The Influence of L2 Transfer on L3 English Written Production in a Bilingual German/Italian Population: A Study of Syntactic Errors

Abstract

This study attempts to examine and identify instances of negative "interlanguage transfer" (Sharwood Smith & Kellerman, 1986), which is a phenomenon belonging to the broader field of crosslinguistic influence, in written L3 English production in a bilingual Italian/German population. Transfer from learners' L2 has attracted increasing attention over recent years (De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Jessner, 2006) and research has suggested various potential triggers for facilitative and negative L2 transfer, as well as producing mixed results regarding the individual aspects of language that may be susceptible to transfer from a learner's L2. Quantitative data were collected from 46 subjects in the form of questionnaires enquiring about language backgrounds and attitudes, and written summaries. The Statistical Package for Social Science was used to analyse specific instances of written syntactic errors resulting from both L1 and L2 transfer and these were then examined in the light of the questionnaire responses in order to identify possible determining factors behind any L2 transfer for both linguistic groups. Results provided evidence of negative syntactic L2 transfer from German and Italian in English L3, yet the possible determining factors were sometimes unexpected and not necessarily identical for both groups. This study suggests that L2 transfer in multilingual settings is a very real possibility which may be of future interest in terms of multilingual language processing and have consequences for the L3 classroom.

The Interferences of Indonesian Grammatical Aspects into English: An Evaluation on Preservice English Teachers’ EFL Learning

“…Each of the researchers has provided evidence in relation to language contact in different context and methodology. The finding we are now reporting provide empirical evidences to support researchers who investigated the interference to English, from German and Italian (Forsyth, 2014), Chinese (Guo, Liu, & Chen, 2014;and Wang, 2015), Russian (Galkina and Radyuk, 2019), Arabic (Thyab, 2016 andSabbah, 2015), and Turkish (Erarslan and Hol, 2014).…”

“…Without having knowledge in such regard, learners will not be able to do so. Our initial assumption was that there had been a decent chance that such ungrammatical sentences were caused by the interference of Indonesian into English (see: Galkina and Radyuk, 2019;Erdocia and Laka, 2018;Dweik & Othman, 2017;Amin, 2017;Thyab, 2016;SattiHamad and Yassin, 2015;Sabbah, 2015;Wang 2015;Forsyth, 2014;Erarslan and Hol, 2014;Guo, Liu, & Chen, 2014;Gao, 2013). The preservice teachers could have found the difficulties in second language learning which were caused by the first language or previous language interference.…”

Hizkuntzen arteko elkarreragina: euskara, gaztelania eta ingelesezko ekoizpen idatziak

“…Era horretan, hiztun eleaniztuna hizkuntza jakin bateko jatorrizko hiztunarekin alderatu ezin den subjektua dela azalduko da. Ikuspegi hori hiru zutabe nagusitan oinarritzen da (Cenoz eta Gorter, 2011, 2014: hiztun eleaniztuna, errepertorio linguistikoa eta testuinguru soziala.…”

“…Horrekin guztiarekin, hizkuntza bat baino gehiagoren jabekuntza-prozesua H2n jabekuntza baino prozesu konplexuagoa dela erran daiteke, baita bere-bereak dituen adierazle, elkarreragin eta tasunak dituela ere. Focus on Multilingualism (Cenoz eta Gorter, 2011, 2014 ikuspegiak hiztun eleaniztunaren errepertorio linguistikoa osatzen duten hizkuntza guztiak, beren elkarreragin prozesu konplexuarekin batera, ikuspegi holistiko eta oso baten bidez aztertzea du helburu, baita hizkuntza bakoitzak bertzearen jabekuntza eta garapenean nola eragiten duen aztertzea ere.…”

“…Hiztun eleaniztuna hizkuntza ezberdinei dagozkien eta bere hizkuntza errepertorioa osatzen duten hainbat elementu linguistikoren jabe da, horrela, hiztunaren jardun linguistikoak bere-bereak dituen adierazle, elkarreragin eta tasunak dituela (Cenoz eta Gorter, 2011, 2014. Elementu linguistiko horiek etengabeko elkarreragin konplexuan egonik, hizkuntza-elkarreraginak gerta daitezke hiztunaren ekoizpenetan, hizkuntzaren dimentsio ezberdinetan, gainera.…”