In the process of language acquisition, the negative transfer of mother tongue is an inevitable phenomenon, because in the mind of the language learners, there is a complete system of mother tongue language。 Therefore, the transfer of L1, especially the negative transfer, has been the focus of language researchers and teachers。 The majority of learners’ L2 writing has an obvious trace of mother tongue transfer, and the negative transfer of L1 is the main obstacle of the students’ L2 writing。 

This thesis aims to investigate the influence of Chinese negative transfer on English writing and provide countermeasures。 It is based on the previous research and theory of language transfer to discuss the causes and the varieties of Chinese negative transfer。 By analyzing the typical mistakes caused by the negative transfer of Chinese students’ English writing, we can minimize the negative transfer。 In addition, finding effective teaching methods in English writing can help teachers to improve students’ writing ability。 The paper also analyzes the reasons for such mistakes from cultural and linguistic perspectives and then provides solutions to reducing the negative transfer。 Such a methodic analysis is not only meaningful but also helpful to improve students’ English writing competence。

2。 Literature Review

Written expression is an important part of students’ English learning and an important way to test students’ written communicative competence。 Because of the imperfect English knowledge and the unformed English thinking mode, negative transfer of mother tongue will inevitably occur in the learning process repeatedly。 Most linguists agree that the negative transfer of language is particularly obvious because the learners often participate in English learning and activities with the help of L1 knowledge。论文网

2。1 Definition of language transfer

In the study of foreign language learning, transfer often have an effect on SLA when the first language makes a transition to the second language。 

H。 Ellis (Cook 102) defined transfer as “A hypothesis that task A learning will affect the task of learning B。” If we replace the “task A and task B” by “L1 and L2”, we can get the definition of language transfer。 According to Odlin (1989), language transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously acquired (Odlin 29)。 According to its effects, it can be pided into positive transfer and negative transfer。 

Positive transfer refers to the positive effects caused by the existing skills on new skills, whereas negative transfer is a behavioral psychology term that refers to the interference of the previous knowledge with new learning。 It relates to the experience with one set of events could hurt performance on related tasks。

2。2 Classifications of language transfer

According to the sources, language transfer can be pided into interlingual and intralingual transfer; borrowing transfer and substratum transfer。 According to the level of its occurrence, there are linguistic transfer and non-linguistic transfer。

Ellis (2000) listed 6 factors that constrain the language transfer, such as phonology, vocabulary, grammar, discourse and so on。 He stressed that the learner’s mistakes are crucial to the researchers。 These errors provide not only the basis for how to learn but also a strong basis for the understanding of the strategies used by learners。

Based on the students’ English composition, this paper studies the language negative transfer。 After the analysis, the errors caused by the negative transfer of the Chinese in the students’ English composition are classified into the following categories: morphological level, lexical level, syntactic level, textual level and rhetoric aspect。