Language Transfer

Language Transfer

Definition of Language Transfer

At first, let’s take a look at the phrase of “Language transfer”.

“Transfer” is originally a basic concept in psychology. In psychology, it

refers to “the phenomenon of previous knowledge being extended to the

area of new knowledge, this is to say, the influence which we learning or

remembering of one thing has on which we learning or remembering of

another thing”. And it is this concept that forms the psychological basis for

“language transfer”.

The notion of “language transfer”, at its birth, was closely related to the

behaviorist行为主义者theories. They assumed that learners tended to

transfer the characteristics of their native languages and cultures into the

foreign languages and cultures that they were learning. Accordingly, when

we make errors in second language learning is the result of the interference

of our mother tongue learning because of differences between the two.

Interference as such is called Negative Transfer. Negative transfer is one

that interferes with our second language learning in later situation.

Specifically, it refers to the use of native language patterns or rule that

leads to an error or inappropriate form in the target language (=second

language in my report). Similarities between the first language and second

language, on the other hand, are believed to facilitate帮助

促进

the

learning of the second language. Facilitation as such is called Positive

Transfer. It may help or facilitate language learning in another later

situation, and may occur when both the native language and the target

language have the same form.

Possible English-learning obstacles

A learner's mother tongue that we also call one's First Language and it

always has great impact on his or her Second Language. For example, we

are Chinese and our mother tongue is Chinese. In this class, what we are

learning now is English, our second language. So we can say that our first

language Chinese influence our second language’ performance greatly. As

a result, I think that the essential reason why we Chinese students face

plenty of obstacles in learning English, even the majority of them are

very diligent, is the impact of our mother tongue. So now I will list these

obstacles that we Chinese students may face in Chinese environment.

I will begin from our writing g is the most

comprehensive全面的

充分理解的

reflection of the learners’ target

language ability. So writing is an essential skill when we learn a second

language. Chinglish expression is the most representative errors for our

Chinese students through this part. And they usually form the

compositions in Chinese, and then translate it into English. For two

simple instances, when some people translate the sentence of “他的英

语说得很好”into or she says: His English says very well.

And this is Chinglish expression. Then let’s see the next sentence,

everybody in the world hopes that they can be happy, I am also. “I am

also” is a sentence of typical Chinglish expression too. According to

this sentence, we know he or she wants to express the Chinese meaning

“我也是”, but he or she does not know that in English there is a

particular structure to express this meaning and thinks that the

expression “I am also” is right as far as English grammar is concerned.

We reproduced that sentence is that, everybody in the world hopes that

they can be happy, so do I.

However, what is important for us is how we

can overcome this obstacle. In my view, the different thinking modes in

English and Chinese are the major causes of Chinglish expressions.

Since one’s thinking mode is deeply rooted in his mind, it is very

difficult for us to change it. So as a learner, if we want to improve our

English writing, we must train ourselves more, and to know more about

English. We should realize the importance of writing in our study and

life, even in our future work. Do as the follows, and we will gain more.

First, thinking in English. To think in English, learners should avoid

relating everything to their native language by making the second language

as a separate system. Learners should learn to live with uncertainty in

order to keep their writing.

(2) Reading in English extensively.

The more a student reads, the better his

writing becomes. Reading widely is one of the best ways to acquire

native-like English. So, after-class reading with more kinds of

materialsshould be done.

Now I talk about our listening and speaking English

the majority of us, even we learn English usually or learn English every

day, we find that after a month or a long period of time, our oral

English and listening skill do not improve very much. At that time, we

will feel depressed and do not have confidence to learn English any

more. Take one of my high school classmates for example, she is

hardworking in learning English, but her score in listening part is very

low at every examination. She felt sad and don’t know why. In my

opinion, the cause of my classmate’s failure in English listening is the

impact of our Chinese environment. She doesn’t have enough

opportunities to communicate with others in English and what’ more

the time she listens our mother tongue nearly spending her all day

except in the English class. On the contrary, a classmate of mine, he

usually takes part in our school’s English corner and he has an

American friend who is his neighbor. Consequently, his oral English

and listening English are both well. So, in order to improve our oral

English and listening English, we should catch chances to practice

more. For instance, we’d better take actively part in English Speech

Match, participate in English corner usually and such activity that can

let us practice English more. In a word, we should put ourselves in an

English environment. In this way, we will improve greatly and quickly.

Our English teachers should try their best to set a real practicing scene

in classroom for us, like now is very practical.

Now let’s talk about English reading.

Reading comprehension always occupies an important position in English

teaching in China. Most difficulties encountered by our college students in

reading can be classified into three sorts. The first sort is that the learners

cannot grasp the meaning of reading material even though they know the

meaning of every word in this material and have no doubt about the

grammatical structures. The second is that the learnt meanings of some

words seem inappropriate in the text that we read. The last one turns out to

be that reading is hard to continue in case of meeting several new words. I

think all the above phenomena reveal that our Chinese student's reading

comprehension remains in the level of words and sentences instead of

discourse谈话

演讲

语段

and the concept of discourse has not been well

established. These phenomena result from the traditional procedure in

reading teaching which starts with words, then sentences, and finally the

whole discourse. I think we can reverse the procedure in reading, start with

discourse and then come to deal with those difficult sentences and words.

Have a try, and you may feel different.

Finally, second language acquisition is based on grasping mother

language. Therefore, the transfer will appear certainly. All we can do is to

find it and then make full use of positive transfer and reduce the negative

influence of it.