negative transfer

Negative Transfer of English Articles in Compositions of Chinese EFL Learners*
In learning an L2, learners are inevitably subject to the influences of their NL, which we term as language transfer. Some influences are quite facilitative to their learning, while others are error causing. In analyzing my data of collected errors from the 60 compositions made by a group of 20 adult EFL learners, the misuse of the English articles is strikingly frequent. In correcting those compositions, I am greatly inspired to find out the deep cause accounting for such misuses and to give some theoretic explanations to it. And my efforts result in this paper, which is expected to a little bit helpful for the Chinese EFL learners.

1.classification and description
According to Corder, errors can be grouped into four categories, namely omission of some required element, addition of some unnecessary or incorrect element, selection of an incorrect element and misordering of the correct element...