scholarly journals The Impact of Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue On College ESL Learners: Zhejiang Yuexiu University as a Case Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-31
Author(s):  
Kun Chu ◽  
Lingling Lou
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Negative Transfer ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Chinese College Students ◽  
The Impact

Negative transfer of mother tongue is a major difficulty that every second language learner has to overcome, especially for those students whose target language is quite different from their mother tongue. With the in-depth development of pluralism in the world, people pay more and more attention to the learning of various languages, especially English. In this situation, the concerns of language researchers on the negative transfer of mother tongue are inevitably boosting. Given this, based on the pertinent theories of the negative language transfer, this study aims to explore the impact of negative language transfer on Chinese college students’ English learning through a questionnaire poll with some students of Zhejiang Yuexiu University as the research objects. The results of the study are mainly shown in two aspects: the impact of the negative transfer of mother tongue on college students’ oral learning and college students’ writing learning. At the end of the article, the author puts forward the cultural differences between China and the Western countries that lead to the negative transfer of mother tongue, and some effective methods to help Chinese college English learners reduce the negative transfer of mother tongue in their process of English learning.

PRAVOPISNE GREŠKE U MEĐUJEZIKU SRBOFONIH STUDENATA KOJI UČE TIPOLOŠKI SRODNE JEZIKE (ITALIJANSKI KAO L2 I ŠPANSKI KAO L3)

Lipar ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol XXI (73) ◽  
pp. 217-231
Author(s):  
Marija Vujovic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Negative Transfer ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Third Language ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Orthographic Errors

The studies that analyze the interlanguage of plurilingual speakers have been the focus of linguists’ interest for the past three decades, since empirical researches have proved that both students’ mother tongue and non-mother tongue can be a resource for transfer when learning a new language. The paper analyzes orthographic errors made by Serbophone students of philology who study two typologically similar languages - Italian and Spanish, which arose as a result of a negative transfer from one language to another. The presented errors prove that the negative transfer is stronger in typologically closely related languages than in those that are not, regardless of the order of acquisition (De Bot, 1992; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Jarvis, 2000; De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Cenoz, 2001; Ecke, 2001; Hammarberg, 2001; Ringbom, 2001). Due to the factors of language distance and psychotypology that influenced the appearance of transfers, it has been proved that interlinguistic similarities are the ones that caused the largest number of errors (Swan, 1997) and the appearance of negative lateral transfer, i.e. negative transfer from the second to the third language. The errors did not occur exclusively due to ignorance of the rules of the Spanish language, but they were caused by the influence that the knowledge of the previously acquired Italian had on learning Spanish. Thus, most of the errors were interlingual. Many errors identified in the corpus would not have been made by students who had previously learned another foreign language typologically distant from Spanish. As the largest number of orthographic errors was identified in words that are the same or similar in Italian and Spanish, the claim of many linguists (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Cenoz, 2001; De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Ecke, 2001; Hammarberg, 2001; Ringbom, 2001) that the typological similarity between L2 and L3 facilitates language transfer has been proved. Thus, when studying transfer, one should pay attention not only to the influence of the mother tongue on the target language, but also to the influence of L2 on the target language, especially in the case when L2 is typologically closest to the L3.

scholarly journals A Study of Negative Language Transfer in College Students’ Writing from Cultural Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Bai ◽  
Jie Qin
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Negative Transfer ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Positive Transfer ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Aesthetic Perception ◽  
Cultural Perspective

Language and culture are closely related with each other and they are inseparable. Language, as a vehicle of culture, is as well culture’s manifestation. Transfer, as an important notion in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), states the situation of previously existing knowledge being extended and expanded to the gaining of new knowledge. Language transfer can be classified into positive, negative and zero transfer. As for the definition of positive transfer, it is the transfer that helps or facilitates language learning in another situation. Negative transfer is one that interferes with language learning in another situation. How to utilize the positive transfer and avoid negative transfer is of great significance in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT). Aiming to improve college students’ English writing, the author tries to analyze the negative transfer from the cultural perspective. With the guidance of the theory of Language Transfer, the author carries out a research on the students’ writing tasks. Based on the research, author has discovered the interference of their mother tongue in students’ writings shown in idioms, cultural terms and conventions in expression. Therefore, the students are not free to use language to explain their arguments. The study also found these negative transfer are mostly generated by cultural difference. The sources of negative transfer include in the three aspects which are thinking mode, aesthetic perception and religious belief. Thus students should find some solutions and avoid negative transfer efficiently.

scholarly journals Transfer in related Slavic languages

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Marta Pančíková ◽  
Alexander Horák
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Negative Transfer ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Positive Transfer ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Impact

In the field of teaching Polish as a foreign language, transfer plays a major role. Positive transfer helps the users of closely related Slavic languages learn more quickly, while negative transfer should be closely monitored. Intercomprehension is a phenomenon which consists of guessing the meanings of related words and linguistic forms, and the ability to quickly understand languages which are closely related to the mother tongue of learners; in other words, it is a case of positive transfer. Intercomprehension in teaching related languages is directly associated with the phenomenon of language transfer. In the practice of teaching Polish as a non-native language in Slovakia and Czechia, teaching methods related to intercomprehension, including a contrast-based approach, have been applied for a long time. However, more focus has always been placed on negative transfer. In this article we provide examples of the impact of transfer, usually negative, at several linguistic planes in learning Polish by Slovaks and Slovak by Poles. The first author indicates two planes, those of inflection and syntax, using examples from the works of Polish students; the second author discusses the problems associated with lexis and indicates three planes: those of word formation, lexis, and style. Their discussions indicate that similarities help master a language more quickly and how important highlighting the differences for learners is.

THE IMPACT OF SIBLING STATUS ON CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENTS' QUALITY OF LIFE

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen D. Edwards ◽  
Art W. Bangert ◽  
Gregory Cooch ◽  
Naotaka Shinfuku ◽  
Tao Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
College Students ◽  
The Self ◽  
World Health ◽  
World Health Organization Quality ◽  
Chinese College Students ◽  
Self Rating ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
The Impact

The World Health Organization Quality of Life-100 (WHOQOL-100, Power, Harper, Bullinger, & WHO1QLG), the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (Zhang, 1993), and the Self-Rating Depression Scale (Zhang, 1993) were used to determine whether Chinese college students from only child and sibling child families rated perceptions of their quality of life differently. Small to moderate significant differences were found when comparing only students to sibling students on the WHOQOL-100 with no significant differences on measures of anxiety and depression. These results suggest that only students do not differ greatly from sibling students in terms of their overall perceptions of their quality of life. A unique characteristic of this study was that it targeted older college students born after implementation of the one-child-per-family policy in China. Also, self-rating instruments were used to gain a greater holistic understanding of the emotional well-being, physical state and social functioning of students. Several psychosocial and economic reasons, including methodological issues related to this study's findings, were discussed.

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