Abstract: Viewing from the present documents, study about language transfer had always focused on the relationship between mother tongue (L1) and the second language (L2).  This paper aims to apply the theory and methods of language transfer theory to two relevant languages, English (L2) and German (L3), in order to find the role that English plays in German learning. This study was carried out through a questionnaire, which was responded by English majors from School of Foreign Studies, in Jiangnan University. By comparison, the present learning situation of German can be shown, the application of language transfer theory in English and German can also be revealed. There were three main results can be drawn by this study. Firstly, according to the statistical results, in the learning process of German, most students believed that English didn't get in the way, but offered great help. Secondly, in the learning process of German, the main two problems were pronunciation and predicate word order. Thirdly, some personal learning habits may also affected the learning effect. Hopefully, the result of this study can help English majors get a better understanding of their second foreign language(German), thus enhancing the learning efficiency.

Keywords: the first foreign language; the second foreign language; language transfer; pronunciation; predicate word order 

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter1 Introduction-1

Chapter 2 Literature Review-3

2.1 Language Transfer-3

2.2 Relevant Relationship between German and English-3

Chapter 3 Research Methods-5

3.1 Research Questions-5

3.2 Subjects-6

3.3 Data Analysis-6

Chapter 4 Results and Discussions-9

4.1 General Analysis of English and German in pronunciation-9

4.2 General Analysis of English and German in predicate order-11

Chapter 5 Conclusions-15

5.1 Implication-15

5.2 Limitations with the Present Studies and Future Directions-16

References-19

Acknowledgements-21

Appendix: the Questionnaire-23