The Role of L1 in Chinese College Students' English Learning: A Study of Kellerman's Theory of Language Transfer
- DOI
- 10.2991/icemeet-16.2017.154How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- topic-prominence in Chinese; L1 transfer; psychotypology; prototypicality; L2 proficiency
- Abstract
From a psycholinguistic perspective, Kellerman suggested that L1 transfer is determined by learners' perception of the distance between the native language and the target language (psychotypology), and learners' perception of certain L1 rules or items in terms of language specificity/neutrality (psychotypicality). Apart from the two factors, however, L2 learners' proficiency in the target language may also affect L1 transfer. 80 non-English first-year undergraduates participated and a language proficiency test and two questionnaires were employed in the study to investigate the influences of Chinese on English learning. The results showed that the Chinese EFL learners' perception of the specificity of Chinese topic-prominent structures, English proficiency, and the interaction between the two factors all significantly affected the transferability of the Chinese topic-prominent structures to their acquisition of the English subject-prominent structures. In contrast, no statistically significant effect was found for learners' perception of Chinese-English distance.
- Copyright
- © 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Yan-Qing Huang PY - 2017/01 DA - 2017/01 TI - The Role of L1 in Chinese College Students' English Learning: A Study of Kellerman's Theory of Language Transfer BT - Proceedings of the 2016 2nd International Conference on Economics, Management Engineering and Education Technology (ICEMEET 2016) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 738 EP - 744 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/icemeet-16.2017.154 DO - 10.2991/icemeet-16.2017.154 ID - Huang2017/01 ER -