Abstract

English writing, as a testimony of students’ level of English, could embody their potentiality in English. In English learning, language transfer has been a solid-established fact. The influence on English writing caused by language transfer could be roughly divided into positive influence and negative influence. Actually, in the field of Second Language Acquisition, language transfer has always been a hot issue. The expected final achievement the researcher tries to get is to figure out how negative transfer influences high school student’s writing and put forward some useful advice both for teachers and students.

The author reviews the literature of language transfer and related studies both in China and abroad in this thesis. Error analysis theory is applied when the author analyzes errors she has collected from writing samples. When the author categorizes those errors, Carl James’ classification of errors is reviewed, that is substance error, text error and discourse error.

To collect solid data, two methods are applied in the research: questionnaire and writing task. The participants of the questionnaire and the writers of the writing samples all come from Sheyang High school. 150 valid questionnaires and 50 writing samples are collected from the Senior 1 students’ mid-term examination in 2016. After data collection, the author analyzed the questionnaires and writing samples with the help of her friends. 

It is found that the negative transfer has a strong effect on the students’ writing. Among all the mistakes and errors collected from writing samples, errors caused by negative transfer of Chinese occupies a large part, accounting for 48.4%. The statistics show that the influence of negative transfer on L2 writing could not be neglected. The researcher also finds that the influence of negative transfer on the students’ writing is mainly manifested in errors, including substance errors, text errors and discourse errors.

Based on the present research, the author suggests that both teachers and students should raise their awareness of negative transfer. However, owing to the limited time and lack of experience, this research is still incomprehensible and further research is needed in the future.

Key words: language transfer, senior high school students, writing, error analysis

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

1.1 Significance of the Study-1

1.2 Objective of the Study-1

1.3 Layout of the Thesis-2

Chapter 2 Literature Review-3

2.1 The Definition of Language Transfer-3

2.2 Classification of Language Transfer-4

2.2.1 Positive transfer-4

2.2.2 Negative transfer-4

2.2.3 Avoidance-5

2.2.4 Over-use-5

2.3 Diachronic Theories of Language Transfer-6

2.3.1 Behaviorist views-6

2.3.2 Mentalist views-6

2.3.3 Cognitive views-7

2.4 Related Studies-8

2.4.1 Related studies on language transfer in second language acquisition-8

2.4.2 Related studies on language transfer in L2 writing-9

Chapter 3 Methodology-11

3.1 Research Questions-11

3.2 The Setting and Participants-11

3.3 Instruments-12

3.3.1 Writing task-12

3.3.2 Questionnaire-12

3.4 Data Collection and Data Analysis-13

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion-15

4.1 General Analysis of Negative Transfer on English Writing-15

4.1.1 Results from students’ compositions-15

4.1.2 Results from questionnaire-17

4.2 Manifestations of Negative Transfer on English Writing-19

4.2.1 Errors at substance level-19

4.2.2 Errors at text level-20

4.2.3 Errors at discourse level-24

Chapter 5 Conclusion-26

5.1 Major Findings-26

5.2 Implications of the Study-26

5.3 Limitations of the Study-27

References-29

Appendix A: Writing Task-31

Appendix B: Writing Samples-32

Appendix C: Questionnaire (Chinese Version)-38

文献综述报告-39