A Study of Negative Language Transfer in College Students’ Writing from Cultural Perspective

Abstract

Language and culture are closely related with each other and they are inseparable. Language, as a vehicle of culture, is as well culture’s manifestation. Transfer, as an important notion in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), states the situation of previously existing knowledge being extended and expanded to the gaining of new knowledge. Language transfer can be classified into positive, negative and zero transfer. As for the definition of positive transfer, it is the transfer that helps or facilitates language learning in another situation. Negative transfer is one that interferes with language learning in another situation. How to utilize the positive transfer and avoid negative transfer is of great significance in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT). Aiming to improve college students’ English writing, the author tries to analyze the negative transfer from the cultural perspective. With the guidance of the theory of Language Transfer, the author carries out a research on the students’ writing tasks. Based on the research, author has discovered the interference of their mother tongue in students’ writings shown in idioms, cultural terms and conventions in expression. Therefore, the students are not free to use language to explain their arguments. The study also found these negative transfer are mostly generated by cultural difference. The sources of negative transfer include in the three aspects which are thinking mode, aesthetic perception and religious belief. Thus students should find some solutions and avoid negative transfer efficiently.