以英语为母语的汉语二语学习者习作中的母语迁移现象

First Language Transfer in Mandarin Compositions Written by Learners with English as Mother Tongue

帮助汉语学习者进行书面表达是汉语教师一项较为艰巨的任务。在日常教学中,教师经常发现学生的习作中会反复出现一些语法错误和不恰当的表达方式。母语迁移是二语习得领域中的一个重要理论,经常用来解释分析二语学习者在学习过程中出现的各种问题。本研究对以英语为母语的汉语二语学习者习作中出现的各种错误进行了定量分析和定性分析,总结出四种类型的错误并对导致这些错误的认知机制进行了探究。结果显示,这些以英语为母语的汉语学习者在汉语写作中对于句式结构和词语的选择都会受到其母语的影响。这些影响分为两种:将英语的一些语法规则,包括词法、语义规则、句法等迁移到汉语的书面表达中;由于英汉两种语言在一些语言学规则方面的差异,导致学习者难以掌握一些汉语独有的语法规则,从而错误频出。

To help Mandarin learners express their ideas in compositions is one of the toughest jobs for teachers of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) who frequently find that their students’ works are rife with inappropriate expressions as well as grammatical errors. Mother tongue transfer, which is an important part of second language acquisition study, has always been used to account for the various problems occurring in second language learners’ study process. This study carries out both quantitative and qualitative analyses on the errors in compositions made by Mandarin learners with English as their mother tongue. Four categories of errors are identified, and the cognitive mechanisms that lead to these errors are studied. The results reveal that the compositions made by Mandarin learners are subject to the influence of the learners’ mother tongue (i.e., English) both in sentence structure and choice of words. The influence can be categorized into two types. First, learners transfer the English grammars (e.g., lexical, semantic, syntactic rules) to Mandarin compositions. Second, due to the linguistic differences between the two languages, learners have difficulty in mastering some Mandarin grammars, thus making various mistakes.