A Study on Negative Transfer of Non-English Majors' Writing Under the Error-Analysis Theory

摘要

In second language acquisition, one's mother tongue will influence both in a positive and negative way. While Chinese and English belong to different language families and have different cultural background, negative transfer appears in vocabulary, sentence construction, coherence, and culture. In this paper, the author studies negative transfer in college English writing. 150 sophomores from Xidian University are chosen, and interview and writing test are combined to accomplish the study. After statistical analysis of the students' negative transfer in the writing test, the author explores the appearance of them in college English writing, and proposes feasible strategies to avoid negative transfer.