论文总字数：33244字

摘 要

英语写作能力是学生综合语言运用能力的体现。初中生处于英语学习的初级阶段，英语写作常常受到母语负迁移的影响，而产生许多中式英语的表达。笔者在范水初级中学为期三个月的见习中，体验了初中英语写作教学的环节并发现了学生写作中存在的母语负迁移问题。在收集，归纳和整理初中生英语写作中的典型错误的基础上，从词汇，句法，语篇和文化表达四个方面来分析母语负迁移对初中生英语写作的影响，进而提出减少母语负迁移对英语写作的干预的对策。

关键词：母语负迁移；初中英语写作；对策

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Background Information 1

1.2 Thesis Statement 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Language Transfer 2

2.2 Studies on Language Transfer in Wwriting 3

3. Negative Transfer in Students’ Writing 4

3.1 Negative Transfer in Vvocabulary 4

3.2 Negative Transfer in Syntax 6

3.3 Negative Transfer in Discourse 9

3.4 Negative Transfer in Culture-related Expressions 9

4. Strategies of Avoiding Negative Transfer in English Writing 10

4.1 Contrasting English and Chinese 11

4.2 Strengthening All-round English Language Skills 11

4.3 Developing the Habit of Thinking in English 12

4.4 Increasing the Input of Cultural Knowledge 13

5. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 15

1. Introduction

1.1 Background Information

In language learning, writing is one of the four basic language skills, and it reflects the comprehensive ability of language learners. Compared to other language skills, writing is usually considered to be the most difficult. “It is also confirmed that writing is a complicated process and being able to write well is usually considered to be the complex skill to master in language learning; few people can feel relaxed and light-hearted when faced with a formal writing task” (Nunan, 1991：20). Plus, Caijigang (2003:51) also pointed that Chinese students’ writing competence laged far behind their abilities of grammar, vocabulary and reading.

In junior high school, students are affected by the thinking modes of Chinese in result of the negative transfer of mother tongue in their writings. “One of the manifestations of transfer in Second Language the acquisition is occurrence of errors ‘as a result of negative transfer of mother tongue patterns into learner’s L2’ ”(Ellis, 1999: 152). To solve the problem, many scholars have made various researches and got prominent achievements. But most of the domestic researchers took the higher professional students as research subjects. In consequence, their research results cannot fully guide the junior high school English learning and teaching. Based on these, it is significant to investigate the negative transfer of mother tongue in middle school students’ writings and find some solutions.

1.2 Thesis Statement

In the process of English language learning, it isn’t hard to find that Chinese students affected by the influence of the native culture are accustomed to the Chinese way of learning English. Students completely adopt Chinese vocabulary, grammar habits, sentence structure and rhetorical devices in English learning. As a result, writings they produce fail to convey the meaning they want to express. In the hope of reducing and avoiding the negative transfer of mother tongue in students’ writings, the thesis intends to investigate the concrete cases and the prime forms of errors occurred in students’ English writings in order to find out specific solutions.

This paper is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is to the introduction part. Chapter Two focuses on the nature and types of language transfer, and reviews the historical research on the negative transfer of mother tongue in writing. Chapter Three is the main part of the research, in which it states the types of negative transfer errors. Meanwhile, the author analyzes the written errors in junior students’ English writings, explains in detail how negative transfer of mother tongue leads to those written errors. Some strategies or suggestions for avoiding negative transfer in English writing are presented in chapter Four. In the Chapter Five, the author sums up the paper and the limitations of the present study.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Language Transfer

According to Miao and Ni (2007:21-25), transfer is a psychological term, which refers to the phenomenon of “previous knowledge being extended to the area of new knowledge, i.e. the influence which the learning or remembering of one thing has on the learning and remembering of another thing. In foreign language learning, mother tongue plays an important role in second language acquisition. “Individuals tend to transfer the forms, semantic meanings as well as the distribution of them from their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture when attempting to grasp and understand the language and culture as practiced by natives” (Freeman and Long, 2000: 52). Therefore, language transfer is a common phenomenon in the process of language learning, which is “the effect that learners’ first language has on the acquisition of a second language” (Ellis, 2000: 51).

There are mainly two kinds of transfer: positive transfer and negative transfer. When the features in mother tongue and target language are the same, the mother tongue facilitates the learning of second language. Negative transfer, results from different features between target language and mother tongue. When the differences exist between them, the language learners still use the language rules of their mother tongue, thus the negative transfer occurs.

In 1957, American linguist Lado first put forward “language transfer”. He considered that in second language acquisition, learners widely relied on the first language. Schachter’s(1974:205) view of language transfer was perhaps the most distinguished from the traditional view of transfer. She claimed that transfer is not a process at all, but is a constraint on the acquisition process. Kranshen (1981:148) thought that transfer referred to “those processes that lead to the incorporation of elements from target language into mother tongue”. However, the widely accepted theory of language transfer is put forward by Odlin. “Transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired” (Odlin, 2001: 27).

Although language transfer is the main barrier in language learning, some other factors cannot be neglected, such as sex, age, the ability of learning and so on. The thesis’ research subject is junior high school students, who are studying English based on the learning of mother tongue, so they are also affected by the environment. On the contrary, the positive transfer of mother tongue cannot be denied.

2.2 Studies on Language Transfer in Writing

Yu Liming (2004:76) mentioned “we must pay attention to the negative transfer of mother tongue”. In the study of the phenomenon of negative transfer of mother tongue, in terms of writing, many scholars make researches from different angles. “We can analyze the impact of Chinese English from the level of vocabulary, syntax, rhetoric and discourse in English writing” (Zhou Shibao, 2002: 51-56). Through all the kinds of errors resulted from the negative transfer of mother tongue in middle school students’ English writing, Wu Dinge (2001: 119-123) mentioned that to solve the problem of negative transfer should improve the understanding of the English teachers, that is to say, the importance of language communication, English culture and the thinking of English should be paid much more attention. Other scholars combine class teaching presenting solutions to the negative transfer of mother in junior high school students’ writing. In 1969, American linguists Selinker first put forward the concept of “interlanguage”. “Interlanguage refers to the transitional language built between mother tongue and target language by SlA learners”(Selinker, 1972: 209-231). Rutherford (1987:56) mentioned, “In English writing, word-to-word translation is the common means”. Researchers at home and abroad all studied the negative transfer of mother tongue in writing. Although they have involved all aspects of English writing, the specific angles to middle school students’ writing are very few. Most foreign scholars have stated the language transfer in writing theoretically, and seldom with specific examples. The paper, based on the theory of language transfer, analyzes the specific examples in middle students’ writing.

3. Negative Transfer in Students’ Writing

Based on the theories in chapter two and the author’s teaching practice in Yangzhou Fanshui Middle school, a research on negative transfer of mother tongue is carried out with the purpose of analyzing the errors students often make in English writings. By categorizing and analyzing typical errors, students’ English proficiency is hoped to be improved. The errors are all collected from the Fanshui Middle school students’ writings written in exams and exercises.

3.1 Negative transfer in vocabulary

English and Chinese languages belong to different language families respectively: Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European. Expressions of vocabulary and structures are different because of the great differences in culture, geography, custom and language logical thinking. Not every Chinese vocabulary has its equivalent in English. And negative transfer usually happens when students fail to find the equivalent. They use the Chinese words or structures to express English words in the English writings.

3.1.1 Negative Transfer in Vocabulary Meaning

During the internship, the author found that many students write compositions according to the literal translation with the result of some negative transfer of vocabulary in writing.

Examples:

(1) They can attend all kinds of activities after class time.

(2)Popular major lets college students find a good job.

In sentence (1), the students want to express “课外时间”. Owing to the limitations in vocabulary, English vocabulary in mind isn’t enough to express the original ideas. From the mind, he can’t find the corresponding English vocabulary, so he has to turn to the direct translation according to the mother tongue. In fact, “spare time” and “free time ” both express “课外时间”.

In sentence (2), in his opinion, “let” corresponds to the meaning of “让”, but it actually means “allow” and “permit”. Thus, it is better to change “lets” into “enables”.

Therefore, due to the difference in Chinese and English expression, the definition of a language usually expands beyond the scope of the collocation of another language. For example, “吃” is “eat”, but “eat’’ is limited to the dinner and fruits in English, while “吃” includes many aspects in Chinese. “吃药” is not “to eat medicine” but “to take medicine”; “吃苦”is not “to eat hardships” but “to bear hardships’’; “吃败仗” is “to suffer defeat” .

3.1.2 Negative Transfer in the Part of Speech

The part of speech of English is very complex. Many students in English writing seldom pay attention to the part of speech.

Examples:

(3) Mary is going to marry with John.

(4) The teacher entered into the room.

In sentence (3), it wants to express “和某人结婚”, but it expresses “marry with somebody”. “marry” is transitive verb in English, so the sentence must abandon “with”. In sentence (4), the sentence is false. “Enter” is transitive verb, so it should be corrected into “entered the room”.

English vocabulary has twists and turns in the part of speech, while Chinese lacks of obvious changes in the part of speech. As a result, some students with low sensitivity on the part of speech often misuse the part of speech, especially in adjective, verb and preposition. For example, “给…做手术” in Chinese is transitive verb, but in English “operate” is intransitive verb, so the “operate” must adds “on”.

3.2 Negative Transfer in Syntax

Syntax is the largest unit of grammatical structure level, and it is the study of components of sentence and their sequences.

English and Chinese belong to different families, so firstly they have great differences in language construction methods. The former is hypostais, which realizes the connection of words or sentences by strict syntactic forms, such as lexical forms or morphology. Chinese is parataxis, which realizes the connection of words or sentences by paying much attention to lexical means or the logical relation not the strict language forms. “It is agreed that English is more hypotactic, which stresses a kind of cohesion built on language forms, while Chinese is more paratactic, which emphasizes coherence with context”(Pan Wenguo, 1972: 335).

3.2.1 Numbers on Nouns

Numbers on nouns are common problems in secondary school students’ writing. Some students in writing often neglect the plural forms of some nouns. The plural forms of nouns are divided into regular rules and irregular rules. In junior high school, many students affected by the mother tongue often ignore this point when they necessary. Besides, students also have difficulty in making a distinction between countable nouns and uncountable nouns in some contexts.

Example:

(5) I can see a lot of bird.

(6) There are five book on the desk.

In sentence (5) and (6), “a lot of” and “five” express the plural forms. However, in Chinese there is no obvious change in plural or singular forms. So, the student is affected by the mother tongue, and they don’t put “-es/s” in the back of the nouns.

Both Chinese and English have the grammatical conception about the forms of nouns. In the Chinese language, only the “们” can be used as a plural suffix. It is usually seen like “你 (men)”, “我(men)” “他/她/它(men)”, and some others are like “老师(men)” “朋友(men)”……According to Yu Liming (2004:74), plural forms in the Chinese language are subject to three rules: first, Plural forms should not be used together with numerals; second, Plural forms are used to refer to a group of people who are considered as a whole; third, Only when pronouns are changed into plural forms can the character “men”(们)be added, and sometimes it can also be omitted.

However, in the English language, inflectional affixes are used to identify the plural forms of nouns, such as “buses, apples,-es, -s”, but in most cases, they are added to countable nouns. In other cases, some special nouns whose plural forms are themselves.

3.2.2 Errors in Tense

When students write simple sentence, they have no errors in verb tense. However, if they write compositions or complicated sentences, an article will have several tenses, such as the present tense, the past tense and so on. They not only neglect the proper tense in certain contexts, but misuse the verb tense. To a great extent, they are influenced by the pattern of Chinese. The author collected some examples from the Fanshui Middle students writing about the errors in tense.

Example:

(7) Although I am very busy yesterday, I still play tennis with my classmates.

(8) He worked very hard, but he doesn’t pass the exam.

In sentence (7), “Although I am very busy yesterday (尽管昨天我非常的忙)”，the student ignored the time “yesterday”. In sentence (8), it is a compound sentence. The student wanted to express “他很努力， 但是他没有通过考试” . “pass the exam” is the past action. So, it should be corrected into “he worked very hard, but he didn’t pass the exam”.

There is on change in forms of verbs in Chinese. “明天，昨天，今天” and “已经，正在，过，了等” indicating time are used to express the “tense” in English. However, the tense in English is more complicated than Chinese, just as the first sentence. When students are confused with the complex tense in English, they will be affected by the mother tongue using the Chinese thinking pattern to solve problems.

3.2.3 Errors in Subject-verb Agreement

Subject-verb agreement, it is a common error in students’ writing and many students confused with the point still haven’t paid much attention to it.

Examples:

(9) Someone are frightened by the ending of the story.

In sentence (9), “someone”, indefinite pronoun, belongs to singular form. According to the subject-verb agreement, the verb “are” should be changed into “is”. In English, “am/is/are” all express “是”. Students influenced by mother tongue are confused by this. The error is caused by the lacking of the concept of subject-verb agreement.

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