A Study of the Influence of Chinese language and Culture on Second Language Communicative Competence Acquisition

Second language acquisition is the process by which people develop proficiency of a second or foreign language. Native language may unavoidably play a function in this process. In this thesis, the author discusses the results of the study on the influence of language transfer on the communicative competence in second language acquisition process from the perspective of listening, speaking, reading and writing with the hope of providing theoretical and practical help for second language teaching and learning. This paper is about the achievement of “The research into the second language acquisition process from the perspective of Chinese transfer” subsidized by Education Department of Jilin Province. D.H. Hymes, an American sociolinguist, believes that the nature of a language is its social communicative function. Practically speaking, communicative competence refers to learners’ ability to use the target language to listen, speak, read, and write for the purpose of expressing their ideas. With the development and opening up of China, acquiring the second language communicative competence has become more and more learners’ goal of learning a language. In China most learners’ native language is Chinese, English is their foreign language. It’s unavoidable for them to be influenced by their native language and culture in the process of acquiring communicative competence of English. Odlin called it language transfer. To him language transfer is the cross-linguistic influence due to the similarity and difference between the target language and the acquired (or not fully acquired) language. Its influence may be either positive or negative which is reflected in the learners’ process of acquiring the communicative competence of using the target language to listen, speak, read, and write. 1. The influence of Chinese language and culture on the acquisition of second language listening competence The process of listening comprehension is the process of listening decoding. In decoding, language transfer takes place also. The positive transfer of Chinese in listening usually exists in the following aspects. 1) Transfer of language and culture In listening comprehension, the learners achieve information decoding with the help of the existing background knowledge, namely, the learners’ knowledge about native language and culture. The positive transfer may happen when the listener feels that there is similarity between the input information and the existing background knowledge of Chinese language and culture. 2) Transfer of pragmatic inference In listening, the listener can make sure the intention of the speaker according to the linguistic context of the listening materials. The linguistic context not only includes the context of exchange and the immediate physical environment, but also the knowledge elements of the listeners. Thus the process of decoding the listening information is the process of transfer from the known information (context knowledge) to listening comprehension prediction. 3) Transfer of cognitive pattern International Symposium on Social Science (ISSS 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 71 The cognitive pattern of the native language may give rise to the positive transfer in listening comprehension. The contents of listening comprehension materials are mostly about daily life. The mutual experience of different language users are unavoidably reflected in language and culture. In the process of decoding, the listener may speed up his listening comprehension by making use of the superposition of cognitive environment between Chinese and English. For example, though the listener didn’t hear clearly the word before in the sentence Please lock the door before leaving. , he can still guess its meaning according to the native language cognitive patter. Of course some factors like the deletion of liaison, the indiscrimination of voiceless and voiced sound, the high frequently use of simple sentences in Chinese, the non-correspondence and difference of phoneme combination between Chinese and English language lead to the negative transfer which makes listening more difficult. 2. The influence of Chinese language and culture on the acquisition of second language speaking competence The influence of Chinese language and culture on the acquisition of second language speaking competence may be multi-aspected. This paper just focuses on discourse and cultural pragmatics. 1. Transfer of discourse The transfer of discourse is mainly seen in request and apology. (1)Request Chinese language users usually express their requests directly. For instance, The English native speakers intend to use model verbs and interrogative sentences to express request for the purpose of being polite. For example, Would you please close the door. This mode of behavior may leave an impression of hypocrisy upon the Chinese people. (2)Apology The transfer of apology chiefly takes place in the frequency of use idiomatic expression of apology and in dealing with the relationship between apology and other speech act. The frequency of apology of Chinese native speakers is much less that of the English native speakers. In addition the difference of the relationship between apology and other speech act between Chinese and English may also lead to wrongly use of idiomatic expression. Take the sentence as an example. It is usually wrongly expressed as I’m sorry, is anybody sitting here? But the correct sentence should be Excuse me, is anybody sitting here? 2. Transfer of cultural pragmatics As far as Kasper (1992:207) is concerned pragmatic transfer is the influence of the learners’ native language pragmatic knowledge upon their comprehension, output and second language pragmatic knowledge learning. Pragmatic transfer can be classified into two types. They are pragmatic transfer and social pragmatic transfer. The former refers to the facts that the speakers use the equivalent words which belong to the second language in syntax and semantics to express implication and politeness. Let’s take the words used by learners who do not catch what is said by the others as an example: A;Excuse me, how can I get to Jiangnan bookstore? B: What? Repeat please! Obviously in these sentences, what is used in B’s words is Chinese communicative and pattern. Though it plays the function of asking the speaker to repeat what did he/she say, it also leaves upon the English native speakers the impression of being impolite. Social pragmatic transfer refers to the practice of the speaker copy the personal understanding of social distance, power, rights, obligation, requirements of different speech acts and the contextual elements that influence discourse participation relationship in native language to second language. It results from the second language learners’ use of native social pragmatic rules or norms which can not be accepted by the others. The social pragmatic transfer can be seen in the speech acts like addressing, greetings, topic selection, invitation, congratulations, showing modesty, offering help, and parting etc. Chinese people are well known for their hospitality. Regardless of the liking or disliking of the invited, the host will make an invitation repeatedly to the extend of imposing. It seems