With kinds of surveys on the reasons why the English speaking ability is so difficult to acquire or to improve, the researchers at home and abroad do believe that language transfer is definitely a crucial factor in English learning and teaching。 While learning a second language, the learner is inevitably influenced by his mother tongue which has already existed in his mind。 Sometimes, this influence is helpful for students to learn English, while sometimes, it could be a hindrance in learning。 This thesis is designed to carry out the research, find out the concrete influences caused by mother tongue and work out several constructive teaching or learning methods to improve middle school students’ English speaking abilities according language transfer。

Chapter One  Literature Review

1。1 Transfer and language transfer

According to Weinreich(1953), transfer is evidenced as those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language。 Structurally different areas of the two languages involved would result in interference。 This term was used to describe any influence from the L1 which would have an effect on the acquisition of the L2。 This was the origin of the term transfer。来自优Y尔L论W文Q网wWw.YouERw.com 加QQ7520~18766

Language transfer refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from one language to another language。 It is the transfer of linguistic features between languages in the speech repertoire of a bilingual or multilingual inpidual, whether from first to second, second to first or many other relationships。  When some features of the L1 in accordance with the L2 and would facilitate foreign language learning, we call this phenomenon positive language transfer。 On the other hand, when the differences between the L1 and the L2 interfere learning, then it is called negative transfer, which occurs where there is some sort of dissonance between the L1 and L2。 In this case, acquisition of the L2 would be more difficult and take longer because of the “newness”(hence, difficulty) of the L2 structure。 

1。2 The researches abroad

Odlin(1989), an American linguist, gave a definition in his academic monograph Language Transfer: transfer means the influence caused by the similarity and the difference between the target language and any other acquired language, so he thought transfer is a kind of influence。 

As for Corder, one of the British applied linguists, he regarded transfer as a communicative strategy, which is borrowing。 However, this view is not completely right, because Corder explained the phenomenon of transfer from the point of view of communication and denied the influences in learning language which are caused by mother tongue。

Faerch and Kasper held the idea that language transfer is a psychological process of language。 During this process, learners stimulate the knowledge of their mother tongue to develop and use interlanguage。 While stimulating, there could be two situations。 One is that the transfer is just as a communication procedure, having little effect on mastering target language, because learners might not keep these mother tongue rules in their interlanguage, that is what is called transfer in communication, just occurring while speaking or understanding language so that learners could make use of mother tongue to realize the aim of temporary and inpidual communication or understand target language。 The other is the transfer in learning。 The difference between these two situations is that the transfer in learning is occurring before speaking or understanding language。

Transfer is not a psychological process for Schachter。 She regarded language transfer as a constraint in learning, which is a kind of cognitive view。 She thought the knowledge learners had learnt before would suppress while learners were making assumptions based on target language。 The knowledge to be learned is what having been learned before。 And the transition could take place while learning。 The knowledge above includes mother tongue, the knowledge about other languages, the knowledge that learners have mastered and the views that learners have on target language。