue transfer in second language acquisition”. Journal of Joshua University. 2008.]

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：32463字