The Influence of the L1 (Spanish) on the L2 (English) Language Learning in a Rural School

Abstract

In order to analyze how the L1 (Spanish) affects the L2 (English) language learning in ninth graders of "Aurelia Becerra de Quiñonez" rural school in Rioverde, Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador, a qualitative-quantitative investigation of a descriptive type was carried out using the analytic-synthetic and hermeneutic methods with the techniques of interview, observation and a test, which were applied to a sample of eight students, three Spanish teachers, and three English teachers from the referred school. The results revealed that all of the students had serious structural, lexical and pronunciation problems in English. In relation to the writing ability, they presented insufficiencies because most of them were not able to write the paragraph requested, they even failed in Spanish, which revealed their lack of knowledge in both languages. In addition, some of the words that they wrote in Spanish were misspelled. One of the main factors for those problems was the lack of vocabulary, because they confused words that were similar in both languages, another problem was the structural borrowing from one language to another, showing lack of knowledge of the different classes of words, which was also present in Spanish. The subject-verb relationship was another problem, as they were not able to recognize when a subject was singular or plural and the correct use of positive and negative verbs. The investigation really showed the influence of the L1 (Spanish) on the L2 (English) language learning mainly because of linguistic interference that made students make frequent mistakes.