The Application of Mother Tongue Transfer Theory to English Syntactic Teaching in Primary School

Abstract

This paper reports an empirical study on the sixth-grade students' mastery of English syntax in primary schools, and the influence of mother tongue transfer theory to English syntactic teaching in primary schools. The subjects are 98 sixth-grade students in S Experimental Primary School and the instruments adopted included a questionnaire survey and sentence pattern tests. Detailed analysis of both the qualitative and quantitative data has yield the finding as follow: 1) Grade 6 students have mastered five basic English sentence patterns and some complex sentence structures; 2)The majority of students learn English by acquiring their mother tongue; 3) Mother tongue transfer theory can help students to complete the dialogue accurately with corresponding syntax in class, thus improving the efficiency of English syntax teaching in primary schools.