Chapter One Introduction
1.1Research Background
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has about 24 million inhabitants. Manyethnic groups are living in this area including Han, Mongolians, Manchus, Hui, Daur,Evenks, Koreans, Russions and Oroqen. As all we know, Han (Chinese) constitutebulk large portion of the population, and the largest minority population is that of theMongols. Recent decades, although there are many efforts have been made to improvethe English of the Mongolian students and a marked effect has been produced, due togeographical, historical and many other complex factors, Mongolian regions are notas developed to some extent as other regions in China. With the advance of societyand the popularity of English in international communication, the government andschool should pay enough attention to the English teaching and learning in minorityregions. As a special group of Inner Mongolia Mongolian English learners have theirown unique features. Mongolian is their mother language in spoken and written forms.In the process of acquiring their mother tongue, Mongolian students learn Chinese astheir second language. when they learn English, actually it is their third language.As for the Mongolian students‘ educational background before they enter theuniversity, all the courses are taught in Mongolian apart from Chinese course andEnglish course. When Mongolian students learn English, they are taught both inChinese and English. As Mongolian is Mongolian students‘ native language and themain communication tool, it has great influence on Mongolian Students‘ Englishlearning. So Mongolian students need to acquire three kinds of languages: theirmother language-Mongolian, Chinese and English. Actually it is trilingualism when aMongolian native speaker in Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region is acquiringEnglish as the third Language (L3) through the influence of motherlanguage-Mongolian and the Chinese as the second language (L2). This trilingualismof Mongolian students leads to the complex situation in cross-linguistic influence(CLI)or language transfer.
…….
1.2Purpose of the Study
English writing ability is the manifestation of students‘ comprehensive use of thetarget language. The negative transfer of Mongolian language is one of the mainobstacles to Mongolian students‘ English writing. The author herself has beenteaching English for Mongolian students and found out that many syntactic errors andmistakes made by Mongolian students seem to relate to their mother language. Andthe author is very interested in the syntactic field of Linguistics and there are fewstudies and researches have done related to Mongolian negative transfer in syntacticlevel in particular. So the thesis attempts to find out how the negative transfer ofMongolian affects Mongolian students‘ English writing at syntactic level and seek outsome appropriate measures to minimize the influence of the negative transfer so as toprovide some findings and suggestions to improve English writing skills ofMongolian non-English majors. The thesis is to draw the attention of the Englishteachers especially those who teach Mongolian students and English learners to thesyntactic transfer existing in Mongolian students‘ writings and also offer somerelevant references and suggestive opinions to negative transfer of Mongolianstudents‘ English in syntactic level.
………
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 An Overview of Language Transfer
Since language transfer is the learning psychology theory in second languageacquisition, it is difficult to define the term ―language transfer for linguists. Thedefinition of language transfer keeps on changing as the development of thetheoretical frameworks. As for the research of language transfer, there are variousterms of language transfer to indicate this language phenomenon.The original term of ―language transfer can be traced back to behaviorism in1950s. Lado (1957) stated ―inpiduals are inclined to transfer the forms andmeanings of their own language and culture to the foreign language. When theyattempt to speak the target language and understand culture as native speakers do,they will transfer the forms of their own language productively and receptively.Selinker (1972) who is widely regarded as the founding father of ―languagetransfer considered that language transfer is inter-language. The term―inter-language was taken as the fact that target language constructs a linguisticssystem that partially count on the learner‘s native language but is still different fromthe target language. So, a learner‘s inter-language is completely different and a uniquelinguistic system.
………
2.2 Theoretical Foundations of Language Transfer
Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) was firstly proposed by Charles Fries in1927 (俞理明, 2004), Fries pointed out that learners‘ mother tongue played a decisiveand crucial role during the process of learning target language, and the form andstructure of mother tongue would be subconsciously transferred. Fries also denoted―The most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description ofthe language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of thenative language of the learner. However, it is widely accepted that the mark of thefoundation of the basic theories of CAH is the publishing of the book Linguisticsacross Culture by Lado in 1957.Lado (1957) stated that the the relationship to be proportional relies on therelationship between difference and difficulty, as it were the greater the difference is,the greater the difficulty would be. According to Lado, the students may learn targetlanguage better and know what the real problems are if the teacher can make acontrastive teaching of the target language and the native language, and draw someimplications for English teaching.
…….
Chapter Three Research Methodology........46
3.1 Research questions....46
3.2 Research subject .......46
3.3 Research instruments .......48
Chapter Four Data collection and analysis .........50
4.1 Analysis of the Questionnaire .........50
4.2 Error Analysis...........52
Chapter Five Conclusion ......60
5.1 Major Findings .........60
5.2 Pedagogy Implications .....61
5.3 Limitations and Recommendation for Future Study .....62
Chapter Four Data collection and analysis
4.1 Analysis of the Questionnaire
Fifty pieces of questionnaire paper of the subjects were collected and the authorgot fifty pieces of valid answer sheets. The questionnaire is a general overview of thesubjects‘ attitude towards English writing, their writing strategies, their learningbackground and their opinions about improving writing ability. The questionsdesigned in the questionnaire are expected to be helpful in investigating the mainreasons for syntactic transfer errors in Mongolian students‘ English writings. Therelation of L1 transfer and teachers‘ teaching methods, learners‘ learning behaviorsand writing strategies can be concluded by analyzing the results of the questionnaires.The results of the questionnaires are showed below: After analyzing the data of the questionnaires, it is found that only 38% of thesubjects like English; most of the students (68%) have difficulties in learning English.And as for learning attitude 58% students actually try their best and like to spendsome time to learn it. 38% students are not interested in English and the rest of thestudents even do not like it. 54% of the students consider that writing is the mostdifficult part in their English learning. And 48% students indicate that the grammarand sentence structure in English are difficult to learn and 36% students think theidioms and phrases are the most difficult part to acquire. As for learning strategieswhen they produce English composition, 72% of the subjects are used to consultingChinese sentences first and then translating them into English, and 18% of thesubjects indicate that they are inclined to produce English sentences and the rest of thestudents tend to turn to their mother language-Mongolian when they are lack ofEnglish grammar knowledge.
………..
Conclusion
After the analysis and discussion of the collected data, answers can be given tothe research questions of the present study .The statistic as tables in the preceding chapter clearly show the types of errorsfound in Mongolian students‘ English writing, and from a macro perspective, theerrors are classified into three categories, interlingual errors, intralingual errors andunclassified errors. There are four major findings of the research.
(1) Intralingual errors take a larger proportion in Mongolian non-English majorcollege students‘ English writing,. It takes the percentage of 50.% followed byinterlingual errors at the percentage of 44%. hen confronted with a practical need,learners will produce some utterances or forms they have never known. It is necessaryto provide enough input of target language and make students acquire the basic rulesand knowledge of English.
(2) There are mainly six types of syntactical errors including Agreement, TheWord Order, Conjunction, Clause, Capitalization and Punctuation.
(3) English writing of Mongolian students are influenced by Mongolian syntacticstructures in subject-verb agreement, misplacement of modifiers , adverbials andmisusages of the clause in the sentence to the level of capitalization of the word andpunctuation in the sentence.
............
References (omitted)