Abstract

With the development of economy, the tendency of globalization has become more and more apparent. An increasing number of people tend to learn the second language to broaden their horizon, widen their knowledge and enrich their experience. As a global language, English plays an important role in the world now. English has been learned by an increasing number of Chinese students and the Ministry of Education also sets English as a discipline. However, English, as a second language compared with mother tongue, is difficult for Chinese students to learn from scratch. This essay makes research on the phenomenon of mother tongue transfer in Chinese students’ English writing from the view of contrastive analysis，error analysis and inter-language theory, aiming to find the influence of mother tongue transfer in English writing and its reasons. At last, the paper will make suggestions for teachers and students in order to improve the teachers’ teaching and students’ learning efficiency.

Key words: the second language, mother tongue transfer，second language acquisition，English writing

CONTENTS

中文摘要

Abstract

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-2

3. Language Transfer-4

3.1 The types of language transfer-4

3.1.1 The positive and negative transfer-4

3.1.2 The forward and backward transfer-6

3.1.3 The lateral and vertical transfer-6

3.1.4 The general and specific transfer-6

3.2 Theories related to language transfer-7

3.2.1 Contrastive analysis-7

3.2.2Error analysis-8

3.2.3 Inter-language theory-9

4. The Influence of Mother Tongue Transfer in Chinese Students’ English writing.-9

4.1 The importance of English writing-9

4.2 Syntactic errors-10

4.3 Lexical errors-10

4.4 Discourse errors-11

5. Implications for English Writing and Writing-11

6. Conclusion-12

Works Cited-13