According to the National English Curriculum Standards (2011), the whole basic education period, including compulsory education and secondary education, is pided into nine levels in regard to students’ ability level in each period。 As for Grade7 junior students, they are at Level 3。 Learners at this level are required to meet the standards as follows:

(1)。 Be able to use the common punctuations correctly;

(2)。 Be able to convey information by using simple charts, posters, etc。;

(3)。 Be able to write or answer greetings and invitations by referring to the examples;

(4)。 Be able to describe pictures and write simple stories by using phrases or sentences。

During my teaching internship in a middle school, I find that a large percent of students still fail to meet the requirements when contrasting their writing with the standards。 Even in punctuations, many students fail to use a question mark after an interrogative sentence or to use a full stop when a statement finishes。 When asked to write in phrases or sentences, more problems are exposed。 When looking into the errors, I notice that most of them can be attributed to Chinese negative transfer, which is the major motivation of this paper。

From the perspective of English teachers, the teaching of English writing is far from satisfaction。 Since the improvement of writing is respectively slow, many teachers are reluctant to spend proper time on writing。 In addition, the workload of correcting students’ writing is tremendous。 Teachers often focus on finding grammatical errors while little attention is paid to Chinese negative transfer errors。 This phenomenon also drives me to do researches on Chinese negative transfer。

1。2 Research Purpose来自优W尔Y论W文C网WWw.YoueRw.com 加QQ7520,18766

In the process of second language learning, the existence of mother tongue negative transfer is an indisputable fact。 My two-month teaching internship has also witnessed this phenomenon。 Researches have shown that the lower second language level one has, the more he/she depends on mother tongue while writing (Zamel, 1982), and I find students under middle level in the class expose more Chinese negative transfer errors。 Therefore, there is no denying that Chinese negative transfer is one of the major factors that influence students’ writing ability。

This paper aims to find out the types and percentages of the Chinese negative transfer errors in students’ English writing。 In the meantime, the purpose of this thesis is to lead English teachers to be aware of the importance of Chinese negative transfer and provide more help to the learners in teaching English writing。

1。3 Research Significance 

In China, junior students start learning English as a second language after they have mastered Chinese, thus Chinese inevitably influences their English writing。 However, many English teachers don’t have a scientific understanding and analysis towards Chinese negative transfer, thus students have little improvement in English writing。 Recent years, more and more English educators are focusing on how to improve students’ writing by overcoming Chinese negative transfer。

Different from the researches done before, this thesis specifically lays emphasis on Grade7 junior students instead of whole junior students for the following reasons:

1。 During my teaching internship, I was assigned to a Grade7 class, so I am highly familiar with their learning situations。

2。 Grade7 students’ mentality is quite different from that of Grade8 and Grade9。 Grade7 students have just graduated from primary schools, so both their appearance and mentality are children-like; while Grade8 and Grade9 students are in their puberty, making them more adult-like。 In this sense, the errors made by Grade7 may be different from those of Grade8 and Grade9 in that Grade7 students may make more childish errors or errors caused by primary school learning habits。