Abstract—This paper, based on the theory of language
transfer, aims to study the negative transfer of mother tongue in
the English majors’ writing as well as its reasons. With the aid
of computer software aimwriting and manual checking, this
study is conducted with the 47 writing samples from junior
English majors from Northwestern Polytechnical University.
The students’ argumentative writings are chosen as samples for
case study. The result of study shows that up to 70% of the
students’ errors are due to the negative transfer of mother
tongue. The errors can be roughly categorized into three:
vocabulary, syntax and morphology. The reasons for negative
transfer of mother tongue can be ascribed to the lack of
awareness of negative transfer of mother tongue, weak mastery
of different characteristics between two languages and the lack
of cross-cultural awareness. It is hoped that this paper could
raise some people’s attention to the negative transfer of mother
tongue.
Index Terms—Negative transfer of mother tongue, English
writing, reasons for errors.
The authors are with the Northwestern Polytechnical University, China
(e-mail: chenjie810358141@163.com, yizhang@nwpu.edu.cn).
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Cite:Jie Chen and Yi Zhang, "A Study of Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue in English Majors’ Writing," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 74-78, 2022.