Foreign Learning Environment Reduces Negative Transfer in Pronunciation: An Analysis of the Oral Output of Chinese University EFL Learners

Abstract

Negative interlingual transfer is a crucial topic in the field of linguistics, which makes the theory of second language acquisition complete. Language transfer refers to transfer of language features between or within languages, in which interlingual transfer is the one focuses on the transfer between two languages. The study explores the typical types of negative interlingual transfer in pronunciation of Chinese university EFL learners and factors affecting the degree of negative interlingual transfer in pronunciation in their L2 learning process. To achieve this purpose, the article adopts error analysis (EA) to scrutinize the errors collected by semi-structured interviews. The participants are 20 Chinese university EFL learners whose L1 is Chinese. Ten of them are from Chinese domestic universities, while the other ten come from Sino-foreign university in China or studying abroad. The result is that: typical errors are divided into segmental errors including mispronouncing vowels, adding a vowel between consonant clusters, wrongly emphasizing and extending ending consonants and replacing consonants in English with similar Chinese phonemes, and suprasegmental mistakes, encompassing stress transfer, too flat or too exaggerated intonation and lack of liaison. As for the contributing factors of negative interlingual transfer, the article contends that learning environment is a significant factor. Foreign learning environment can lead to fewer errors and reduce negative interlingual transfer.