Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: With the development of globalization, English is learnt as a world language by more and more people from different countries of the world. In China, English has been learnt by students as a required course since China started open-up policy and reform. However, even though many Chinese college students can do fairly well in English writing，they can hardly avoid making mistakes in their oral English. The learning of oral English takes up a large proportion of time in English study. And besides, the communication between Chinese college students and British and American people is mainly achieved by oral communication. Thus, if their English is expressed inappropriately, misunderstanding and even failure in intercultural communication will inevitably come forth. This paper deals with the effect of the mother tongue on the oral English of the Chinese college students so as to find some constructive methods to make use of the positive transfer of the mother tongue rather than the negative one in college students’ second language acquisition. In that case, as an instructive teaching approach to do good to the English study of the Chinese college students.

Key words: positive transfer; negative transfer; oral English; mother tongue

摘要：随着全球化的发展，英语作为一种世界语言被各个国家的人所学习，在中国，自从改革开放以来，英语便作为一门必修课程被学生所学习。然而，中国的许多大学生即便在写作方面能有很好的作为，他们在口语方面却仍然有很多不可避免的错误。因为英语口语的学习在英语学习中占很大比例，大学生与英美人士交流也主要是通过口语交流来传达信息，所以英语口语表达不当就会引起很多误会，甚至造成跨文化交际失败。本文通过对大学生英语口语受母语影响的分析，力图从正反两方面分析原因，找到大学生二语习得中利用母语正迁移减少负迁移的方法，从而能更好的指导教学，对中国大学生的英语口语学习有所帮助。

关键词：正迁移；负迁移；英语口语； 母语；

1. Introduction
The learning of oral English takes up a large proportion of time in the English study of the Chinese college students. And besides, the communication between Chinese college students and British and American people is mainly achieved by oral communication. If we can’t express ourselves in the right way, we may cause a lot of misunderstandings and even failure in intercultural communication. This article will analyze the influence of the mother tongue on the college students’ study of oral English and find the way to reduce the negative transfer and find some constructive methods to carry forward the positive transfer in second language acquisition to guide learning in a better way so as to benefit the students in their learning of oral English.
This paper, taking the theory of language transfer as a foundation, will deal with methods to avoid the negative influence of language transfer and make use of the positive one so as to improve English teaching and learning.