Case Study of Mother Tongue Negative Transfer in Grade7 Junior High School Students’ Writing

Abstract

Writing is one of the four basic language skills。 In language learning, having a good command of English writing can not only improve our logical thinking and analytical ability, but also facilitate other basic language skills comprehensively。 However, the current situation of junior students’ writing is not so optimistic。 Researches show that a large proportion of the errors in their writing can be attributed to mother tongue negative transfer。85105

For Chinese junior students, mother tongue negative transfer refers to the negative influence caused by Chinese when learning English。 Generally, Chinese junior students start learning English as their second language after they have completely or nearly mastered Chinese。 Therefore, when they are learning English, their Chinese thinking modes and expressions will inevitably make great influence on their English learning, which is the so-called phenomenon --- mother tongue transfer。 Mother tongue transfer can be classified into two groups, positive transfer and negative transfer。 Positive transfer can contribute to language learning, while negative transfer will hinder language learning。

This paper aims to find out the proportion of Chinese negative transfer errors, and systematically classify the errors into different types, making it easier for teachers to solve the problems accordingly。 Based on Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis and Inter-language Theory, I collected the data from 60 Grade7 students in a middle school by means of writing test and questionnaire。 The results show that 73。49% of the errors are caused by Chinese negative transfer, including vocabulary, grammatical, cultural errors, etc。, among which the grammatical errors account for the largest。 Based on these findings, I put forward several suggestions to alleviate the influence caused by mother tongue negative transfer so that English teachers can take practical and effective methods to help students avoid these errors, thus continuously improving the level and quality of both English teaching and learning。

Keywords: mother tongue negative transfer, Grade7 junior students, English writing

七年级学生英语写作中母语负迁移现象的案例研究

摘要 写作是四大基础语言技能之一。在语言学习中，良好的英语写作不仅能提高我们的逻辑思维和分析能力，还能促使其他几项语言技能齐驱并进。然而，当下初中生的英语写作现状却不容乐观。许多研究表明，学生在英语写作中所犯的错误大都源于母语负迁移。

就中国初中生而言，母语负迁移是指中文在英语学习的过程中产生的负面影响。中国初中生一般是在完全或基本掌握了汉语的情况下开始学习英语作为第二外语的，因此在学习英语的过程中，汉语的思维习惯和表达方式势必会对英语学习产生巨大影响，这就是我们所谓的母语迁移现象。母语迁移可分为正迁移和负迁移，正迁移能促进外语学习，而负迁移则会阻碍外语学习。

本文旨在探究学生英语写作中母语负迁移错误的所占比例，并将这些错误进行系统的分类，以便教师对症下药地解决问题。笔者以对比分析、错误分析及中介语理论作为理论依据，选取了来自西溪中学2个班级的共60名初一学生，通过作文测试及问卷调查的方式，进行数据的收集。结果显示，有73。49%的错误是由于母语负迁移导致的，这些错误表现在词汇、句法、文化等多方面，其中句法类错误尤为突出。针对这些发现，本文提出了几条改善母语负迁移影响的建议，以便使英语教师们能切实地采取有效措施，帮助学生克服母语负迁移带来的影响，从而不断提高英语教学和英语学习的水平和质量。