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Negative Transfer of English Articles in Compositions of Chinese EFL Learners
In learning an L, learners are inevitably subject to the influences of their NL, which we term as language transfer. Some influences are quite facilitative to their learning, while others are error causing. In analyzing my data of collected errors from the 60 compositions made by a group of 0 adult EFL learners, the misuse of the English articles is strikingly frequent. In correcting those compositions, I am greatly inspired to find out the deep cause accounting for such misuses and to give some theoretic explanations to it. And my efforts result in this paper, which is expected to a little bit helpful for the Chinese EFL learners.
1.classification and description
According to Corder, errors can be grouped into four categories, namely omission of some required element, addition of some unnecessary or incorrect element, selection of an incorrect element and misordering of the correct elements. Errors of articles can also be categorized in this way, exemplified respectively as follows
Custom Essays on negative transfer
a. Omission
In past two years, I have learned some English, but it is not enough.
Intended meaning ¹ýÈ¥Á½ÄêÖÐ,Î��§ÁË��Ð��¢�ïµ��¶�¶²�¹�.
Reconstruction In the past two years, I have learned some English, but it not enough.
b. Addition
I have a great difficulty in English grammar.
Intended meaning Î��Ú�¢�ï�ï·¨·½ÃæÀ§Ä�½Ï�ó.
Reconstruction I have great difficulty in English grammar.
c. Selection
After he has heard good news, he was very happy.
Intended meaning ÌýÁËÕâ¸öºÃÏ�Ï¢Ë�ºÜ¸ßÐË.
Reconstruction after he has heard the good news, he was very happy.
d. Misordering
Other the two qualifications are respectively loyalty and intelligence.
Intended meaning ÁíÍâÁ½ÌõËØÖÊÊÇÖ�³ÏºÍÖÇ�Û.
Reconstruction the other two qualifications are respectively loyalty and intelligence.
Among all the collected 54 errors of English articles, 140 ones belong to the category of omission (approximately 55%); ones belong to addition (approximately 1%); 7 ones belong to selection (approximately %); and only 8 ones belong to disordering (approximately %).
Viewed in another way, errors can also be classified as pre-systematic, systematic and post-systematic.
Pre-systematic is a stage of random guessing when the learner is only vaguely aware that the target language has a particular system that is totally different from his NL. Therefore, he makes mistakes in most cases when this particular system is needed. Even though he occasionally hits the right form by chance, he doesn¡¯t know he is right. There is no such kind of errors in my data because all the informants have got certain knowledge of the English articles.
The stage of systematic is one when the learner has some idea about the particularity but occasionally he makes mistakes all the same. He has known the particular system but not yet learnt it. For example
Original form I like him not only because he was excellent in teaching, but also because he was excellent in the other respects.
Corrected form I like him not only because he was excellent in teaching, but also because he was excellent in other respects.
For the post-systematic errors, the learner just makes them by chance. This kind of errors are very near to what we call mistakes. For example
Original form In that school, the good teachers are very few.
Corrected form In that school, good teachers are very few.
This picture serves as a first approximation, yet it is to some extent supported by empirical evidence. If the learner is asked to correct his own error and he can give the correct form and explain what is wrong, we may treat his error as post-systematic; if he cannot correct it but can give some explanation of what he is aiming at or trying to do, i.e. he has simply overlooked or forgotten to apply a rule known to him, we consider his error as systematic; and if he can neither correct his own error nor explain it, then his error is pre-systematic, when he has not yet realized that there is such a system in the L. Corder gives a table to illustrate such distinctions
Error-type Correction possible Explanation possible
Pre-systematic No No
Systematic No Yes
Post-systematic Yes Yes
Figure error types (from Corder with little modification)
Guided by these criteria, errors in my data are statistically analyzed as
None is pre-systematic; 10 of the total 54 are systematic, covering approximately 40%; and 15 ones are post-systematic, approximately 60% of the total.
Thus, as a statistic summary of the data analysis, we can draw a table like the following
Error type Class one Class two
Omission Addition Selection Disorder-
ing Pre-sys-
tematic Syste-
matic Post-sys-
Tematic
percentag 55% 1% % % 0% 40% 60%
. Linguistic and psychological explanation
Error descriptions of the above sorts imply the various degrees of seriousness of various errors of articles, but they are too superficial and have little explanatory power and have little value to teachers or learners. Both want to know to what the error is evidence for instead of the errors themselves. In the following sections, we are to found out the implied causes of such errors, linguistic as well as psychological.
.1 Terminology
In Rod Ellis words, transfer is to be seen as a general cover term for a number of different kinds of influence¡±, resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired. Transfer may be both positive and negative. Positive transfer is transfer of a skill X that facilitates the learning and thus has a positive influence on the command of a skill Y because of similarities between them two. Negative transfer, or inference, is transfer of a skill X that impedes the learning and thus has a negative influence in the command of a skill Y because of the differences between them two.
Another distinction is also made between pro-active and retro-active transfer. The former refers to the transfer of existing skills onto the new skills, while the latter refers to the transfer of new skills onto the existing skills. Thus we have four kinds of transfer, as shown in the following table by Theo van Els et al
Positive transfer Negative transfer
Pro-active transfer Pro-active facilitation Pro-active interference
Retro-active transfer Retro-active facilitation Retro-active interference
Fig. 1 four types of transfer
Errors of negative transfer cover a very high percentage of all errors in the L learning process. Tran-Chi-Chau reports that 51% errors are results of negative transfer in adult Chinese-speaking learners¡¯ L English. When we come to the English articles in particular, the problem is much more serious. According to Towell and Richard (1414), even some native Chinese who have stayed in the United States over five years are still apt to committing mistakes when using the articles. Statistically, 70% of their total uses of the articles are unfortunately wrong. Taylor also holds this view, who writes¡± There is some evidence that, for adult learners at least, interference phenomena are most frequent in the first stages of the L learning process.¡±
As for the data collected by myself, all the errors (except some occasional mistakes) can be safely categorized into errors of negative transfer. Later we will discuss this in details.
. As we have discussed just now, L learners are apt to be influenced by their NL. As Corder writes¡± It is generally maintained, and I have assumed up to now, that many errors show signs of the influence of the mother tongue or other language possessed by the learner.¡± This is especially true in compositions, in which the F learners, especially in their early stage, inevitably think in their NL and transfer their ideas into the target language. When the transfer is negative, errors result. This is especially so when the systems are semantically equivalent but not superficially so in form. To the English articles, unfortunately, there are no forms in Chinese corresponding. Therefore, such a transfer will always be negative. Consider the following examples
Intended idea �Ú¹ýÈ¥Á½ÄêÀï,Î�ŬÁ¦�§Ï°�¢�ï.
English realization In past two years, I studied English very hard.
Reconstruction In the past two years, I studied English very hard.
Intended idea Î�×îϲ�¶Î�¸ßÖеÄ�ïÎÄÀÏʦ.
English realization I like best my Chinese teacher in middle school.
Reconstruction I like best my Chinese teacher in the middle school.
Intended idea Î�Ìýµ½ÁË�ð³µµÄÉù��.
English realization I heard sound of train.
Reconstruction I heard the sound of the train.
Even some cases where articles are incidentally correct, the transfer is a negative one. The following example demonstrates this paradox
Intended idea Î�¼á³Öÿ�¶Á��±¾�¢ÎÄС˵.
English realization I keep on reading an English novel every month.
¡°��±¾¡± in Chinese and ¡°an¡± in English are not equivalents at all. The former denotes the concept of number, whose English equivalent should be ¡°one¡± in the strict sense. While the latter is an English mark denoting the concept of indefiteness. This case is a kind of ¡°negative transfer with accidental positive effects¡±.
Some argue that the errors of articles discussed in this paper are not cases of negative transfer on the grounds that Chinese does not have articles, so there is nothing to transfer. Clearly, though, the absence of a structural feature in the NL may have as much impact on the L as the presence of a different feature. L learners just transfer the vacancy into the target language where should be some linguistic elements and cause errors, which are categorized as errors of omission. This is why errors of omission occur so frequently as to cover a percentage of 55% of the total.
. psychological explanation
We shall take the indefinite article to further our discussion in a psychological way.
When a Chinese learner tries to master the indefinite article, he may be faced with many examples like ¡°At that time, I was working in a factory¡± and ¡°This poem was written by a student¡±, which under the influence of his NL, he conveniently and correctly translates into ¡°ÄÇʱÎ��Ú��¼�¹¤³§¹¤×÷¡± and ¡°ÕâÊ×Ê�ÊÇ��¸ö�§ÉúÐ�µÄ¡±. Then he assumes that Chinese ¡°��¡± is the very equivalent for English indefinite article ¡°a(n)¡±, which is not true linguistically.
Then when he is to express the idea of ¡°Ë�ÄÃÆð��±¾��Ö¾¿ªÊ¼¿�ÆðÀ�¡±, he just translates it into English as ¡°he picked up a magazine and began to read¡±. He gets a sentence quite all right.¡±��¡± and ¡°a¡± correspond to each other quite well. So his assumption that ¡±��¡± in Chinese and ¡°a(n)¡± in English are cognates to express a universal linguistic concept is further reinforced.
On another occasion, then, he likes to express the idea of ¡°Õâ¸ö¹ÃÄïÏÖ�Ú³ÉÁ˹¤³ÌʦÁË¡±. He is very likely to put it as ¡°this peasant girl has now become engineer¡±. No English indefinite article is employed before ¡°engineer¡± because its ¡°equivalent¡± ¡°��¡± is not present. Thus the error results. So the learner has undergone the following stages of mental process
L output
L1 equivalents
L input
No L1 equivalents
Ideas to be expressed
Fig. 4 mental process of negative transfer
. Conclusion
This paper is mainly focused on the description and explanation of misused English articles in Chinese learners¡¯ compositions. However, our interest does not and should not end here. Corder claims that there are three goals to achieve in analyzing errors. In the first place, they tell the teacher what the learner has already learned and what remains to be learned. In the second place, an analysis of errors provides to the researcher much information of how the target language is learned and what strategies or procedures the learner is employing to gain the command of certain language points about the target language. In the third place, the making of errors ¡°is a way the learner has of testing his hypotheses about the nature of the language he is learning¡±.
Therefore, errors provide much feedback, theoretical as well as practical. On the theoretical level, they give the teacher rich linguistic data to theorize the nature of the target language. Practically, they tell the teacher something about the effectiveness of his teaching and guide some remedial activities. As to our topic, English article in particular, the study of errors will certainly give us some hints of where the difficulty lies and what is most error-causing. Therefore, the teacher can take some remedial teaching methods in advance when he is to teach English articles.
Bibliography
1.Rod Ellis, The Study of Second Language Acquisition, Oxford University Press, 14.
.S. Pit Corder, Introducing Applied Linguistics, Penguin Books Ltd, 17.
.Theo van Els et al, Applied Linguistics and the Learning and Teaching of Foreign Languages
4.ÀÖü�Æ£¬Applied Linguistics, Nanjing University Press
5.ÕŵÀÕ棬A Practical English Grammar, Íâ�ï½Ì�§���о¿³ö°æÉ磬15¡£
6£®ÖìÖж¼£¬�¢�ïÐ�×÷Öеĺº�︺Ǩ�Æ£¬½â·Å¾üÍâ�ï�§�º�§±¨£¨£�£¬1¡£
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