浅析母语教学在英语教学中的作用

母语在外语学习中占据着重要的作用,大多数的时候起着促进的作用,有时候运用不好,对外语的学习起着反作用,所以运用好母语非常的重要。

浅析母语迁移在中学英语教学中的作用

陈苗玉

（福建省福安市第九中学， 355015）

摘要: 中国的中学生在学习英语时会受到母语迁移的影响。正迁移会对英语学习产生积极

的促进用，而负迁移则会给英语学习带来负面影响。本论文旨在分析正负迁移对中学生英语学习的影响，以期从中得到关于英语教学的启示。

关键词：母语迁移；正迁移；负迁移；启示

Mother Tongue Transfer in Middle School English Teaching Abstract：Mother tongue transfer influences the Chinese middle school students’ learning.

Positive transfer promotes English learning, while negative transfer interfere it. In this paper, the author analyzes the p ositive and negative influences of mother tongue transfer in middle school students’ English learning and aims at to get some revelations for English teaching.

key words: mother tongue transfer； positive transfer； negative transfer；revelations

Introduction

Language transfer is defined as “the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired”(Odlin，2001). Selinker(1983) divides mother tongue transfer into positive transfer and negative transfer. When the mother tongue and the target language share similar structure or grammar and the like, then positive transfer seems to occur facilitating the acquisition of the target language, but when the mother tongue and the target language are different, negative transfer is likely to happen, resulting in hindering the acquisition of the language. In Chinese middle school English teaching, mother tongue transfer also influents students’ English learning. However, as their English teachers, we can analyze the mother tongue transfer and get some revelations for English teaching.

1. Some theories about mother tongue transfer

Before the 1960s, the study of child language was dominated mainly by the

母语在外语学习中占据着重要的作用,大多数的时候起着促进的作用,有时候运用不好,对外语的学习起着反作用,所以运用好母语非常的重要。

“behaviourist” approach to language and learning. The best-known proponent of this approach was B.F. Skinner. According to behaviourists, language is regarded as a set of linguistic habits and the linguistic habits are formed through identifying and strengthening the associations between stimuli and responses. Learning a second language means the formation of a new set of linguistic habits.

The behaviorists’ view of first language acquisition was challenged from the 1960s onwards, especially under the influence of Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theories. He argues in his book “Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior”: language is not a set of habits but a set of abstract rules and language is not acquired through imitation and repetition but rather is an innate inheritance triggered off by minimal environment exposure.

Cognitive linguists view second language acquisition as a similar process to that of children’s experiences in native language acquisition. Dulay and Burt (1974) assert that the process of L2 learning is almost the same as that of L1 acquisition. However, in reality, the two processes differ. Acquisition is the process where language is acquired as a result of natural and largely random exposure to language; learning is the exposure is structured through language teaching. In a word, cognitive linguists put much emphasis on the working process of human’s internal property.

Besides, Contrastive Analysis (CA) plays an important role in mother tongue transfer, which flourished in the 1940s and 1950s. Behaviourist compared the differences between the native language and the target language for the purpose of more effective target language learning. It is a sub-discipline of linguistics concerned with the comparison of two or more language or more subsystems of language in order to determine both the differences and similarities between them”.

The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) takes its root in behaviorism which emphasizes negative transfer, claiming that interference means difficulty in learning. Among all the earlier linguists, Lado can be considered as the most distinctive representative of CAH. He claims the theoretical work of CAH and in his influential book “Linguistic Across Cultures”, he maintains that errors in L2 learning are mainly caused by transfer from L1 habits.

Based on the above mentioned theories, many Chinese scholars and researchers have contributed themselves to the field of mother tongue transfer. However, little attention has been paid to the research of mother tongue transfer in middle school

母语在外语学习中占据着重要的作用,大多数的时候起着促进的作用,有时候运用不好,对外语的学习起着反作用,所以运用好母语非常的重要。

English teaching. Facing challenges and difficulties, the author makes a tentative attempt to analyze mother tongue transfer and get some revelations from it for Chinese middle school English teaching.

2. The influence of mother tongue transfer

2.1 The influence of positive transfer

English belongs to Indo-European language family, while Chinese belongs to Chinese-Tibet language family. They belongs to two different language family. However, they are similar in some basic structures. Take four basic structures as examples: SV (subject + verb)： Everybody laughed (众人皆乐). SVO (subject + verb + object ) ：I have a schoolbag (我有一个 …… 此处隐藏：19138字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……