摘 要

Gass和Selinker曾指出要对第二语言习得现象做出充分的解释，就必须要考虑语言迁移这一因素，所以语言迁移一直以来都是二语习得与外语教学领域的焦点问题。本文将基于语言迁移中的句法迁移的相关理论，采用错误分析的方法，分析总结在大学生英语写作中由于句法迁移所导致的错误，总结出两大可能的原因，并为解决问题提出了一些建议。

关键词: 错误分析; 句法迁移; 英语写作; 教学启示

Contents

1. Introduction .......................................................................................................1
2. Demonstration ...................................................................................................2

2.1. Theories about syntactic transfer.......................................................................2

2.1.1 An overview of syntactic transfer....................................................................2

2.1.2 Error analysis ..................................................................................................3

2.2 Research design.................................................................................................4

2.2.1 Research subjects...........................................................................................4

2.2.2 Research process............................................................................................4

2.3 Data Analysis ...................................................................................................5

2.3.1 Results from analysis ....................................................................................5

2.3.2 Possible causes of syntactic transfer errors....................................................7

2.4 Suggestions for reducing syntactic transfer errors............................................9

2.4.1 Making full use of positive syntactic transfer................................................9

2.4.2 Improving intercultural awareness...............................................................10

3. Conclusion..........................................................................................................11

Works Cited ...........................................................................................................12

Bibliography...........................................................................................................13

An Analysis of Syntactic Transfer in the Learning of College English Writing

1. Introduction

As we all know, transfer is an important research field in second language acquisition as it is generally regarded as the influence of some kind of learning on others and it is also one of the basic conditions for learning(Cui 9). Gass and Selinker also have pointed out that anyone who wants to offer sufficient interpretation of second language acquisition has to take the critical factor language transfer into consideration(92). Language transfer has been a controversial issue in applied linguistics, second language acquisition and language teaching for at least a century. And syntactic transfer has also been a major concern of both language teachers and language researchers. From the beginning of 1980's, language researchers and teachers have paid more attention to syntactic transfer in the research of second language writing as writing is one of the most important ways to facilitate language communicative function and it can be used to consolidate other skills in language study.

In the study of syntactic transfer, studies on word order and relative clauses have been carried out extensively(Pan 25) and here the author will discuss studies on word order and relative clauses. Analyzing foreign and domestic researches, this paper finds that there are more foreign researches in language transfer, but there are relatively fewer researches about syntactic transfer, most of which pay more attention to the transfer of mother tongue to English writing. For example, Guo Chunjie and Wen Qiufang’s research shows that the biggest function of mother tongue is to help people make logical judgments , analyses and inferences. The number of papers on syntactic transfer is increasing, such as Cui San’ A Study on Negative 'Transfer of Chinese Syntax in College Students’ English Writings, Pan Fengjie’s Discourse and Syntactic Transfer in ESL writing, Sun Jun's The Influence of Mother Tongue Transfer on English Writing by Non一English Major University students and so on. Most of them use the theory of comparative analysis and inter-language, not the theory of error analysis.