Abstract:Language transfer is a controversial topic in English language learning. Transfer refers to the impact mother tongue has on a target language or a new language. Transfer is originally a psychological term and falls into two categories: positive transfer and negative transfer. The influence of mother tongue can not be avoided in English language learning. Mother tongue transfer is an important source of students’ learning difficulties, or even errors in English language learning process, and the influence can occur in the course of learning all English language systems. Mother tongue phenomenon is an important topic on which many linguists and psychologists research in second language acquisition. Some researchers have studied the barriers of English major students in their English learning and the interference of mother tongue in English learning. In this paper, English major students are greatly influenced by mother tongue transfer in English learning. Their English learning is mainly affected by the Chinese Mandarin. Besides, the results also show that low achievers with low self-esteem are influenced by Chinese transfer heavier than high achievers. In addition, we should notice the attitudes and ways towards difficulties and errors that English language learners will often confront and make.
Key words: mother tongue; language transfer; negative affect; positive affect
中文摘要:在语言学习中，迁移是指母语对目标语或旧语言知识对新语言知识的影响。这种影响有正面和负面之分,因而也就有了所谓的正迁移和负迁移。 母语和二语之间存在的差异给二语学习带来困难，使学习者产生错误，因为在学习新的语言系统过程中，来自母语的一套根深蒂固的语言习惯，势必会阻碍新的语言习惯形成，二者的相似之处则有利于二语学习。在这篇论文中，英语专业的学生在学习英语时，不可避免的受到母语迁移的作用，出现许多让他们困惑的问题，除此之外，研究的结果还发现，英语学习能力弱的同学比起学习能力强的同学更容易受到母语迁移的影响，因此，只要同学们在学习英语时提高对母语干扰的认识，找到正确的应对方法，英语水平会得到很大的提升。
关键词：母语，语言迁移，正迁移，负迁移
