Language transfer is a common phenomenon in the language learning. Language transfer is the effect of one language on the learning of another. The mistakes made by students in the writing during their English learning come from the interference of Chinese on English, which is called cultural conflict , that’s to say, culture transfer. Language transfer includes positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer refers to the transfer in which language learners’ knowledge of the mother tongue improves the acquisition of the new knowledge of the target language. Negative transfer, also called interference, is the phenomenon in which language learners use the models or rules of their mother tongue in the target language, resulting in the output of the informal or even wrong expressing forms of the target language. In the English language learning, Chinese students try to utilize some mother tongue features more than that of the English language during learning. As language and culture combine together, Chinese students meet cross-cultural barriers of every aspect in the process of English learning. Obviously, fundamental to learning is the reader’s ability to master the language knowledge and understand the culture of the language. The improvement of this ability is the main approach for reducing and even eliminating the cross-cultural barriers in the process of writing.
Researches show that language transfer occurs in all aspects of language of phonology, lexis, syntax, and pragmatics etc. “Chinese English learners may have a lot of mistakes in their English language learning, some of which are caused by the negative transfer from Chinese.” (Su Dingfang, 1996) During my English teaching in the senior middle school, I’ve collected large quantities of mistakes in the students’ English writing. And I’ve found that the more differences exist between Chinese and English, the more mistakes students may make. It is likely to make use of the findings in second language teaching to facilitate second language learning and to minimize the negative effects. In this paper, I’d like to make a contrastive study of the different characters between Chinese and English while analyzing the various mistakes in Chinese students’ English writing caused by the negative transfer from Chinese on the levels of lexis, syntax , discourse, avoidance and over—use, etc.
Each language has its own special rules of word combination and sentence making. Chinese and English belong to two different language systems. Of course, they have different language rules. Chinese is analytic language in which word forms do not change and word order and the use of function words show grammatical functions. English is synthetic language, that is a language in which affixes may be added to the stems of a word to add its meaning or to show its grammatical functions. Due to such differences, Chinese English learners often make mistakes in oral or written works. Generally speaking, negative transfer from Chinese on the level of lexis can be shown as the following aspects: the use of articles, single or plural forms of nouns, verbs and tenses, the use of words, etc. For example, “变质” can be translated as “to go bad”. As a negative language transfer, in the Chinese language, people will say “bad eggs (fruit, cheese, milk, tooth, etc.)”. But in fact, in the English language, there’re many synonyms of “bad”. We should describe the above things suitably as “坏蛋”, “spoiled fruit”, “rotten cheese”, “sour milk”, “decayed tooth”, etc.
(1) There is public library in every town in Britain. There is a public library in every town in Britain. (2) I have a good news to tell you. I have a piece of good news to tell you. Analyze: There being no such words in Chinese that can be equal to articles in English, Chinese English learners often neglect the use of Articles in English. But after they’ve learnt some English, sometimes they are confused by the use of Articles in English.
(1) They were eager to know everything about China and asked me lots of question. They were eager to know everything about China and asked me lots of questions. (2) I hope that you two could come and visit us some times soon. I hope that you two could come and visit us some time soon. (3) The riches are always respected and the poor are always worth nothing at all. The rich are always respected and the poor are always worth nothing at all. |
