4.2.3 Conjunctions 10

4.3 Thinking mode 11

5. Pedagogical Implication 12

6. Conclusion 14

References 15

1. Introduction

With the development of the international economy and communication, English has become more and more important for Chinese people. Rimes (1983) pointed out writing helps students learn. Similarly, English writing, as a main part of English language, helps students to reinforce the vocabulary and grammatical structure. However, English writing has disturbed students in China for a long period of time, especially for college students, who gradually lose their English skills and knowledge since they got rid of the pressure from the college entrance examination. There are a lot of researches attempting to find some reasons for that why English writing becomes so difficult for Chinese Students who are famous for working hard. The paper tries to explain the issue in aspect of negative transfer and puts forward some advice on English teaching. It not only gives a detailed description of how Chinese language interferes with their English Writing, but also makes detailed analysis of improper expressions. 

To make a general survey, scholars, teachers, and even students in English major have done many similar studies on different groups, such as students in junior or senior high schools, and in colleges. The author chose college students as objects for reasons as follows: Compared with students in high school, college students are supposed to have a better mastery of Chinese which may influence on their English writing. Additionally, college students will not be required to learn English as hard as people in high school. It seems that their English proficiency can be better reflected than students who are pushed to pass English examinations in high school. 

The paper consists of six parts. Part one introduces the necessity and background of the study. Under this context, the significance of choosing college students as the object is explicitly shown. Part two focuses on literature review, which gives a clear definition of transfer, indicates the development of researches of language transfer, points out two types of transfer and shows some related studies. The literature review provides useful information for readers to understand the following research. Part three introduces the methodology of the research, including text analysis and interview method, and the procedure by which the study will be done. Part four illustrates the effect of Chinese negative transfer on college students’ English writing with the samples from college students’ compositions, through three main dimensions: lexical level, syntactical level and thinking mode. The author classifies the errors occurring in students’ English writing into seven types: errors in part of speech, word collocation, plurality, grammatical accord, word verbosity, word order, subordinate clause, and conjunction. And then, part five puts forward some advice for English teachers, based on this research and some previous studies, in order to weaken negative transfer phenomenon in ESL or EFL learning. At last, the author concluded the findings, discussions and pedagogical implications from this research.

 2. Theoretical Basis

2.1 The Definition of Transfer

According to Webster’s Third New World International Dictionary (1986), “transfer” means “to carry”, “to bear”, or “to print, impress or otherwise copy (as a drawing or engraved design) from one surface to another”, derived from the Latin word “transferre”, Besides, “transfer” can also mean “the carry-over or generalization of learned responses from one type of situation to another”, especially “the application in one field of study or effort of knowledge, skill, power, or ability acquired in another”. The use of “transfer” in “language transfer” is such an example of the latter explanation.