论文总字数：31023字

摘 要

写作是英语学习中的重要因素之一，也是评判高中生英语水平高低的标准之一。动词是英语句子的中心成分。许多研究表明，在英语写作中，动词错误的比率占据第一。母语干扰在语言学习中是不可避免的，中英文动词变化规则有巨大的差异，使学生的英语写作更加困难。本文从动词错误的角度分析了母语干扰对高中生写作的影响，并给老师提出了一些教学启示。

关键词：负迁移；母语干扰；英语写作；动词错误

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review……………………………………………………2

2.1 Language transfer theories…………………………………………….2

2.2 Researches on mother tongue interference in writing…………………4

1. Research Methodology…………………………………………………5

3.1 Subject………………………………………………………………….6

3.2 Instruments……………………………………………………….....6

3.3 Research procedure……………………………………………………...6

1. Result and Discussion…………………………………………………7

4.1 Result of the distribution of errors……………………………………7

4.2 Discussion of verb errors………………………………………………8

5. Suggestions to Reduce Mother Tongue Interference in Writing….10

5.1 Explicit teaching to the language difference………………………10

5.2 Create good English learning environment………………………11

6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………12

Works Cited………………………………………………………………13

1. Introduction

Writing is considered to be the most difficult item of four English skills in English learning, as it takes both time and effort to improve their skills. In China, English writing is very important for high school students because they are required to write a composition which accounts for about 20 percent in their college entrance examination score. Although high school students have learned English for many years in their primary and junior high school, they still make lots of mistakes and errors in their writings. Many teachers find that even after a lot of explanation and practice, students still write sentences against English expression habits and can not express themselves fluently, accurately and freely.

At present, in many senior high schools, because of the need to teach more grammar points or reading skills, teacher do not spend much time on teaching writing class and tend to pay little attention to it. Actually, in many high schools, most of the English classes are devoted to imparting new knowledge and doing lots of practice, thus there is even no time for one complete writing class. It takes a long time for teacher to give an assignment about compositions and usually this will act as their homework. After handing in, teachers correct them and give scores and hand out several days later, so the feedback in writing takes a long time. Besides, students themselves learn from their errors and do not read carefully when they get the corrected essays.

Since senior high school students have mastered certain degree of Chinese, they will be inevitably affected by the interference of mother language. In the process of composing an article, Chinese students habitually use their native language to think it over or make a draft, and then make a translation. In their writings, a lot of negative transfer errors exist, and this directly affects the improvement of students’ interest and ability in English writing. The purposes of the paper are as follows: (1) to identify the verb errors in students’ writings, (2) to classify the verb errors according to the grammatical category, (3) to present the frequency and percentage of the errors, (4) to explain the causes of mother tongue transfer on verb errors, (5) to propose some pedagogical implications for EFL teachers.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Language transfer theories

2.1.1 Contrastive analysis

Contrastive analysis (known as CA) was originally developed by Fries, and expanded and classified by Lado. In 1957, contrastive analysis hypothesis was proposed by American structuralism linguist Lado and be analyzed from different aspects such as phonological system, grammar system, vocabulary system and culture. (Gao 22). When learning a second language, it is common for students to make mistakes and the causes of mistakes are complex, such as the complexity of the inner structure of the foreign language itself, students’ personalities and mother tongue interference. According to contrastive analysis hypothesis, the major obstacle to second language learning is the interference of learner’s native language (Brown 21). It is considered that if we systematically compare the target language and its culture with students’ native language, we can describe which sentence patterns would be easier and which would be more difficult to master (Lado 46). These difficulties encountered will manifest themselves as errors. Contrastive analysis put forwards the following research procedure: (1) describe the surface structure of the two languages in as much detail as possible. (2) choose the project to be contrasted. (3) try to find their differences. (4) predict the errors learners may make and obstacles they may meet with. Through these steps, learners can greatly reduce the interference of mother tongue.

However, the contrastive analysis is not perfect enough. It holds the opinion that if a distinction can be made between the target language and mother tongue, people can predict the errors may occur in learning process. Nevertheless, a large number of experiments and observation show that many errors predicted do not occur, but some other learning errors show up which have not been predicted. That is to say the ability of prediction of contrastive analysis limited (Richards 172). Certainly, it still has great significance for EFL teachers in their daily teaching.

2.1.2 Error analysis

Because of the limitation of CA, scholars turned to the analysis of learners’ errors. Contrastive analysis lost its popularity in the late of 1960s, and error analysis (EA) peaked in 1970s. Error analysis is defined as the study and analysis of the errors made by second and foreign language learners (Richards 106). Error analysis researchers think that errors are a common phenomenon in language learning. Corder put forward the view that errors have theoretical and practical significance which includes three dimensions. First, for teachers, if systematic analysis of students’ errors can be carried out, they can find out which stage learners have reached in the process of approaching the target language and what they haven’t acquired. Second, to researchers, errors provide proofs of how learners learn or acquire a foreign language and what strategies are executed in discovering the language rules. Third, errors serve as devices by which learners discovered the rules of the target language and are regarded as a way which a learner uses to test his hypothesis about the nature language (Corder 161). People have changed their attitudes towards errors and considered them as meaningful existence. In Corder’s view, errors are of vital importance to the process of EFL acquisition. There are five steps of error analysis. The first is selecting, collecting and analyzing data. The second is to identify errors, which means to make sure what is error that counts. The third is to classify errors. The forth is to give explanations to errors and identify the psycholinguistic causes of errors. The fifth is to evaluate and analyse the severity of errors.

EA improves people’s understanding of the nature of errors made in the process of second language learning and makes huge contributions to the improvement of second language teaching.However, EA has its own drawbacks. First of all, it is hard to give an accurate distinction between error and right. What’s more, EA keeps teachers over emphasizing on learners’ errors (Brown 260). In addition, EA can not explain the avoidance phenomenon when learning a foreign language that learners sometimes adopt.

2.1.3 Mother tongue interference

Mother tongue refers to one’s native language (L1). In the heyday of behaviorism, people noticed learner’s use of prior linguistic information or some physical carryout of native language surface to a second language context, namely language transfer, including negative transfer and positive transfer (Odlin 27). And negative transfer is also known as interference. Since learners have reached a level of negative language, the language structure and concepts of culture in L1 deeply influence the second language acquisition. It is inevitable for learners to give priority the knowledge in their mother tongue especially when they encounter difficulties in learning the second language. Odlin also points out that people tend to equate negative transfer of mother tongue with production errors, however, native language interference may also result in learner’s misunderstanding, overproduction and underproduction. It may occur fossilization which is defined as a process occurring from time to time in which incorrect linguistic features becomes a permanent part of way a person speaks or writes one language under circumstances that learners are seriously interfered by L1.

Language transfer is a common phenomenon in the process of second language learning. Usually compared with positive transfer, mother tongue has more negative transfer effects on second language acquisition. The causes of language interference are complex (Wen 261). From the perspective of language themselves, they have both similarities and differences, which makes it possible for negative transfer. Take English and Chinese for example, they are different branches of language and contain the universality of human language. However, in terms of language pedigree classification, Chinese belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family and English belongs to Indo-European language family, so there are many differences between Chinese and English (Zeng 15). From the perspective of learners, when they learn English. They have reached a certain level in Chinese and they can easily employ Chinese grammar and vocabulary to make themselves get through to. And this makes them tend to use Chinese thinking model unconsciously when they try to express the same idea in English, which leads to negative transfer. Meanwhile, learners learn English in the context of Chinese, so they can not use English spontaneously.

2.2 Researches on mother tongue interference in writing

Several experiments have been done on negative transfer of native language in writing. For example, a case study of the influence of negative transfer of native language on second language acquisition was conducted by Bhela in 1999, focusing on the influence of the first language interference on sentence structure in second language writing. For subjects with English as their second language were required to compose an essay in both Chinese and English with two sets of pictures in succession. The result showed that although these subjects used some acceptable mother tongue structure sentences in their compositions, they used a large number of Chinese and English sentence structures alternatively and then produced many strange English sentences. This study reveals, to some degree, Chinese as mother tongue has an effect on English output (Bhela 9).

The language environment of Chinese students’ writing determines their Chinese thinking pattern when writing in a second language, and makes them rely on their mother tongue heavily. Thus this unavoidably leads to the negative transfer (Xiong 16). Xiong analyzes the interference of writing from the aspect of lexical, syntactic and discourse. Deng gathered a great deal of writing material from students’ compositions and analyzed them in her master’s thesis. It is concluded that many of the morphological, lexical and syntactic errors in the primary stage of writing are the result of negative transfer of native language. Because senior high school students have already relatively had complete knowledge of native language, when learning a second language, the mother tongue will inevitably interfere the language acquisition. If teachers find out the causes of mother tongue interference in students’ compositions, then correct them in time, and use specific and feasible teaching strategies to guide students, they can help students to overcome the interference of mother tongue, so as to avoid the negative transfer and improve their ability of English expression. However, the limitation of this paper is that it fails to realize that mother tongue interference is a normal phenomenon in the process of English learning for high school students. The impact of mother tongue interference can be reduced but can not be overcome completely.

There are many have been conducted on English major students, college students (Deng 34) and high school students about mother tongue transfer. However, the causes for negative transfer of native language have not been deeply explored and the explanations are general. The former do provide a great deal of information and reference basis, and this paper focuses on verb errors in high school students’ English writing.

3. Research Methodology

3.1 Subject

The subjects of this survey are senior one students from class one and class eight in Huai’an NO.1 Middle School. Each class has 36 students. The school divided students into different classes on the basis of their entrance grades. The English level that class one students reached is a little higher that that in class eight so students in the two classes can generally represent other students. Besides, the ratio of boys to girls in this study is basically the same in order to reduce the impact of gender difference and thinking model difference. Last but not least, all the students in this survey are learning English in a Chinese context. Based on these, this study has its reliability and validity.

3.2 Instruments

The instruments of this research are test papers of their mid-term examination. The topic of the composition is my school life. To ensure the reliability and validity, the essay combines quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis. Quantitative analysis involves distribution of types of verb errors in students’ writings and qualitative analysis involves the reasons of verb errors influenced by mother tongue interference.

3.3 Research procedure

The writer conducted the internship in Huai’an NO.1 Middle school and became their English teacher for 3 months. So, during this period, the writer collected their writing samples. These writings are collected from their mid-term examination. The topic is my school life. Because it was an examination, students were asked to compose a writing within the prescribed time. In addition, students should obey the examination rules, keep quiet and follow the guidance of the invigilator. What’s more, they had not been informed that these compositions would be used as samples in the study so as to ensure the reliability and validity. The total number of the collected writings is 72, however, there are 8 writings which have too few words and 4 writings with terrible handwriting that can’t be corrected accurately. As a result, there are 60 compositions in this survey as samples.

Moreover, because these compositions are written during the exam, the writings themselves have their own marks given by teachers. And some of the errors have been corrected by teachers. So when correcting the compositions, the emphasis is verb errors. The writer has read these writings many times to find the verb errors and classify them into different categories according to the grammatical rules.

4. Result and Discussion

4.1 Result of the distribution of errors

After counting by the author and another reliable teacher, the total number of verb error is 202. There are five kinds of verb errors. They include tense, S-V disagreement, lack of verbs, double verbs and gerunds. Among these errors, lack of verbs, double verbs and gerunds can be can be called the misuse of predicate and non-predicate verbs. So they will then be discussed together. In English, verb error also includes infinitive and voice. However, because the subjects have not learned passive voice and infinitive errors, there is no errors of these types. This paper will discuss those five verb errors only. The result is shown in the following table.

As is shown on the form above, the number of tense error is 88, and it accounts for 43.56% of the total number of all the errors, being the highest error rate. That means students haven’t master the usage of each tense and tend to make mistakes from time to time. The number of S-V disagreement is 22, coming to 10.89% of the total. The number of lack of verbs, double verbs and gerunds is 52, 25 and 15 respectively, and their percentages are 25.74%, 12.38% and 7.43%.

4.2 Discussion of verb errors

4.2.1 Tense errors

English tense is a verb form. Different tenses are applied to describe various situations and events. The tenses in English is very complex and there are nine basic tenses in English shown in the following table.

And each of them can be combined with another tense to form a more complex tense. Here are some examples in the following table.

There exists huge differences about tense system between the two language. There aren’t such various complex tenses in Chinese. Many adverbs and functional words such as “zheng zai,” “ceng jing,” “jiang yao,” “zhe,” and “le” are added in front of or behind the word to express the tense rather than change the verb form itself. That is to say, Chinese is a tenseless language which has no grammatical morphemes for making lexical verbs. Because of the complexity of English tense and the huge difference of the tense usage between the two languages, it’s a big challenge for Chinese students to use English tense accurately and freely. Therefore, they make mistakes unavoidably when they make sentences.

Here are some sentences of tense error in students’ compositions. 1. Our classmates are helpful when I got (get) into trouble. 2. I studied (have studied) in this school for two months. 3. I often discussed (discuss) with my classmates about Maths. As is presented in the samples, students always confuse past tense with past perfect tense and present with past tense. Students have noticed the difference and are careful when they use, but they are inevitably influenced by their mother tongue, usually applying Chinese pattern to English.

4.2.2 S-V disagreement

The verb in an English sentence must keep in accordance with its subject in terms of person (the first person, the second person and the third person) and number (singular and plural). Subject with singular meaning requires singular form verbs. On the contrary, there’s no such rules in Chinese. For example, there are three words “is,” “am,” and “are” to modify “he (she),” “I” and “they” respectively, but there is only one word “shi” in Chinese in that situation. Because of this complete difference, S-V disagreement always occurs in students’ writings.

The following sentences are the examples in their writings. 1. It is of a great challenge to me because all the homework are (is) much more difficult than I used to get in my former school. 2. Our teachers who teaches (teach) our English and Math are friendly and helpful. 3. My new school have (has) many classrooms, one playground and a big meeting room. In the first sentence, the word homework is uncountable and the following verb needs a singular form. But there is no such rules about countable noun and uncountable noun in Chinese. In students’ writings, there are lots of similar errors that when there needs a singular form, they put a plural form in the sentence. The fact that Chinese has been ingrained in learners’ thoughts brings about all these errors. And there are no rules of S-V agreement in Chinese. Therefore, students haven’t develop the awareness that the predict should change with the form of the subject. And this type error appears in English writing with high frequency.

4.2.3 Misuse of predict and non-predicate verbs

A predicate verb is a concept corresponding to a non-predicate verb. Both of them are verbs, but the former is a predicate component and the latter cannot be used as a predicate component. A predicate verb is limited by its subject, with the changes of number and person. The non-predicate verbs are divided into infinitive, gerund and participle (past participle and present participle). Since verbs in Chinese have no changes in person and number, no matter whether the verb is a predicate or other components, there is no change in word form. Therefore, it is accessible for Chinese verbs to serve as different components and can be employed again and again in a sentence. Moreover, there are also some sentences in Chinese that do not have even a verb in each sentence and this also meets up to the Chinese grammar. However, the use of English verbs is strictly restricted by the rules of morphological change. As a general rule, a sentence has only one verb as predict in a sentence and when another verb existing in the sentence, the non-predicated verb form should be used.

Because of these differences, students easily misuse predicate and non-predicate nouns, and this type of errors exist in their writings frequently. Here are some examples. 1. I like stay (staying) under the tree and feeling the sunshine. 2. They (are) often friendly to me and share their food with me. 3. The home work (is) not as heavy as I used to have in my old school. 4. During break time, they are often talk (talking) with me. The errors presented above are all influenced by mother tongue. Lack of verbs and a few verbs existing in a Chinese sentence are both acceptable . Besides, the sentences mentioned before have the pattern of “Chinglish”. When students can not express them freely in English, they will be inclined to come up with the idea in Chinese and then make a translation in literal level from word to word.

5. Measures to Reduce Mother Tongue Interference in Writing

5.1 Explicit teaching to the language difference

English and Chinese belong to different language families that make it inevitable for high school students to encounter difficulties when learning English. Teachers should consciously guide students, in other word, apply explicit teaching to pay much attention to the differences between Chinese and English in the daily teaching and summarize the differences in lexical collocation, sentence structure and language expression between the two languages. Firstly, teachers still need to pay attention to traditional grammar teaching so that students can think in the target language and reduce the mother tongue interference at the lexical and syntactic level. For example, the verb collocation. Many English verbs have their own collocation or verb phrases such as apologize to somebody for something, concentrate on, communicate with and so on. English is a hypotaxis language with lots of inflectional changes focusing on language form and sentence structure. And its grammatical structure plays a decisive role in expression. Chinese is a parataxis language with no inflectional changes and most of the sentences are connected by semantics. Secondly, teachers can present the differences between Chinese and English thinking modes so that students can primarily understand the influence in thinking modes on language expression so as to improve their cross-culture awareness. By this means students can gradually organize sentences in English thinking model. Understanding the difference between the two languages is beneficial to their English learning, improving the efficiency of English learning, monitoring their own language output and improving their English writing ability.

5.2 Create good English learning environment

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