Language Transfer of English Majors in L3 German Learning from the Perspective of Dynamic Systems Theory

Abstract

As the cultures of the worlds peoples interact and merge, language is an important vehicle for their development and will inevitably influence and intermingle with each other. English and German belong to the same language family, and both languages have commonalities and similarities in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Based on this, from the perspective of dynamic systems theory, this paper focuses on the positive and negative transfer of L2 (English) knowledge in the acquisition of L3 (German) vocabulary and investigates the difficulties of trilingual learning of English majors in Guangzhou, China by means of questionnaires and interviews. The contents of the questionnaire included the different trilingual categories chosen by English majors and the influence of second language in the trilingual learning process. Through the questionnaire survey, the author found that second language had a significant transfer effect on third language acquisition in phonetics and vocabulary. Through the classification of trilingual and the analysis of transfer categories, it is expected to effectively improve the learning effect of German and strengthen the understanding of English majors on trilingual acquisition.