Abstract

Third Language Acquisition, shorted as TLA, is a new research field appeared in the late 80s in 20th century, along with deep-going of the research of SLA and transfer theory, and boomed between the late 20th and early 21st century. Up to now, the research on SLA has been developed and become matured but the research on TLA is relatively rare. In our country, the training program of foreign language majors is “the majored foreign language + second foreign language”. There’s no doubt that English and Japanese are the two languages which have most learners in China. For most learners, they learn English earlier, mostly in primary school time while Japanese started later. This thesis focuses on the phenomenon of the reverse negative transfer phenomenon from Japanese (L3) to English (L2). The researcher selected 33 respondents, who are all sophomore students of Japanese major of Foreign Language School in our university, emphasis on three aspects: phonetical transfer, lexical transfer and syntactical transfer; analyzed the data of inquiry and conducted several conclusions about common transfer phenomena. It is phonetical transfer which influence deepest and widest among the reverse negative transfer phenomena. In addition, the transfer degree is relevant to the respondents’ start year and basic of both L2 and L3 to some extent.

Keywords: Third Language Acquisition (TLA); English; Japanese; reverse negative transfer; phonetical; lexical, syntactical, language distance 

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 The general description of research of TLA (overseas & domestically).-1

1.2 The historical background and significance of this research.-1

2. Literature Review-2

2.1-Cross-linguistic Influence-2

2.2 Transfer theory-3

3.Methodology-4

3.1 Research questions and hypothesis-4

3.2 Participants & Instruction-4

3.3 Questionnaire design.-5

3.4 Data collection-5

3.5 Data handling. (Statistical Analysis)-5

3.5.1 Basic information of respondents-5

3.5.2 The aspects and degree of reverse negative transfer-5

4. Findings-6

4.1 Phonetical transfer (in pronunciation aspects and examples)-6

4.2 Lexical transfer (in vocabulary aspects and examples)-6

4.3 Syntactical transfer (in grammar aspects and examples)-6

4.4 The relationship between the language level and transfer degree-6

4.4.1 The relationship between English language level and transfer degree-6

4.4.2 The relationship between Japanese language level and transfer degree-7

4.5 The relationship between start year and transfer degree-7

4.5.1 The relationship between English start year and transfer degree-7

4.5.2 The relationship between Japanese start year and transfer degree-8

5. Discussion and Conclusion-8

5.1 The aspects and degree of reverse negative transfer.-8

5.2 Other facts-9

References-10