Abstract

Language transfer has been a heated topic in second language acquisition and language teaching and learning since 1950s. L1 transfer refers to the influence of mother tongue on second language or foreign language learning. The great differences between Chinese and English have caused a lot of difficulties to Chinese students learning English as a foreign language. Among the four basic skills in English learning, speaking is the most difficult one. However, few researchers have conducted empirical studies on the negative influence of L1 transfer on English speaking, especially on collocation and syntax.
This study explores the negative effects of L1 transfer on collocation and syntax in English majors’ speaking. The participants are 55 sophomores majoring in English in university. The author watched the recordings of their extensive reading classes, transcribed the question&answer parts and the comment parts to texts, and analyzed the lexical collocation errors and syntactic errors.
The results show that negative transfer of mother tongue has a great influence on both collocation and syntax in English majors’ speaking. In this study, the statistics reveal that English majors are most likely to misuse the “verb + noun”, “adjective + noun”, and “noun + noun” structures, and they often commit syntactic errors in subject-predicate agreement, run-on sentences and repetition. The students always think in Chinese and translate their thoughts into English in their speaking. The author also offers some suggestions for students to improve their English speaking.

Keywords：negative transfer of mother tongue, collocation, syntax

摘要

上个世纪50年代以来，母语迁移一直是第二语言习得和语言教学领域里的一个热门话题。母语迁移指的是母语对二语习得的影响，母语和外语之间的相同点会对外语学习产生帮助，不同点则会造成阻碍，甚至导致错误的产生。汉语和英语属于两种不同的语系，它们之间的差异给中国学生们的英语学习带来了很大的困难。在英语四种基本技能，即听、说、读、写中，说是英语交流中最重要的一项技能，也是英语学习中最困难的一项。然而，国内比较注重英语阅读、听力和写作，对英语口语学习尚未有足够的重视，很少有专家学者通过实证研究探讨母语负迁移对英语口语学习的影响，尤其是对词语搭配和句法的影响。
本研究探讨母语迁移对英语专业学生口语词语搭配和句法的影响。本研究以55个英语专业的大二学生为研究对象。作者观看了他们泛读课的录制视频,，将问答部分和评论部分分别转写成文本，并仔细分析了其中的词语搭配错误和句法错误。
研究结果表明，母语负迁移对英语专业口语词汇搭配和句法都有很大的影响。数据显示，六种词语搭配错误中，“动词+名词”搭配是英语专业学生犯错误最多的，然后是“形容词+名词”搭配和“名词+名词”搭配；句法错误中，学生们犯的最多的分别是主谓一致、流水句和重复赘余。最后作者为英语学习者们提高英语口语水平提出了一些建议。

关键词：母语负迁移，词语搭配，句法