Exploring native language interference of Chi nese learners in – ResearchGate

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2. Literature Review

The acquisition of English as a second language by Chinese learners is full of challenges primarily

due to the significant differences between the syntactic structures of Chinese and English. Syntactic

transfer, particularly from Chinese to English, has been identified as a significant factor affecting the

English writing proficiency of Chinese college students. Traditionally, language transfer has been

seen as the outcome caused by the similarities and differences between other languages previous

acquired and target languages [1]. According to previous research in related discipline, native

language has inevitable influence on second language acquisition [2]. In particular, it has been found

that Chinese learners frequently use certain sentence structures in their language production. For

instance, they frequently overuse the “there be” construction, which is directly a reflection of the

Chinese topic-comment sentence structure and causes errors in English existential sentences [3] [4].

The misuse of this term and the misunderstandings that follow emphasize how important it is to

develop instructional strategies that deal with these syntactic differences. Building on this basis, the

observation and study explore the intricacies of syntactic transfer, scrutinizing not just overt faults

but also minute nuances of language interference that impact Chinese learners’ writing skill.

Moreover, the flexibility of Chinese sentence structures, which often lack a strict subject-predicate

order, has been justified as a widely observed error in English writing. It is reported that Chinese

learners frequently omit subjects in English sentences, leading to sentence fragments or run-on

sentences [5] [6]. This issue underscores the importance of understanding the underlying grammatical

principles of both languages to avoid such errors. The research seeks to provide a more

comprehensive understanding of these issues by analyzing a diverse range of writing samples and

conducting semi-structured interviews to uncover the cognitive processes behind these errors.

The misuse of the subjunctive mood by Chinese learners, is another critical area of syntactic

transfer. Chinese learners struggle with the nuanced use of the subjunctive mood in English, often

employing it incorrectly in conditional sentences or to express wishes, which are more

straightforward in Chinese without the need for morphological changes [6]. And semantic transfer

errors occur when Chinese learners directly translate from Chinese to English, leading to inaccuracies

in meaning due to structural and expressive differences. This direct translation approach can result in

a loss of semantic precision, which can be problematic in academic and professional writing contexts

[7].

The findings revealed that students often directly translated Chinese phrases into English, leading

to errors in meaning, form, and sentence structure. The cultural norms also influenced their oral

expressions, making them indirect and overly polite, which further contributed to the persistence of

“Chinglish.” There is still room for improvement, despite the fact that numerous academics and

linguists have worked very hard to demonstrate language transfer and how it affects second language

acquisition. Few studies have examined the issues with articles, prepositions, and agreements that

students may run into when completing writing assignments; these issues may also be brought on by

linguistic interference. Furthermore, very little research addressed the kind of sample that presents

potential situations of native language interference and discussed them in relation to the genre of the

texts that were collected.

The research also intends to contribute to pedagogical issues helping students avoid negative

transfer. As what have been proposed in previous studies, teach should have advanced understanding

on the cross-linguistic differences between Chinese and English and intrinsic motivation and interests

of the learners to trigger their awareness on language transfer [8]. It is also widely agreed that the

input, cultural awareness, and cognitive system of target language play important role in lowering the

impact of negative language transfer [9]. Based on that, teaching philosophy nowadays has been

evolving more and more cultural aspects, but still, it is to be clarify which cultural knowledge has the

capacity to improve students’ language competence and how effective they are.