Case Study on Positive Effects of Forward Transfer on Chinese College Students' English Writing, based on the Common Underlying Proficiency Hypothesis

Abstract

When many scholars in China already examined the impact of native language transfer on second language acquisition, they typically focused more on the disadvantages brought by reverse transfer, and then demonstrated how to facilitate second language acquisition by mitigating such effects. In contrast, this paper, based on the Common Underlying Proficiency Hypothesis, delves into the influence of college students' native language writing proficiency on their writing abilities in English, emphasizing the positive influence of conceptual foundation on cognitive academic linguistic proficiency. Jim Cummins came up with the Common Underlying Proficiency Hypothesis which contains two major ideas. The first differentiates between Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills and Cognitive Academic Linguistic Proficiency. The second is called Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis, which highlights the potential mutual reinforcement between mother tongue and second language. Based on the above theory, this work analyses in detail five sets of samples collected, that is, five Chinese and English essays by Chinese university students, to find examples of the positive influence that mother tongue can have on second language learning, i.e., the occurrence of forward transfer. Then, through these concrete examples, this work analyses a way to actively make forward transfer happen and they both deal with the differences and similarities between Chinese and English, since they are the trigger of mother tongue transfer. The feasibility of this approach is supported by analysis of the five couple of samples.