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1、The Influence of The Negative Transfer of Chinese on English Vocabulary StudyI. Introduction Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is a very complex process. The factors which influence the rate and level of achievement of the second language are various, such as age, motivation, personalities, language
2、 aptitude, cognitive process, etc. However, the mother tongue plays a very important part in it, for it always functions in the process of Second Language Acquisition, especially in non-naturalistic learning surroundings. In the elementary stage of Second Language Acquisition, language learners simp
3、ly use the knowledge of the mother tongue for reference. As Rod Ellis (Ellis, 1999:37-38) has suggested, making use of the mother tongue embodies a common psychological process, that is, learners have to depend on what they have learnt in their mother tongue to help them understand the knowledge of
4、a new language. The transfer of the mother tongue refers to the influence that the learners mother tongue exerts over the acquisition of the second language.The transfer theory believes that, if the habits of the mother tongue are supposed to help to form and develop the habits of the target languag
5、e (the second language), or more concretely to say, if the mother tongue possesses certain similar or totally identical characteristics as the target language, the mother tongue will facilitate the learning of the target language. This effect is known as positive transfer. On the other hand, if the
6、habits of the mother tongue are supposed to prevent the learner from learning the habits of the target language, that is, the learner has to totally depend on the language rules of the mother tongue to learn the target language, the problems of the negative transfer arises.In most of the western cou
7、ntries, language learners learn their second languages that have the same origin as their mother tongue. Similar cultural background and language characteristics make the positive transfer appear more often than the negative transfer in the learning process. Nevertheless, the foreign language that C
8、hinese students mainly learn in the school is English. Compared with Chinese, it comes from a different language family. Its different cultural tradition and language characteristics (including pronunciation, vocabulary and grammatical system) make our Chinese students encounter much more difficulti
9、es than the students from the western countries. II. DemonstrationWhen Chinese students start learning English, they have been equipped with the solid foundation of knowledge of Chinese and deep-rooted Chinese way of thinking, they mainly learn English in the school, and they just use it to communic
10、ate with their Chinese classmates and teachers. Moreover, those real communicative opportunities are very limited for them. Chinese inevitably influences the English study of our Chinese students, especially the English vocabulary study. Although the acquisition of English vocabulary has something i
11、n common with the acquisition of Chinese vocabulary, they also have many differences. When our Chinese students begin to learn English vocabulary, they are definitely influenced by the system of Chinese vocabulary that they can always depend on to express themselves freely. On the basis of conceptua
12、l system of Chinese, they learn new language symbols. However, there is a great distinction between conceptual system of English and that of Chinese. Owing to the limitations of learning environment and the differences in aim and level of achievement, when middle school students dont know how to tac
13、kle the problems on English oral and written expressions, they will naturally turn to their mother tongue. Under these circumstances, using the knowledge of Chinese vocabulary in the communication to express their ideas might bring about the negative transfer of Chinese in English vocabulary study.
14、It usually falls into the following three types:A. The negative transfer caused by the non-equivalent conceptual meaning of vocabulary The conceptual meaning refers to the base meaning of the word (Hu Wenzhong, 1985:95). The closer the meaning is to the base meaning of the word, the more likely it i
15、s to be transferred. Both Chinese and English vocabulary has many non-equivalent conceptual meanings. However, most of the students cannot distinguish which words they have learnt in English have non-equivalent conceptual meanings, so they are prone to make errors. For example,“It was quite warm whe
16、n I got here, but the climate suddenly turned cold overnight.”Here “climate” refers to the average weather conditions at a particular place over a period of years, but in this sentence, the change from “warm” to “cold” means the particular condition at a certain time, so “weather” is the correct cho
17、ice. To some students, these two words have the same meaning. Its hard for them to tell the difference so that they usually take it for granted that these two words could be used indiscriminately.Lets look at another example:“He also studies French except English.“Except” means “but not, leaving out
18、”. Here “except English” means English is not the subject he is learning, but when we look at the second word “also”, its obvious that the word “except” is not correct. The right answer is “besides” which means “as well as”. Students easily mix up the conceptual meanings of these two words. They can
19、t perceive the distinction between them so that they might make such errors.B. The negative transfer caused by the non-equivalent connotative meaning of vocabularyConnotative meaning refers to the meaning suggested by a word in addition to the formal meaning or nature of the word (that is to say, th
20、e meaning except the conceptual meaning of the word), such as the commendatory or derogatory implication of a word, the tone of a word, etc (Hu Wenzhong, 1985:96). Most Chinese students find it hard to understand the connotative meaning of a word, especially when it relates to the specific cultural
21、background and language traditions. They feel too puzzled to grasp it. For instance, “John can be relied on. He eats no fish and plays the game.”When most students first look at these two sentences, they might wonder what is the relation between them, as it seems that the two phrases “to eat no fish
22、” and “to play the game” have no connection with the meaning of the first sentence. Actually in English history, Catholics could eat fish in the fast days, but when the Protestantism was established, the Protestants fought against the Catholics. They refused to eat fish in the fast days to show thei
23、r royalty for their new religious belief. So “to eat no fish” means royalty and faithfulness. As for the phrase “ to play the game”, it originally means “to contest according to the rules”. Here it refers to “justice and honesty”. Thus, the second sentence can be explained in this way: “John is fait
24、hful, fair and honest.” Students ignore the cultural meaning of this phrase, so they just judge the sentence from the surface meaning of the words so that they might misunderstand it. There are many synonyms in English vocabulary. With the development of language, particularly in the aspect of Engli
25、sh vocabulary, the connotative meanings of many synonyms have more or less been changed. Some words are often used derogatorily. Since our Chinese are not familiar with these changes, they easily use the improper words in some occasions. For example, some junior students are prone to use the word “p
26、easant”(the synonym of “farmer”) in their compositions. In fact, in the present English dictionary, “peasant” has derogatory meaning. It refers to a person without education or manners (now used especially in some developing countries). If someone uses this word in the communication, it maybe means
27、a humiliation or contempt. Therefore, now westerners prefer the word “farmer” to “peasant”. From the point of view of physics, the color words of Chinese and English should not make much difference, but when they are used in their respective cultural environments, the connotative meanings of these w
28、ords will be different. For instance, in the western countries, “white” means pure and sacred, so a brides wedding dress is always white, while in China, “white” is the color of the mourning apparel, so the bride would wear red wedding dress in her wedding day rather than a white dress. Chinese peop
29、le believe that white color will bring them bad luck, even disaster. The differences of color words in two cultures will definitely result in the misunderstandings. To most of Chinese students, it is really difficult for them to tackle this problem in English vocabulary study. Besides, in Chinese an
30、d English, some connotative meanings of words of animals are non-equivalent. Take the word “dragon” for example, it is the good symbol of the Chinese nation which stands for the good omen and prosperity, but in English culture it symbolizes the fierce and evil force. In Bible, the Devil Satan who wa
31、s against the God is called “the great dragon”, and those saints who killed the dragons (such as St.George) are treated as heroes. In modern English, “dragon” usually refers to a brutal, harsh and savage person. Therefore, in order to distinguish between Chinese word “Long” and English word “dragon”
32、, Chinese word “Long” is translated into “Chinese dragon”. Moreover, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore these four countries of southeastern Asia are often called “four tigers” instead of “four dragons”. Thus, its no wonder some Chinese students would misunderstand this phenomenon. The reason st
33、ill lies in the cultural difference in Chinese and English vocabulary.C. The negative transfer caused by the non-equivalent grammatical meaning of vocabulary.Chinese and English belong to different language families, so the grammatical meaning of their vocabulary is different. Chinese students are u
34、sed to mechanically applying the grammatical rules of Chinese vocabulary in the learning process of English vocabulary. They are supposed to make errors in the following aspects: 1. Countable nouns and Uncountable nouns.Generally speaking, Chinese nouns have no plural forms, so when Chinese students
35、 learn English nouns, they always decide the form of English nouns according to the rules of Chinese abstract and non-abstract nouns. Usually errors would appear, such as “a good advice”, “a bad news”, “a fine weather”, “some changes”, “five equipments”, etc. Sometimes, the meanings of some Chinese
36、nouns are abstract, while the corresponding English nouns are countable and they have plural forms, such as “goods”, “table manners”, “many thanks”, “in high spirits”, etc. Facing this problem, some Chinese students are too puzzled to decide which one is a countable noun or not.2. Transitive verbs a
37、nd Intransitive verbs. Chinese students tend to judge the nature of English verbs according to the rules of Chinese transitive and intransitive verbs.a. Chinese students are supposed to be influenced by the transfer of the rules of Chinese intransitive verbs in English vocabulary study. For example,
38、 “She married with a poor man.”In this sentence, the student think that the verb “marry” is intransitive at least in Chinese way of thinking, so he naturally adds a preposition “with” to it. Actually “marry” is a transitive verb. Native speakers always say “marry sb” instead of “marry with sb”. Take
39、 another verb “serve” for instance; a student translates such a Chinese sentence into English: “He serves for the people.” In fact, the same case is true for the verb “serve” in the sentence, “serve” is a transitive verb, so “serve the people” is the correct answer.b. Chinese students are supposed t
40、o be influenced by the transfer of Chinese transitive verbs in English vocabulary study. Take the verb “laugh” for example, students are supposed to think that “laugh” is either a transitive or intransitive verb, so sometimes students would write such a sentence: “I made a silly mistake and she laug
41、hed me.” Actually In English “laugh” is an intransitive verb; the correct expression should be “laugh at sb”.3. Instant verbs and Continual verbsIn Chinese, many instant verbs can describe the movement in a period of time, but in English, only continual verbs should be modified by an adverbial phras
42、e indicating a period of time in an affirmative sentence. The negative transfer of Chinese results in the following error: “His mother has died for two years.“Die” is an instant verb. The movement happens at a certain time, and then it doesnt continue, so here the sentence should be corrected as “ H
43、is mother has been dead for two years.”4. Adjectives and Adverbs待添加的隐藏文字内容3 When Chinese students are supposed to use an adverb to modify the verb, but without the marked word indicating Chinese adverb (such as “de”), they probably mistakenly use an adjective,. Look at the following sentence:“Helen
44、sings as wonderful as Mary.”Here an adverb should be used to modify the verb “sing”, so the adjective “wonderful should be replaced by the adverb “wonderfully”From all the examples above, we can see that, if students stick to the rules of Chinese vocabulary in the process of English vocabulary study
45、, to completely grasp the knowledge of vocabulary will be impossible for them.III Some suggestions for vocabulary teaching1. Using the context No matter when we learn or teach a foreign language, we can not ignore the fact that in a language learners brain has existed a deep-rooted system of the mot
46、her tongue which is used automatically everyday (Wang Chuming, 2001). English vocabulary consists of a great number of words. They have different means of expressions, usages and meanings. Teaching vocabulary cannot ignore that the students has to learn not just the meaning or the pronunciation of e
47、ach word, but how to use it. One simple way of doing this is the traditional task of getting the students to make up sentences using particular words. For example, students are given a box containing verbs such as “accept”, “drink”, and “sit” and are asked to write sentences about hospitality in the
48、ir country (Greenall, 1994). The focus on a situational context makes the exercise more evident and at the same time allows the students to use the words productively in the syntactic context of a particular sentence.2. Building a communicative settingBesides, its very necessary and important to cre
49、ate a good communicative environment for Chinese students to learn English vocabulary. By means of audio-visual aids, students can learn the knowledge of English vocabulary in a relaxing way so as to lessen the influence of the negative transfer of Chinese. Pictures, slides, objects, songs, facial expressions and gestures can be used to deepen our comprehension of a certain word. For instance, in order to teach a new word “fruit”,
