The Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue on English Pronunciation——from the Phonetic and Phonological Perspectives

Language researchers have long been working on the language transfer theory since 1970s with an aim to help second language acquisition. Researches on transfer of pronunciation were explored from many aspects, such as phonetics, age, motivation and culture etc. By illustrating the Chinese learners’ improper English pronunciation, it tries to discuss the negative transfer of their mother tongue on the English pronunciation on the theoretical basis of phonetic and phonological differences between the two languages. Based on these studies and analysis, it hopes to arouse the learners’ awareness of the different pronunciation between English and Chinese and their interests in acquiring a native-like pronunciation, and hopefully the teachers will also help the learners have a good knowledge of the difference before they’re affected by the negative transfer of Chinese.     

The Common Mistakes Among Chinese English Learners

Chinese Style: While walking along the street, I met my friend.American Style: While walking along the street, I met a friend ofmine.Chinese Style: Here is a pair of nice shoes.American Style: Here is a nice pair of shoes.     

The Common Mistakes Among Chinese English Learners

Chinese Style: It was so late there was no taxi. American Style: It was so late that there was no taxi available.Chinese Style: Let me help you to do your work. American Style: Let me help you with your work.     

The Common Mistakes Among Chinese English Learners

Chinese Style: This book deserves to read several times. American Style: This book deserves to be read several times.Chinese Style: I make a rule of going to bed early and getup early.American Style: I make a rule to keep early hours.Chinese Style: I went to the sea. American Style: I went to the beach.     

Chinese Learners‘ Realization of Requests in English

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English Learners’ Performance on a Measure of Dyslexia Risk

Many schools now screen students for dyslexia in early grades. However, there are valid concerns that these screeners may be biased or ineffective at screening students who are not yet proficient in English (i.e., English Learners; ELs). The present study examined the performance of 54 first graders on a dyslexia screener. Results showed that students who were ELs performed similarly to their peers who were proficient in English on many literacy subskills. Additionally, we found that EL students were not significantly more likely to be “flagged” as at risk for dyslexia. These findings have practical implications for using universal screeners to identify students, including students who are designated ELs, as being at risk for learning disabilities, including dyslexia.     

Chinese Culture Can’t be Expressed Exactly in English

Culture is itself a most comprehensive metaphor shown by people--different crowd has specific and characteristic culturewhich is a mixture of history and experience. English as a world language Language plays an important role transmitting, but not exactly,different cultures. Thus, Chinese culture can not be expressed in English besides people who use English as Englishes exactly. This paperwill illustrate the fact through introuducing elements of culture, especially from the aspect of the broadening of Little C (behaviour culture),and analyzing the reason from three aspects according to the broadening of Little C, that is, English can not express Chinese products exactly, English can not express Chinese ideas exactly, and English can not express Chinese behaviours exactly.     

A Contrastive Study of Semantic Prosody between English Native Speak ers and Chinese English Learners——Case Study of “Avoid”

In this paper,the author uses data-driven and contrastive interlanguage analysis approach,applying AntConc 3.2.1 as the tool,to make a comparison between corpus FLOB and CLEC on the using of the word avoid.The result shows that the se mantic prosodic tendency between the two communities is in great similarities but also have differences.Through comparison and analysis,the author finds the hidden reason and summarizes how to improve.     

The Agony of Early Chinese Immigrants--A Review on Shanghai Girls

The article aims at exploring by the way of a traditional approach—Historical-Biographical the agony confronted by early Chinese immigrants in America based on the novel Shanghai Girls.Early Chinese Americans encountered numerous pains:hardship in their work,discrimination in their lives,and the threat of deportation from the host government.Generally,the sufferings of theirs derive from three sources,namely,their powerless homeland,the hostility of the white and their low education status.Due to the poverty and powerless their homeland,both the sisters encountered countless insults.     

The Effects of Glossary and Read-Aloud Accommodations on English Language Learners’ Performance on a Mathematics Assessment

Glossary and reading aloud test items are commonly allowed in many states' accommodation policies for English language learner (ELL) students for large-scale mathematics assessments. However, little research is available regarding the effects of these accommodations on ELL students' performance. Further, no research exists that examines how students use the accommodations. Using a randomized experimental design and think-aloud procedure, the present study explored the effects of the two accommodations. Results showed no significant effect of glossary, mixed effects of read aloud, and significant interaction effects between students' prior content knowledge and accommodations, which suggests the accommodation was effective for students with content knowledge. Think-aloud data indicated that students were not familiar with, and did not actively utilize the glossary. Implications for the effective use of accommodations and future research are discussed.     

The Analysis of Comparison Between English and Chinese Animal Idioms

Idioms are essence of a language and a kind of special and fixed phrases or short sentences in the long period of language use.Because animals have been considered as people’s best friends for hundreds of years,people adopt different species of animals as metaphors to express all their emotions.However,due to the different national characteristics between English and Chinese,such as geographical conditions and tradition so in most cases easterners and westerners have different attitudes and understanding towards same animals,of course,some animal idioms have the same meaning.     

Chinese Learners’ Pragmatic Failure in Communication with English Native Speakers

Chinese Learners’ pragmatic failure can be divided into pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.Pragmalinguistic failure stems from inappropriate pragmalinguistic transfer and teaching-induced errors.Sociopragmatic failure is mainly caused by cross-cultural differences in the assessment of such socio-cultural variables as size of imposition and social distance,and also by the deviation from rules of speaking.Inappropriate teaching materials are also an important cause of Chinese learners’ sociopragmatic failure.     

A Study on the Correlations Between Chinese EFL Learners’ Autonomous Learning and Their Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning and learner autonomy have become heated topics in English teaching.Many researchers both at home and abroad have carried out the study on this field,and they proved that learner autonomy and cooperative learning are rel evant,cooperative learning can promote English majors’learning autonomy in terms of listening,reading,speaking,however,no obvious findings in vocabulary and writing.This study is conducted to prove the feasibilities and effectiveness of cooperative learning applied to foster first-year non-English majors’learning autonomy from the aspect of vocabulary and structure.The re sults of this study showed that cooperative learning was much more effective than traditional teaching approaches in fostering some positive affective factors.According to this research,cooperative learning can also improve learners’vocabulary and struc ture significantly.     

Analysis of English Majors’ Expressiveness of Chinese Culture in English

Currently English has spread around the world so extensively that it has become a link language across many cultures.Since 1980s,China saw a warm discussion of language,culture and cross-cultural communication.An increasing number of researchers and educators began to be aware of the vital importance of culture in EFL teaching and learning and cultural content has been available in classrooms teaching.However,the development of English teaching and cross-cultural communicative competence is target culture-oriented and the ability of expressiveness of home culture in English is almost ignored.Thus,the thesis seeks to collect the students’ perceptions on expressiveness of Chinese culture in English and the culture teaching in EFL in China.     

The Analysis of Wallace Stevens’Chinese Complex-Take the Poem "The Snow Man"for Example

Wallace Stevens is an American imagist in the twentieth century.At that time,American traditional values and religious beliefs confronted serious crisis.Chinese culture,to a large extent,appealed American poets including Wallace Stevens.In the world of disorder,Stevens pondered anew the perceptions towards the world.In a large number of letters and poems,Stevens manifests his enthusiasm of Chinese cultures.This thesis takes Stevens’The Snow Man for example to analyze the essence of Chinese"Dao"in natural evolvement,nothingness,and meditation as well as the element of reconciliation in Chinese landscapes painting.     

Corpus-based Study on the use of "really" in Chinese Students’ Writing

This corpus-based study aims to explore if the high frequently used word "really" is at a risk of overused,underused or misused in the writing of Chinese learners.Then draw attention on English learning and teaching and raise learners’ awareness of the structural and collocation complexity of words.     

The Specificity Principle in Young Dual Language Learners’ English Development

This study employs the Specificity Principle to examine the relative impacts of external (input quantity at home and at school, number of books and reading frequency at home, teachers’ degree and experience, language usage, socioeconomic status) and internal factors (children’s working memory, nonverbal intelligence, learning-related social-skills, chronological age, gender) on children’s English-language development in phonological awareness (PA), receptive vocabulary (RV), and word reading (WR). Altogether, 736 four- to five-year-old Singaporean Mandarin-English speaking kindergarteners were assessed twice longitudinally. Their English-language PA, RV, and WR development was predicted using the eight external factors and five internal factors with Bayesian least absolute shrinkage and selection operators. Internal factors explained more variance than external factors in all three language domains. External factors had their largest impact on RV.     

Using An Inductive Approach to Teach Grammar to Chinese Adult Learners of English

1.IntroductionThe methods on how to teach and learngrammar have been debated in recent years.Krashen(1982)argues that grammar can beacquired naturally from meaningful input andopportunities to interact in the classroom.However,more recent research(Swain&Tarone,1995)suggests that the communicative classroomdoes not result in very high levels of grammaticalor sociolinguistic competence among learners.Inaddition,Ellis(1993)reasserts the importance ofgrammar teaching concerning accuracy inlearne…