How does inter-lingual transfer influence tense errors in Chinese ESL students

Inter-lingual transfer significantly influences tense errors in Chinese ESL (English as a Second Language) students. This influence occurs because Chinese and English have very different tense and grammatical systems, leading to transfer errors when Chinese learners apply their native language (L1) rules to English (L2).

Influence of Inter-lingual Transfer on Tense Errors

• Chinese does not use verb inflections to mark tense in the way English does, which makes it challenging for Chinese ESL students to correctly use English tenses. For example, the Chinese language does not inflect verbs for past, present, or future tense; instead, context or time adverbs often indicate time reference. This typological difference causes Chinese learners to omit or misuse English tense markers, resulting in errors such as wrong tense forms or omission of auxiliary verbs and inflections in English sentences. ^{1, 2}

• The negative transfer from Chinese leads to common tense errors including misuse of past tense, misuse or omission of the third-person singular “-s”, and confusion with the auxiliary verb “be” and verb agreement. These errors arise because the morpho-syntactic features of English verb tenses have no direct correspondence in Chinese. ^{2, 1}

• Studies show that Chinese ESL learners have a higher error rate in tense-related inflections than agreement inflections, illustrating specific difficulty with English tense morphology. ²

Error Patterns and Examples

• Dropping subjects and verbs as Chinese is a null-subject language, which can influence ESL writing and speaking in English.
• Misuse of verb tense, incorrect verb form, and errors in past tense and third person singular present tense usage are prevalent.
• Errors in English passive voice construction also reflect L1 interference as Chinese expresses passive differently. ^{3, 4, 1}

Broader Context

• These inter-lingual transfer errors are part of a broader set of challenges for Chinese ESL learners, including issues with word order and article use.
• Pedagogical approaches that focus on explicitly teaching tense and grammatical rules can help mitigate these transfer errors by making learners aware of the differences between their first and second languages. ^{1, 2}

In summary, inter-lingual transfer from Chinese to English causes specific and common tense errors in Chinese ESL students because of fundamental differences in how the two languages express tense morphologically and syntactically. This leads to frequent misuse and omission of English tense markers that do not exist in Chinese. ^{4, 1, 2}

References

• Crosslinguistic Influence of the First Language: Interlingual errors in the writing of ESL Saudi learners

• The Use of Inflection Morphology of Tense and Agreement in English Among Chinese Second Language Learners in College

• Research on Three Error Types of Chinese Esl Learners’ Acquisition of Passive Voice

• Frequent Errors in Chinese EFL Learners’ Topic-Based Writings

• Error Types of and Strategies on Learning Chinese Connectives: A Study on Chinese as a Second Language Learners’ Writing

• Typological characteristics of interlanguage: Across L2 modalities and proficiency levels

• Corpus-Based Error Analysis of Chinese Learners’ Use of High-Frequency Verb Take

• Processing Instruction Versus Traditional Instruction: The Transfer-of-Training Effects on Chinese EFL Learners

• Exploring language learning and corrective feedback in an eTandem project

• Error Types of and Strategies on Learning Chinese Connectives: A Study on Chinese as a Second Language Learners’ Writing

• A comparison between the preferences for oral corrective feedback of teachers and students of Chinese as a second language

• Editorial: Second or foreign language learning and cognitive development

• Speech errors in consecutive interpreting: Effects of language proficiency, working memory, and anxiety

• An experimental study on grammatical sensitivity and production competence in Chinese and Spanish EFL learners and its implications on EFL teaching methods

• Linguistic distances between native languages and Chinese influence acquisition of Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar

• The effect of study-abroad experience on lexical translation among interpreting students

• Positive cross-linguistic influence in the representation and processing of sentence-final particle le by L2 and heritage learners of Chinese