The Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue in Middle School Students’ English Speaking Performance

Abstract Mother tongue transfer is an inevitable phenomenon in students’ second language learning and it could be pided into positive transfer and negative transfer。 Many scholars at home and abroad have devoted themselves into the researches of mother tongue transfer and have made great contributions。 However, most of them pay much attention to English writing and focus little on English speaking。 As for middle school students, the researches on their English speaking are much more rare, which results in the fact that English teachers and students in middle school are unaware of the influence caused by negative mother tongue transfer and could not come up with efficient teaching or learning methods to improve students’ speaking performance。 So it is necessary to carry out this research。 90075

This thesis studies whether the negative transfer of mother tongue influences middle school students’ English speaking and how it works。 Questionnaire and speaking test are adopted。 And 45 students from a middle school with different grades take part in the research。 The data include questionnaire answers, the total errors in students’ speech texts, classifications of errors and errors in vocabulary。 Then analyse these errors by contrasting different usages of words in English and Chinese。 At last, put forward several methods for English teaching and learning。

 The results of the research show that negative transfer of mother tongue influences students’ way of thinking。 To be specific, students would organize their speeches in mind in Chinese and then translate them into English。 Besides, negative transfer of mother tongue would mix up students’ memorizing language rules in English and Chinese so that their errors in English always could be explain in Chinese。 Then according to these influences, in English teaching and learning, teachers should compare and analyse the similarities and differences between Chinese and English, motivate students’ interest and attitudes towards English learning and help students to think in English to improve students’ English speaking performance。 Only regarding English and Chinese as two inpidual and connected parts, can students avoid negative transfer of mother tongue and absorb English knowledge thoroughly and efficiently so as to improve their speaking performance as much as possible。 

Key words: negative transfer: mother tongue: middle school students: English speaking: vocabulary: error analysis

初中生英语口语母语负迁移现象研究

摘要 母语负迁移现象在学生的二语学习中难以避免，它分为正迁移和负迁移。许多国内外学者已经投身于母语迁移的研究并做出了相当大的贡献。但是，大多数学者都比较关注英语写作很少关注英语口语。而关于初中生的英语口语研究更是少之又少，从而导致了初中英语老师和学生都没有注意到母语负迁移带来的影响，也没有想出有效的教学方法来提高学生的口语。所以这项研究很有必要进行。

这篇论文主要研究母语负迁移对初中生的英语口语产生的影响及其原因。研究采用问卷调查发和英语口试。45个来自同一个初中且成绩档次不同、年级不同的初中生参与了此次研究。收集的数据包括问卷答案，口试文本中所有的错误及其分类和关于词汇方面的错误。然后根据中英文词汇的不同用法分析这些错误。最后，提出教学方法。

研究结果显示母语负迁移影响着学生的思考方式。具体来说，学生总是先在脑中用中文构思然后说的时候将这些内容翻译成英文。除此之外，母语负迁移会使学生混淆记忆中英文的语言规则，因此有些英文中的使用错误常常可以在中文中得到解释。根据这些影响，在英语得教学中老师应该对比分析中英文的相同点和不同点，激发学生学习英语的兴趣和激情，帮助学生学会用英语思考问题从而提高他们的口语。只有将英语和中文视作两个既相互独立又相互联系的部分，学生才能够尽量避免母语负迁移的影响，透彻高效地理解英语知识从而提高英语口语。