Volume 29, Issue 1
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.192
LANGUAGE TRANSFER IN THE ACQUISITION OF ECOLOGICAL LANGUAGE: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Abstract
Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. This unavoidable phenomenon has a great impact on language acquisition. Based on cognitive psychology and linguistic theory, this paper explores the language transfer in acquisition of ecological language. First, the author briefly introduced the relevant theories of eco linguistics, language transfer, cognitive psychology and language acquisition. Then, an empirical analysis was performed on the Chinese language transfer among learners of English as a second language in the acquisition of English. The data of the analysis were collected through questionnaire survey and interview. The results show that language transfer is helpful to the acquisition of the second language, if the learner is aware of the similarities and differences between the two languages and willing to transfer the knowledge and skills of the mother tongue to the second language learning; contrastive teaching promotes the positive transfer of language acquisition, and suppresses the negative transfer, enhancing the learning efficiency of the second language. The research results shed new light on promoting English teaching methods.
Keywords
Cognitive Psychology, Ecological Language, Language Acquisition, Language Transfer.