Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: In the process of learning a foreign language, Chinese students are influenced or interfered by their mother tongue inevitably. This is because language transfer plays an important role in foreign language learning. Language transfer has been a central issue for at least a century in applied linguistics and second language acquisition, and it is widely accepted that the similarities and differences between the target language and the native language result in “language transfer”. In general, language transfer can be classified into two types: positive transfer and negative transfer. The present thesis, based on the previous related researches and a variety of literature, tries to give a detailed and specific description about the similarities between Chinese and English languages in several aspects. Through the comparison between the two languages, the paper is aimed to prove that the mother tongue has a positive effect on foreign language learning for primary school students.

Key words: language transfer; the mother tongue; positive transfer; negative transfer;     positive effect

摘要：中国学生在学习英语的过程中不可避免的要受到母语的影响或干扰。因而慢慢引入了一个新的话题---语言迁移。一个多世纪以来，语言迁移在应用语言学和二语习得方面已经成为了一个中心议题。语言迁移是因为目标语和原先习得的语言之间的相似点和不同点而导致的。语言迁移分为两大类：正迁移和负迁移。本文根据前人的研究，再结合多种文献资料，在很多方面把中文和英文两种语言的相似点做了一个很详细具体的描述。通过两种语言的对比研究，旨在证明母语对小学学生的外语学习有正面作用。

关键字：语言迁移 母语 正迁移 负迁移 正面作用

1. Introduction
Language transfer has always been a central focus in the second language acquisition and language teaching. It is considered that there exist both the similarities and differences between the mother tongue and a foreign language. For Chinese learners of English, language transfer refers to the role the Chinese language plays in learning English. Currently, there are some discussions on whether the mother tongue should occur in English learning and how it influences learners in their foreign language learning. Many of the previous studies focus on the negative transfer of the mother tongue and ignore its positive transfer. Therefore, it is generally believed that the mother tongue is the interference in the process of English learning.
The present thesis, based on the previous theoretical framework of language transfer, explores the positive impact of the mother tongue on primary school students in their English learning. Primary school period is a special period of time because learners of English are still at their incomplete development stage. If primary school students can make proper use of Chinese, they may get a lot in their further learning process.