The Influence of Negative Transfer of Mother Language on Syntax in Students’ English Writing

The language transfer theory postulates that a learner’s mother language would either positively or negatively impact his acquisition of a foreign language as a second language. When there are similarities between the native language and the target language, the transfer functions positively, while in case of differences, it functions negatively. Writing is one of the five basic skills of English learning, which is the most intuitive reflection of students’ overall ability level. This paper first analyzes the phenomenon of negative transfer of mother language and English writing, and then analyzes the impact of negative transfer of mother language on students’ English writing from the syntactic level. Based on the analysis, this paper proposes countermeasures from four aspects: strengthening comprehensible language input, enhancing the comparison of Chinese and English, applying the diversified writing evaluation feedback methods, and guiding students to develop writing strategies, in order to help students overcome the interference of mother language and improve their writing ability.