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Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue in Middle School Students’ English Learning I. Introduction
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“Transfer” is originally a basic concept in psychology. It is an important concept in learning psychology, according to Ellis(145), which refers to “the phenomenon of previous knowledge being extended to the area of new knowledge,” this is to say, what we learn and remember from one thing has influence on what we learn and remember from another thing. In the study of second language acquisition (hereinafter referred to as SLA), the term of “language transfer” is used frequently. Language transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously acquired. Odlin(224) proposed that transfer can not only be seen in learners’ good influence, that is positive transfer; but also can be reflected on learners’ errors (negative influence), that is negative transfer. 25050
Negative transfer refers to the interference of mother tongue, that is to say the bad effect of mother tongue on second language learning. If the first language structure differs from that of the second language, negative transfer occurs. First language (hereinafter referred to as L1) can always play a negative role in SLA as the result of difference between two languages that L1 may prevent or interfere with the second language (hereinafter referred to as L2) acquisition process. Negative transfer of mother tongue is one of the main resources of the errors for middle school students, and is always concerned by language researchers and teachers.
With the wide and close exchange of technology and culture in the world, the increasing attention is being paid to English. It is becoming more and more important to develop students’ ability to communicate in English. So how to teach English is worth discussing. Also problems involved in students’ learning English should be found out to improve their ability. This figure clearly demonstrates a terrible situation of middle students’ English learning. Based on this situation, the thesis contains five parts. The first chapter is the introduction. Chapter two is introduction to some analytical approaches of language transfer. Then in chapter three is to analyze of errors which was made in the respective of lexical level, syntactic level and cultural level. In chapter four, suggestions and some solutions were recommended. Last chapter is the conclusion. So how to improve students’ English learning ability is of great importance and extremely urgent.
II. Analytical Approaches of Language Transfer
Since the 1940s, there have been three modes of analysis—contrastive analysis, the study of interlanguage and error analysis, each of which is a milestone in understanding second language acquisition. These three language transfer theories hold a respectively different view to the learner’s learning behavior.
2.1 Contrastive Analysis
Contrastive Analysis (CA), as linguistic research for the purpose of providing useful information for language teaching, started from the 1940s in the U.S.A, and prevailed between 1950s and 1960s. It was assumed that the greater the difference between the native language and the target language, the greater the learning problem and the potentiality of mother tongue interference. This view was clearly stated by Lado:
We assume that the student who comes in contact with a foreign language will find some features of it quite easy and others extremely difficult. Those elements that are similar to his native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult. (179)
2.2 The Study of Interlanguage
The fewer errors may not necessarily prove achievement in learning a particular aspect of L2. It is equally import to determine whether the learner’s use of correct forms approximates that of the native speaker. This idea gave rise to the study of interlanguage. It is the approximate language system that the learner constructs for use in communication through the target language. The term was coined by the American linguist Larry Selinker.