Effects of the Second Language on the First: A Study of ESL Students in China

Abstract—Language transfer may occur in both directions: either from the first language to the second or from the second to the first. The study of language transfer is incomplete if either direction is ignored. Extensive and all-encompassing studies have been witnessed on the study of the effect of the first language on the second while it leaves us much room of investigation related to the study of the effect of the second language on the first. To fill this gap, by virtue of the theory of multi-competence, this study explored the ESL students' transfer of the second language structure to their first language through investigating the effect of English causal clause on the Chinese causal clause. The research found that influenced by the second language knowledge, the middle-level (L2) ESL learners were apt to put the adverbial clause behind the main clause in Chinese, demonstrating that language transfer was bidirectional and there existed backward transfer from the second to the first language. It was also discovered that the transfer was associated with the ESL students' second language proficiency level. Index Terms—multi-competence, English causal clause, Chinese causal clause, backward transfer I