Systematicity of L1 Thai Learners' English Interlanguage of Dependent Prepositions

Abstract

The study investigates systematicity in English interlanguage of dependent prepositions among L1 The findings demonstrate that systematicity occurred in the learners' English usage of prepositions of all such types, possibly due to negative transfer from the learners' native language. Also, the L2 learners tended to exhibit such systematicity irrespective of their English proficiency level. It may be assumed that the cognitive aspect of L2 learners' working memory is involved in processing the usage of the four types of English dependent prepositions. The results of the study are expected to shed light on the problems of L2 English interlanguage of dependent prepositions among L1 Thai learners.

Thai Learners’ Acquisition of L2 Collocations: An Interlanguage Perspective

“…In interlanguage, it seems likely that L1 transfer is dominant in accounting for collocation errors (Boonyasaquan, 2006;Phoocharoensil, 2011;Sumonsriworakun & Pongpairoj, 2017). Although NL interference was not directly investigated in the current study, it can serve as an explanatory account of the research findings.…”

“…However, the verb listen cannot be immediately followed by the noun music in English. A seminal study by Sumonsriworakun and Pongpairoj (2017) also affirms that Thai speakers' difficulty with English verb-preposition use is attributable to negative transfer. In their study, Thai participants had difficulty producing incongruent collocations such as depend on, where depend with, a deviant collocation, is more acceptable in Thai.…”

“…The concept of interlanguage has been widely adopted to describe how learners develop their linguistic knowledge, ultimately allowing researchers to gain a fuller understanding of the learning process (see e.g., Fauziati, 2017;Phoocharoensil, 2011;Sridhanyarat, 2017;Sumonsriworakun & Pongpairoj, 2017). Thus, this study adopted the notion of interlanguage serving as the major theoretical framework to account for the way Thai EFL learners develop their knowledge of L2 collocations.…”

“…Positive transfer arises in certain contexts where the learner's NL and TL have similar forms, subsequently enhancing the TL learning process (Saville-Troike, 2006). For example, Sumonsriworakun and Pongpairoj (2017) assert that Thai learners were able to produce congruent collocations such as succeed in which can be directly translated word for word between Thai and English. In case the learner's NL rule is different from the TL counterpart, such a difference may lead to negative transfer, probably impinging on the correct use of the TL rule (Saville-Troike, 2006).…”

“…Nevertheless, the accurate use of collocations seems to be a great hindrance for both ESL (Fan, 2009;Wray, 2000;Yamashita & Jiang, 2010) and Thai EFL learners (Boonyasaquan, 2006;Mongkolchai, 2008;Phoocharoensil, 2011). Within the Thai EFL context, few studies (Phoocharoensil, 2011;Sumonsriworakun & Pongpairoj, 2017) have addressed how learners acquire collocations whilst considering interlanguage, as established by Selinker (1972). This line of research has mostly focused on identifying collocation errors rather than exploring whether a particular learner can fully acquire L2 collocations in the interlanguage.…”