Syntactic Transfer: Evidence from the Interlanguage of Hong Kong Chinese ESL Learners

Abstract

This article presents evidence of syntactic transfer from Chinese to English based on data obtained from 710 Hong Kong Chinese ESL learners at different proficiency levels. Three methodologies were used: self‐reporting in individual interviews, translation (with and without prompts), and grammaticality judgment. The focus of the study was on 5 error types: (a) lack of control of the copula, (b) incorrect placement of adverbs, (c) inability to use the there be structure for expressing the existential or presentative function, (d) failure to use the relative clause, and (e) confusion in verb transitivity. The results showed that many Chinese ESL learners in Hong Kong tended to think in Chinese first before they wrote in English, and that the surface structures of many of the interlanguage strings produced by the participants were identical or very similar to the usual or normative sentence structures of the learners' first language (L1), Cantonese. The extent of syntactic transfer was particularly large for complex target structures and among learners of a lower proficiency level, though high‐proficiency learners may also have relied on the syntax and vocabulary of their previous linguistic repertoire, their L1, when finding it difficult to produce output in the target language.

Thai EFL Students’ Writing Errors in Different Text Types: The Interference of the First Language

“…In order to comprehend L2 writing difficulty in terms of language and syntactic transfer more clearly, a number of researchers as well as scholars have paid much attention to identifying what hardships L2 student writers may confront while writing. Chan (2004) investigated the evidence of syntactic transfer from Chinese into English. The data obtained from 710 Hong Kong Chinese students were to be analyzed.…”

“…The errors caused by the mother tongue were as follows: 1) Apostrophe, 2) Punctuation, 3) Spelling, 4) Prepositions, 5) Capital letters, 6) Present & past continuous tenses, 7) Subject pronouns, 8) vocabulary, and 9) Passive & active voice. Chan (2004) studied the errors in Hong Kong Chinese student writers' writing to examine how syntactic transfer affected the effectiveness of students' writing performance. According to the study results, five syntactic structures were found:…”

Lexikos 22

“…The Sentence Completion Task with the provision of a Chinese context was included because it has often been reported that many Cantonese ESL learners tend to think in Chinese when producing written English output (Chan 2004b(Chan , 2010. They often have a target Chinese word in mind when constructing an English sentence and attempt to convert it in English and fit it into the Chinese context in mind.…”

“…To learners of the language as a second language, monolingual dictionaries may present even more difficulties, as in the production of target language sentences, many ESL learners tend to think in their mother tongue. L1 transfer has been found to be one major source of learner problems not just among lower proficiency learners, but high-proficiency learners also rely on the syntax and vocabulary of their L1 when writing in L2 and/or when encountering difficulties in the production of target language output (Chan 2004b;Bhela 1999; Van Weijen, Van den Bergh, Rijlaarsdam and Sanders 2009). Given that monolingual dictionaries rely on corpora which do not necessarily provide "the English that is really needed or wanted by its users" (Kernerman 2007: 142), it is interesting to investigate the usefulness of these dictionaries to ESL learners when their target language production processes are guided by their native language and when their production processes are not.…”

Lemmatizing Textbook Corpus for Learner Dictionary of Basic Vocabulary

“…A similar conclusion is also mentioned by Folse (2006), Lotto and de Groot (1998) who state that students will have better word retention level if L1 translations are provided. On the other hand, Chan (2004) and White (1997) consider bilingual dictionaries as limited, and they contain rigid or imprecise L1 translations that may not be helpful to learners to develop lexical awareness.…”