Language transfer is a linguistic phenomenon frequently found on learners who know more than one language. It has traditionally been regarded as the unidirectional influence of native language knowledge on the acquisition and use of a second language. While language transfer is mainly considered to be L1 influence on L2, more and more empirical studies have shown that learners’ L1 can also be influenced by acquiring an additional language. Language transfer in second language learning is no longer considered to be unidirectional, but bidirectional, and it occurs in various linguistic areas, such as phonology, semantics, syntax and discourse. However, most bidirectional transfer studies to date have mainly focused on immigrant and second language learners, and studies on foreign language learners were comparatively rare. In the present study, we attempted to examine bidirectional transfer in Chinese EFL learners’ use of referential strategies. The wordless picture book “Frog, where are you?” by Mayer (1969) was used to elicit English and Chinese narratives from the participants. Four groups of participants were recruited: the English and Chinese controls, and intermediate and advanced Chinese EFL learners. The EFL learners’ English and Chinese narratives were compared with those of the English and Chinese controls, respectively. Four referring expressions were focused in the present study: (a) zero anaphora, (b) pronouns, (c) full noun phrases and (d) names. Each referential choice was further divided into those for the protagonist (i.e., the boy) and for the secondary characters (i.e., the dog and the frog). L1 influencing L2 was not found in the present study, implying that these Chinese EFL learners have picked up the referential strategy use in English. On the other hand, L2 influence on L1 was found in the advanced EFL learners’ use of pronouns for the protagonist. This finding supports Cook’s multicompetence theory, which claims that bilinguals’ first language system is different from that of their monolingual counterparts. Results of within-group comparisons indicated that the two groups of learners used significantly more zero anaphora in their Chinese narratives than in the English narratives, suggesting they somehow differentiated the referential systems of the two languages.

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