Positive and Negative Transfer of English in German Vocabulary Learning

ABSTRACT

Since both English and German belong to the Germanic family of languages, they have numerous similarities in terms of vocabulary and rules of word formation. This undergraduate thesis utilizes contrastive analysis and error analysis, and combines theory with practice to study the positive and negative transfer of English in German vocabulary learning. The contrastive analysis compares the similarities and dissimilarities between these two languages from aspects including cognates, compounds, derivatives, conversion, and loanwords. Typical examples of the corresponding English and German vocabularies are categorized, summarized, and exemplified in the theory part. The conclusion in theory is that the similarities beget positive transfer, which means that the previous knowledge of English vocabulary will facilitate the learning of certain German words, while the differences cause negative transfer, which hinders the learning. Besides, an error analysis is conducted with the help of 41 students from 3 different grades in School of Foreign Languages, SJTU to test whether the theory applies in reality. The students answered a questionnaire, whose questions were deliberately chosen from the examples in the contrastive analysis that are prone to be answered either wrongly due to the differences between the two languages or correctly due to the similarities. The data were then collected, calculated, and analyzed. The result in general turns out to substantiate the theory, which is that the positive transfer is more likely to emerge when the English words and German equivalents are similar, while the negative transfer is prone to appear when the English words and German equivalents are different. The longer the learners have learned German, the less likely the negative transfer is to happen. As a result, the German language learners who already have some knowledge about English vocabulary should utilize their previous knowledge to diminish the sense of unfamiliarity when learning a new language; meanwhile, they should also pay attention to and memorize repeatedly the dissimilarities between these two distinct languages to avoid the negative transfer.

Keywords：English, German, vocabulary learning, positive and negative transfer