4. Results and Discussion 11

4.1 Errors analysis and classification 11

4.1.1 Negative transfer in grammatical morpheme 11

4.1.2 Negative transfer invocabulary 13

4.1.3 Negative transfer in syntax 14

4.2 Interview 15

4.3 Causes of the errors 16

5. Conclusion 17

5.1 Major Findings 17

5.2 Implications 17

5.3 Limitations 18

References 19

Appendix 21

1. Introduction

English Curriculum Standards (2011) for compulsory education define the main objectives of English education, of which the training of students’ basic skills is taken as the foundation for their overall development. Among the four skills, writing plays a significant role in English learning, which is not only a way to review and consolidate vocabulary and grammar, but also to promote the development of listening, speaking, reading abilities. As a result, English writing is usually an effective way to show learner’s competence. Actually, the above teaching goal has already been put forward as early as 2001. Though the curriculum reform has been conducted for more than a decade, the current situation of students’ English writing is still not optimistic since errors are still common in students’ composition. Johanna Myles (2002), the Britain scholar, classifies errors into two major branches: errors in social and cognitive aspects and errors in language transfer. It is conspicuous that students’ English writing is always accompanied with their Chinese ideas, no matter for wording, phrasing or making sentences. And Li Ying (2011) demonstrates that 86% interviewed middle school students are accustomed to conceiving their English writing in Chinese. This is the influence of language transfer in students’ English writing. 

The Second Language Acquisition (SLA) term, transfer, was first raised by Lado in 1957. SLA is regarded as a formation process of language habit and behavior, during which the firmly established native language system will have impact on new language system. Positive transfer appears when some of the characteristics of mother tongue are similar to those of the target language and contributions to SLA are made because of the similarities. However, negative transfer is the cause of interference with SLA and is regarded as the cause of a sizeable number of errors in Chinese students’ compositions. Shi Yujun (2006) points out that Chinese is a parataxis, while English is hypotaxis. The difference between Chinese and English is a great hindrance to Chinese English learners. Therefore, learners often make English-Chinese sentences (to write Chinese sentences in English), which are called Chinese style English or “Chinglish”, which is the manifestation of negative transfer in Chinese students’ English writing.

Foreign and native linguists have conducted the large aggregation of studies, which attest to the inevitability of negative transfer in students’ English writing. In 1975, Chau made an investigation of negative transfer among Chinese students by analyzing their English compositions, and the research findings show a 51% of errors resulted from negative transfer (Xu Yulong, 2002), the result of which is the same as that of Shu Dingfang’s research in 1996.