Exploring the Impact of Language Transfer: Taking Chinese and Spanish Students’ English Learnig as Examples

Abstract

This study examines the effects of language transfer on second language acquisition using the English language learning of Chinese and Spanish students as an example. Language transfer includes positive transfer (the aspects that help learning) and negative transfer (the aspects that hinder learning). In the process of learning a language, this is an important phenomenon. This study will investigate the phenomenon of language transfer among students studying English whose first language is Spanish or Chinese in order to compare the positive and negative transfer impacts of the two student groups in terms of phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar. Through empirical investigations on their English language acquisition in conjunction with the idea of language transfer, the particular difficulties and advantages that Chinese and Spanish students encounter when learning English are investigated. The study found that Chinese and Spanish-speaking students showed a variety of positive and negative transfer patterns in their English language learning.. Spanish students exhibit substantial vocabulary and grammatical structure migration, whereas Chinese students mostly exhibit language transfer in pronunciation and grammatical structure.