Abstract:

As Long and Richard (1989) prefaced in Odlin's book Language transfer, language transfer has been a central topic in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and language teaching for at least one hundred years. By tracing back its prime in the 1950s and 1960s, decline in the 1970s and rebirth from the 1980s, it is clear that a comprehensive understanding of language transfer has always performed a vital function in mastering the nature of SLA.

Language Transfer, either positive or negative, from language learners’ mother tongues has a vital effect upon second language learning: positive transfer stimulates language learning while negative transfer hinders language learning. Learners can not avoid the influence of thinking mode of mother tongue so that mistakes occur due to negative transfer, however, mother tongue strategy, if made good use of, can felicitate language learning.

Writing, as one of the effective methods to evaluate leaners’ comprehension in second language learning, trends to reflect the influence of transfer in a relatively objective way. However, due to the exam-driven educational system in China, both teachers and learners only focus on what language aspects being tested in exams. They hardly concern improving the “time-consuming” writing skill, which contributes to the unsatisfied performance of learners’ English writing. Moreover, the distinctive differences between the mother tongue Chinese and the target language English in syntax greatly attribute to the negative transfer of mother tongue in English writing.

On the basis of the theories of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, and Error Analysis, this article is about to take College English learners in Yunnan Normal University of China as research subjects; and to carry out case studies based on their English writing samples; and to discuss influence of negative transfer on English learning.

Keywords:

Negative Transfer, English writing, College English.