1 Introduction 简介
1.1 Needs for the Study
The relationship among people all over the world is becoming closer and closer with the integration of the global economy. There is no doubt that English has been widely used in people’s daily life as well as international business and affairs. Now, people have paid much more attention and recognition to English learning. Therefore, the importance of learning English is obvious. However, English and Chinese belong to different language families, and each of them has its own complete system and different cultural background. There are many difficulties and obstacles during the process of English learning for most of the EFL(English as Foreign Language) learners. As an adult, they have owned complete knowledge structure and strong ability of logical reasoning with their mother tongue(MT). In other words, their language customs have been formed. Therefore, it is inevitable of the interference of Chinese in their English learning process.
It is widely accepted that a second or foreign language is strongly influenced by the learners’ MT or the first language(L1). As Lado (1957) first put it, the process of influence from the MT is called language transfer, which occurs in every aspect of language learning including pronunciation, spelling, grammar, etc. Language transfer can be either positive or negative. When transfer result in something correct because the rules of the first and the second language overlap, this is referred to as positive transfer. By contrast, when transfer result in something incorrect, this is referred to as negative transfer, also known as interference(Dulay, 1982). The study of language transfer has been a hot issue for more than a century in the field of applied linguistics, second language(L2) acquisition and language teaching, especially negative transfer has been a major concern of both language teachers and language researchers. Writing, the expression of ideas in written words, serves as the most important means of communication in conveying people’s ideas and feelings. It has been regarded as a vital factor in successful worldwide communication and cooperation. However, compared with the other three basic skills, namely listening, speaking and reading, writing is the most tough to acquire. Therefore, in the process of teaching, we have paid more and more attention to the students’ writing skills. But in fact, most of the Chinese students have much difficulty in writing correct and fluent sentences in English. It is very common for them to make various kinds of errors in their writings in English, although they have studied the language for about 6 years or more. They get used to taking Chinese as a medium and translating it into English, so as not to get much improvement after a two-year study of college English. The phenomenon of native language transfer can be easily found in their writing, and the errors caused by the negative transfer of the MT are the main problems in the students’ English writing.
