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Language transfer or crosslinguistic influence (CLI), referring to the influence of an L1 on the learning of an L2, is a significant aspect of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Much work in this area is data-driven, and consequently, large L2 corpora have been constructed for use in CLI analyses. The field of Natural Language Processing, and in particular the specific task of Grammatical Error Correction (GEC), also has corpora that can be of use in these kinds of analyses. In this paper, we take the FCE corpus, a popular dataset of English as a Second Language (ESL) learner texts used for Grammatical Error Correction model training, and use it to analyse the relationship between the distributions of errors and the first languages of the ESL learners. We carry out a detailed analysis of three error types, and demonstrate that the errors made by ESL learners have a statistically significant relationship with linguistic characteristics of their first languages, suggesting the existence of both positive and negative transfer. The analysis aligns with results from the SLA literature, and validates the use of GEC corpora for use in CLI analysis.

Abstract Speaking constitutes one of the main goals of learning a second language (L2). Despite the increasing attention on the role of planning and language transfer in L2 learning, the combined effect of using different languages and pre-task planning on language production remains unclear. This study investigated whether the use of different languages in planning affects speaking performance and whether the effect differs by language proficiency. A total of 84 students in Chinese universities learning English as a foreign language participated in several speaking tasks after planning using their first language (L1) Chinese or L2 English. Findings showed that using L1 in planning results in significantly higher syntactic complexity, accuracy, and fluency in speaking performance than using L2 in planning, while the difference in lexical diversity were not statistically significant. Further analysis shows that for speech accuracy, the facilitative effect of L1 was stronger among low-proficient than high-proficient learners. Findings from this study support the use of L2 learners’ entire linguistic repertoire in speaking activities and provides implications on speech production theories as well as translanguaging pedagogies.

This paper examines the influence of Hindi/Urdu on Czech in advanced Hindi/Urdu L1 speakers of Czech as a second language. At present, dozens of Hindi/Urdu L1-speakers enroll in Czech language courses in India every year, and thousands of Hindi/Urdu L1-speakers live in the Czech Republic and have acquired Czech at various levels of proficiency. The objective of this paper is to provide first empirically based insights for teachers of Czech as a foreign/second language to Hindi/Urdu L1-speakers in India and in the Czech Republic. This study analyzes language production of 10 Hindi/ Urdu L1 speakers who have lived long-term in the Czech Republic. The analysis is based on recordings of informal conversations. The obtained linguistic data was compared with standard grammar descriptions of Hindi/Urdu and Czech in order to perform error analysis. With the help of contrastive analysis, errors caused by language transfer were identified and categorized according to the following language domains: phonetics and phonology, and morphosyntax.

The paper explores the effects of multilingual reading with students studying several foreign languages. The importance of this study is determined by the search for better practices leading to the incorporation of all language experience of the students when proceeding with a new language. Multilingual reading is defined as a skill aiming at simultaneous perception and comprehension of several written texts in different languages translated from one authentic text. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the potential of multilingual reading in the formation of metacognitive strategies of comparison, transfer and code switching in the process of studying French and English after Russian (the students‟ native tongue). The paper examines the causes of referring to reading as a universal language skill for the enrichment of the students‟ repertoire of multilingual activities; the goals of multilingual reading; existing approaches to reading in a foreign language which have led to the idea of multilingual reading. The conclusion is drawn that to implement multilingual reading a certain level of mastery of a language under study is expected. Multilingual reading is best for incorporating into the language teaching after second foreign language is introduced. This is the time when a student is considered to be a sophisticated reader in his / her native tongue and first foreign language. The main goal of multilingual reading is to form the students‟ metacognitive strategies of comparison, transfer and code switching. The most appropriate literary genre for starting multilingual reading is popular science. Relative simplicity of its structural organization allows the readers to comprehend its meaning avoiding difficulties of reading a work of fiction full of specific stylistic devices. Besides, popular science incorporates features of science, colloquial, journalistic and feature literature styles. All things considered, popular science becomes a universal tool of multilingual reading.

An analysis of the use of demonstratives in isiZulu (izabizwana zokukhomba) has shown that they go beyond the known deictic functions of demonstratives as used in other languages like English. In isiZulu, demonstratives tend to also denote specificity, a function normally performed by the definite article in English. This article, therefore, compares the functions of articles in English to those of demonstratives in isiZulu, with the aim to demonstrate the similarities in terms of use between the two languages. This added function of demonstratives, it is argued, may account for some of the errors in English second language learners’ use of articles, as evidenced by data from written exercises of learners whose first language is isiZulu. The findings suggest that second language learners of English tend to confuse articles because of the differences between the two languages, especially during their (learners’) interlanguage stage. Contribution: The article highlights a significant difference in the use of demonstratives between English and isiZulu due to the added function of specificity in isiZulu demonstrative (isabizwana sokukhomba) which is performed by the definite article in English. It also demonstrates how, without an article system, isiZulu can convey meaning like any language with an article system.

Learners of a second language struggle to select and produce appropriate different kinds of speech acts due to their complexity. The students of the Islamic boarding schools are assigned to acquire two non-native languages compulsory and concurrently, namely Arabic and English. This study adapts the descriptive analytical approach to investigate the pragmalinguistic of the speech acts of apologizing in the Arabic language as produced by non-native speakers with special focus to the IFIDs. The participants are 202 students recruited to fill in a DCT that consists of eight situations regarding the students’ violation of the rules of the school. The results show that the students tend to use certain semantic formulas of apologies due to their lack of linguistic proficiency. To conclude, these forms are template slots of the IFID in which the non-native apologizer can slot his/her apology within these templates, and hence, enrich their pragmatic competence ability.

Language transfer means the application of knowledge and understanding of a source language on a target language. Dissimilarities between the source language and the target language could result in a negative transfer. This essay aims to investigate the interference of Indonesian language on English second language writing regarding the order of noun phrase constituents, number marking, and verb tenses. The results presented in this essay were based on three elicitation tasks that were answered by 20 Indonesian students who studied English at a senior high school in Sumbawa Regency, Indonesia. Their ages were between 15 to 18 years old. The participants were given a test that consisted of three elicitation tasks focusing on sentence writing. The results showed that the negative transfer was still found in the students’ writing. However, the students may make mistakes since they had a lack of knowledge, or because they were unable to apply what they knew in their writing.

Idiomatic expressions play an important role in communication. They are widely used in both spoken and written discourse and are often one of the indicators of native-like proficiency. This paper discusses Chinese idioms chengyu in foreign language education, presents some observations regarding the scope of idioms predicted for the advanced level of Chinese, and introduces conceptual gaps between L1 and L2 as possible reasons for learners’ mistaken usages. This study argues that equipping students with skills and knowledge needed for reaching contextually appropriate use of idioms should be the main goal in the teaching/learning process and provides a set of practical suggestions as to which aspects of teaching idioms should be considered thoroughly.

This case study examines transfer effects in the acquisition of grammatical gender in L3/Ln. A learner of L3 Swedish, who had previously acquired two grammatical gender systems: one in his native Polish and the other in his non-native Norwegian, participated in three tasks: an online gender decision task, an offline gender decision task, and a speeded acceptability judgement task on determiner phrases (indefinite article + noun). Accuracy scores in all three tasks reveal robust transfer from Norwegian, but not from Polish. The transfer from Norwegian determines two processes inherent to grammatical gender, i.e. gender assignment and gender concord. However, response latencies in the online gender decision task point to competition between the Norwegian and Swedish gender systems at the level of gender retrieval, suggesting that target-like gender representations in Swedish are developing. Since transfer is traditionally claimed to be situated at the level of linguistic representation, it is assumed that the learner in this study temporarily developed a shared grammatical gender system for Norwegian and Swedish.

Second language acquisition requires many aspects including how the working memory supports the system of the human input system. Working memory has a crucial identity in storing information for a short time. It is a limited complex ability required for holding and manipulating information in a brief period for learning, thinking, giving attention, counting, memorizing, comprehending, and problem-solving. The aims of this research are to predict the role of working memory capacity on males and females and to identify the language transfer in between. The subject of this research consisted of 14 Indonesian students (7 male 7 female) at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). They are signed as postgraduate students of many different majors. Data were taken by using the reading span test of Ronnberg version. Data were analyzed by referring to Baddeley, Hitch, and Ellis. The finding of the research declares that difference gender has different working memory capacity pattern and language transfer. Gender is also a crucial factor in improving second language acquisition.

The subject of this research is devoted to the analysis of the Lak students’ language transfer in learning and using Persian. This subject expresses the subjects under study, variables, description of the situation; that is the the descriptive analysis of the data. In this research the variables are: language transfer, Laki language as the first language (L1), Persian language as the second language (L2), learning and the use of Persian language. In the present study the researcher is looking for causes and types of language transfer from L1 into L2 and vice versa.The researcher has observed the use of Persian by educated and common Lak speakers in different situations, and has decided to investigate this subject. The general purpose of the present study is to analyze interlanguage of Lak learners in acquiring and using Persian. The researcher intends to discover the elements that these learners transfer from their L1 into the L2 in the course of making their interlanguage. Interlanguage refers to the middle phases between L1 and L2. Learner language is oral or written language that is produced by leaners. The role of interlanguage is providing data to study L2 learning. The purpose of this research is to describe and explain language learners' competence and development, and its growth over time. Competence can be analyzed only through a kind of performance. Transfer is a term used in applied linguistics to refer to a process in foreign language learning whereby learners carry over what they already know about their first language to their performance in their new language. Crosslinguistic influence (CLI) or - the influence of a person’s knowledge of one language on that person’s knowledge or use of another language - is a phenomenon that has been of interest to laypeople and scholars alike since antiquity and most likely ever since language evolved. Transfer phenomena often came to signify sloppiness, narrow-mindedness, and lack of mental clarity and sound thinking (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p. 1-2). These views were challenged in the 1940s and 1950s (Lado,1957; Fries,1940; Weinreich, 1953). Discussion of language transfer moved to a scholarly footing, legitimizing it as an unavoidable feature of language learning and use and exploring it as a linguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic phenomenon. Since the 1950s, a number of additional books have dealt extensively with transfer, including, in chronological order, Vildomec (1963), Gass and Selinker (1983), Kellerman and Sharwood Smith (1986), Ringbom (1987), Dechert and Raupach (1989), Gass and Selinker (1992), Sjoholm (1995), Jarvis (1998), Hufeisen, and Jessner (2001, 2003), Alonso (2002), Cenoz, Hufeisen, and Jessner (2003), Cook (2003), Arabski (2006), and Ringbom (2007). Language transfer affects all linguistic subsystems including pragmatics and rhetoric, semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics, and orthography. Research on transfer, has had a discovery nature, and researchers have tended to follow a concatenative approach. According to Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008, p. 4-8), the new era of research characterizes four features about language transfer: Jarvis and Pavlenko (2002) are among those who introduced bidirectional transfer. In the oral and written production of a user of L2, crosslinguistic influence can function in both directions simoltaniously, from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L1. Bidirectionality refers to a two-way interaction between two linguistic systems of an L2 user. Bidirectional transfer enjoys a multicompetence framework that is a specific speaker-hearer with a unique linguistic system. Within this framework bidirectional crosslinguistic can be discussed and understood as a complex process which may affect not only additionally learned languages but also L1 competence. Conceptual transfercan be characterized as the hypothesis that certain instances of crosslinguistic influence in a person’s use of one language originate from the conceptual knowledge and patterns of thought that the person has acquired as a speaker of another language. Different researchers consider different causes for language transfer. Researchers like Corder (1983) are trying to explain transfer on the basis of communication. From this view point, transfer is either a performative phenomenon or a product of it. Ringbom (1992) also claimed that there is a relationship between transfer and learning. Transfer can occur as a result of differences and similarities between two languages. Major and Kim (1996) showed that Korean English learners lerned /z/ sound better than the similar sound /ʤ/.Some others believe that transfer works along with other causes. Sociolinguistics, markedness, prototypes, language distance, and factors of language development affect language transfer. In their revised position on transfer, Gass and Selinker (1993) state that it is not incompatible to think of L2 acquisition as being affected by two interrelated processes: first, the learner's build-up of a body of knowledge in which he or she tests hypotheses formed on the basis of the available L2 data and second, the learner's utilization of the knowledge of L1 and other languages known to him or her (Johnson & Johnson, 1999, p. 355). Learners, consciously or not, do not look for differences; they look for similarities wherever they can find them. In their search for ways of facilitating their learning task, they make use of intralingual similarities, which are perceived from what they have already learned of the TL. Ringbom, (2007, p. 10) has shown that Swedish speakers learn many aspects of English vaster than those of Finish learners of English. He attributes these differences to the fact that Swedish and English are typologically closer. Speakers of Roman and Germanic languages have better understanding of English vocabulary than speakers of non-Indo-European languages.

The article discusses a study examining the facilitating effect that analysability (i.e. the degree of transparency) and similarity between English and Estonian equivalents have on Estonian EFL learners’ idiom comprehension. A group of (pre)adolescent L1 Estonian learners of English performed an idiom comprehension test, which consisted of idioms categorised into five groups on the basis of the degree of transparency (i.e. the degree to which their idiomatic meaning is inferable from the literal meanings of their constituents or from their figurativeness) and the degree of similarity to their Estonian equivalents. The results revealed that both transparency (in the form of a constituent to be taken literally) and identical L1 idioms facilitate EFL idiom comprehension nearly to the same degree, while the effect of semi-transparency (that is, figurativeness) seems to be clearly lower. However, opaque idioms with partially similar L1 equivalents appear to be even somewhat more difficult than opaque idioms without any L1–L2 similarity. *** "Inglise keele kui võõrkeele idioomide mõistmist hõlbustavatest teguritest" Artikkel analüüsib uurimust, mis võrdles kahte inglise keele kui võõrkeele idioomidest arusaamist hõlbustavat tegurit: esiteks sõnasõnalistel elementidel ja figuratiivsusel põhineva analüüsitavuse mõju ja teiseks inglise idioomidega sarnaste ja identsete eesti keele kui emakeele idioomide mõju. Rühm Eesti põhikooli kuuenda klassi õpilasi sooritas idioomidest arusaamise testi, milles idioomid olid liigitatud viide erinevasse kategooriasse: 1) läbipaistmatud idioomid, millel on identne eestikeelne vaste; 2) läbipaistmatud idioomid, millel on osaliselt sarnane eestikeelne vaste; 3) läbipaistmatud idioomid, millel pole eestikeelset vastet (või on see täiesti erineva sõnastusega); 4) läbipaistvad idioomid (milles on vähemalt üks sõnasõnaliselt võetav element) ilma eestikeelse vasteta ning 5) poolläbipaistvad idioomid (ilma sõnasõnalise elemendita, aga kergesti arusaadava kujundlikkusega) ilma eestikeelse vasteta. Ilmnes, et läbipaistvus ja identne eestikeelne vaste hõlbustavad arusaamist peaaegu samal määral. Samas näib poolläbipaistvuse (figuratiivsuse) hõlbustav mõju olevat selgelt madalam ja idioomid, millel on ainult osaliselt sarnane vaste eesti keeles, osutusid kõige keerulisemateks. Vastupidi identse vaste olemasolule, mõjub osaliselt sarnane eestikeelne vaste pigem segadust tekitavalt kui toetavalt ingliskeelsest idioomist arusaamisele.

Students’ attitudes towards learning and the perception and beliefs behind them may have a profound influence on learning behaviour and learning outcomes. Teachers’ awareness of such needs and preferences will result in more realistic and useful teaching strategies which, in turn, will have a facilitative effect on the learning process. Thus, learners should be given opportunities to express their own language learning preferences, especially in reference to the definition of objectives in general and awareness of strategies for learning. Moved with the conviction that learners and their preferences are of crucial importance in the development of learner autonomy, 74 students in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, were asked about their perceptions and preferences on ESL classroom activities. The results showed that learners were not always able to clearly define their preferences. This may be due to the fact that learning a foreign language is a culturally and psychologically different process than learning any other subject via the individual’s first language. Thus, educators have the additional responsibility to help learners to find their learning strengths, and by cognitive training help students to expand their learning style preferences. Also, implications from this study clearly display that teacher training programmes should seriously examine and implement innovative ways of teaching English considering students’ identity, character, and limitations.

In using the foreign language they are learning, learners tend to use forms that deviate from the target language (TL) norms. The question that arises is whether these forms are the result of transfer or the result of some other causes; and if transfer does exist in learner language, whether it diminishes with the development of the learner TL achievement. This paper tries to find answers to these questions by (1) reviewing some related literature, and (2) looking at some data of learners' written production of Indonesian learners of English. The data were collected from the writings of the fifth semester students of the English Department (group A, representing low level of L2 achievement), and the final projects written by the English Department students (group B, representing high level of L2 achievement). In this paper, all forms that deviate from the TL norms were called errors, irrespective of whether they were, in fact, mistakes or real errors. The learners' errors were broadly classified into two classes: intralingual errors and interlingual errors, and it was the latter that became the focus of this study on the assumption that interlingual errors were caused by L1 transfer. The results of data analysis showed that intralingual errors were slightly higher in group A than interlingual ones; but in group B interlingual errors formed the majority of errors made by the learners (75%). It can be concluded that L1 transfer does exist in the L2 of the Indonesian learners of English. The results also showed that L1 transfer does not diminish with the development of the L2 achievement. It is strongly suggested, therefore, that Indonesian English teachers anticipate the errors caused by L1 transfer and find ways to solve the problems.

This study examines verb-adverb word order among heritage speakers of Spanish using an acceptability judgment task and a selection task in affirmative and negative sentences. Heritage speakers of Spanish show reaction patterns to stimuli fundamentally similar to those of the monolingual comparison group, but with several subtle differences. In affirmative sentences, they show a slightly higher preference for the options that are consistent with both the Spanish and the English grammars (in affirmative sentences, adverb-verb-object), and their judgments span a smaller range vis-à-vis native speakers. In negative sentences, heritage speakers of Spanish also generally coincide with monolingual speakers, but their acceptability of the negation-adverb-verb-object option (ungrammatical in monolingual Spanish) is higher than in the monolingual comparison group. We hypothesize that, first, heritage speakers of Spanish maximize bilingual compatibility: they prefer options that are compatible with the structural analysis of both languages. This hypothesis is consistent with previous findings showing that both languages are activated in parallel. Second, we explain the results in negation sentences as lexical indeterminacy: negation can have its lexically specified selectional properties as in English or as in monolingual Spanish, allowing for two alternative analyses. Hence, feature values in the lexicon may be transferred, whereas full functional categories are not. Transfer can be indirect in the form of smaller rating spans, a by-product of being a proficient bilingual: by maximizing compatibility with both languages, speakers extend the range of grammatical options in the language, but at the same time, their less certain judgments reflect this parallel activation.

Understanding language learning in later life can elucidate how linguistic experiences and age-specific cognitive skills can be leveraged for language acquisition, providing insight into how lifelong experiences configure our learning capacity. In this study, we examined to what extent acquisition and maintenance of a non-native language (English) is scaffolded by cognitive skills and previous linguistic experiences in older adults; and to what extent these cognitive/linguistic factors predict older learners’ success in acquiring novel functional language. We recruited 53 participants who were native speakers of Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, and Somali, had continued to learn English as adults, and were currently exposed to majority-English contexts. To identify contributors to participants’ English skills, we administered a language history and self-reported proficiency interview, brief cognitive testing, and verbal fluency tasks in L1 and English. We found that digit span and orientation measures were cognitive predictors of English proficiency, while similarity of known languages to English, L1 skills, and English language exposure were linguistic predictors of English skills. To examine participants’ ability to maintain language knowledge and to learn new functional English, we also conducted a preliminary longitudinal service-based study in a subset of 19 participants using our Specific-Purpose English Communication System for Seniors (SPECSS) curriculum. In this subset of SPECSS learners, we identified digit span and orientation, but not age, as cognitive predictors of short-term language maintenance. Further, better novel English learning as a result of our curriculum was observed in learners whose other known languages were less similar to English. Findings inform best practices in developing language curricula for older adults, and help generate new hypotheses on preparedness for language learning across the adult lifespan with a possible interaction between cognitive skills and transfer of knowledge from previous languages in multilingual older learners.

In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), the role of transfer has been theorized and studied to account for the influence of the native language on an interlanguage. However, stemming from behaviorist mentality, the concept of transfer has become widely associated with the direct transfer of habits and fails to take into consideration other cross-linguistic influences (CLI) that shape or are shaped by the interlanguage, such as avoidance, ‘reverse transfer’ from a learner’s second language (L2) to native language (L1), perception of linguistic distance, and interlanguage transfer. Thus, the reductionist analysis of direct L1 to L2 transfer is no longer sufficient to account for the parallel activation of languages in multilinguals.

Recently, the powers that be at the English language school where I work posted signs in every classroom, advising that only English is to be spoken there. The signs feature a menacing-looking Uncle Sam, wearing a patriotic top hat and a scowl. His outstretched index finger points accusingly at the viewer and his catch phrase is altered to read, “I want YOU to speak English at (name of school)” The background of these signs is an ominous black, and above the image of Uncle Sam is a warning: “Caution: English Only Zone.” Is imposing an institutional ban on the native language in the classroom the best way to foster L2 acquisition? This question is one that has been debated in the ESL/EFL world for some time, and there is a wealth of literature on the subject. Much of the research on this topic suggests that using the native language as a tool to foster target language acquisition is beneficial, rather than detrimental, for the students. These signs, therefore, seem misguided. Missing from the debate in the literature, however, is a clarification of exactly what it means to use the native language in the classroom. Do these signs try to prohibit students from chatting in their L1 in between tasks, forbid students from using the L1 as an L2 acquisition tool, or warn the teachers not to use the students’ L1(s) as a teaching aid?

Discourse connectives are often reported to be difficult for second language learners, yet the causes of these difficulties are still not fully understood. In this paper, we test the ability of German-speaking learners to process and understand a connective with a complex form-function mapping in their L2-French, namely “en effet,” a connective that does not have an exact translation equivalent in their L1-German. We assess learners' competence both in an on-line processing experiment and an off-line judgment task. We argue that one of the interesting specificities of “en effet” is that the two coherence relations that it conveys cannot equally be conveyed implicitly. This case study therefore provides some information about advanced learners' sensitivity to the necessity of explicitly marking a coherence relation by the use of a connective. Our results indicate that advanced learners do not perceive the difference between relations that need and need not be marked by a discourse connective and have not acquired the complex form-function mapping of “en effet.” We argue that these difficulties cannot be attributed to negative transfer effects, but reflect general limitations in proficiency.

Similar to second language students who embed features of their primary languages in the writing of their second languages, deaf and hard of hearing (d/hh) writers utilize features of American Sign Language (ASL) in their writing of English. The purpose of this study is to identify categories of language transfer, provide the prevalence of these transfer tendencies in the writings of 29 d/hh adolescents and describe whether language features are equally or differently responsive to instruction. Findings indicate six categories of language transfer in order of prevalence: unique glossing & substitution, adjectives, plurality & adverbs, topicalization, and conjunctions. ASL features, of both lexical and syntactical nature, appear to respond similarly to instruction.

Posited as a “holistic” approach to the study of multilingualism and multilingual competence in educational contexts, Focus on Multilingualism (Cenoz & Gorter, 2011) attempts to bring together the fields of (1) second language acquisition (SLA), and (2) bilingualism/ multilingualism studies – both in (a) theory and (b) research methodology. It has even been argued – from a language ecological perspective – that there is more validity to this new approach than its traditional counterparts, given its proximity to the way languages are used in a social context. Specifically, FOM differs from SLA and bilingualism in that it takes into consideration the individual roles as well as the interplay of (i) the multilingual speaker, (ii) the entire linguistic repertoire (i.e., the multiple languages spoken by the learner), and (iii) the context, such as seeing the linguistic landscape as an additional source of language input (see, for example, Cenoz & Gorter, 2008). While this emphasis on the interconnectedness and mutual support across the learner’s different subsystems during the course of development and social interaction may appear somewhat in spirit with the sociocultural and/or complex systems approaches to SLA, FOM apparently gets ahead in that it avoids comparing the competence of multilingual speakers against the benchmarks of the native speaker of the target language(s). As will be illustrated below, while FOM has the potential to supplement current approaches to SLA in certain aspects of theory and research, it unavoidably also has its limitations.

The rise of multilingualism has drawn the attention of language researchers and instructors to various phenomena that have been observed in multilingual speakers, who develop knowledge on how and when to use their languages depending on, for instance, the interlocutors involved in the conversation, the topic of the conversation, and the social context (Reyes, 2004). The present paper aims to focus on two representative multilingual phenomena, namely code-switching and translanguaging. Each phenomenon will be defined based on existing literature and their potential functions in multilingual classroom research will be highlighted and discussed.

Abstract The study explores first language (L1) influences on the mechanisms of spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL). We hypothesized that the transparency of L1 orthography influences (a) the amount of hesitation associated with spelling irregular English words, and (b) the size of units EFL spellers operate. Participants were adult speakers of three languages differing by the degree of transparency, Danish, Russian, and Italian (n = 60), and a group of English native speakers (n = 20). We analyzed keystroke logs from typed spellings of 30 English words. The amount of hesitation (number of corrections and number of long within-word pauses), was equal across all participants groups, thus disconfirming our first hypothesis. Inter-key intervals between onsets and rhymes were longer than within-rhyme intervals, but only in Danes and native English speakers, and not in Russians and Italians. We discuss how the characteristics of the L1 may explain the observed cross-linguistic differences. Résumé L'étude explore l'influence de la langue maternelle sur les mécanismes de l'écriture en anglais langue étrangère. Nous avons supposé que la transparence orthographique de la langue maternelle influencerait (a) le degré d'hésitation associé à l'écriture des mots anglais irréguliers et (b) les unités orthographiques que les apprenants de l’anglais langue étrangère utilisent en écrivant. Les participants (apprenants de l’anglais [n = 60] danois, russes et italiens, et un groupe anglophone [n = 20]) ont épelé 30 mots anglais irréguliers à l’ordinateur; les frappes de touche ont été enregistrées. Le degré d'hésitation (le nombre de corrections et le nombre de pauses longues) était uniforme dans tous les quatre groupes, ce qui infirme la première hypothèse. Les intervalles entre attaques et rimes étaient plus longs que les intervalles entre noyaux et codas, mais seulement chez les Danois et les Anglophones, et pas chez les Russes et les Italiens. Nous discutons comment les caractéristiques de la langue maternelle peuvent expliquer les résultats.

Este artigo avalia se a produção interlinguística de sujeitos brasileiros, aprendizes/falantes de inglês-L2, em contextos em que se espera o emprego da construção causativa-passiva do inglês (John had his hair cut), recebe influência de língua materna (transferência linguística). Relatam-se os resultados de um pequeno estudo conduzido com trinta e oito informantes brasileiros, de três níveis de proficiência na língua inglesa. O estudo aplicou a metodologia proposta em Jarvis (2000) para a análise do tema. Os resultados apontam para a complexidade do fenômeno da transferência linguística e para a importância de se submeterem os dados coletados a tratamento estatístico.This article evaluates whether an L1 influence (language transfer) can be found in the interlanguage production of Brazilian subjects, learners/speakers of English as an L2, in contexts where the production of English causative-have construction (John had his hair cut) is expected. Results from a small study conducted with thirty-eight Brazilian subjects, distributed along three proficiency levels, are reported. The study applied Jarvis' (2000) methodology for the study of language transfer. Results point to the complexity of the language transfer phenomenon and to the importance of undertaking a statistical analysis of the data.

The recognition that collocation is an important, yet challenging, variable in second language development has attracted extensive research into how to enhance collocation learning. This study examines the collocational knowledge of Libyan Arabic-speaking learners of English by focusing on the influence of two main factors, the learning environment and the native language (L1), since it has been claimed that these factors affect L2 collocation development. Unlike previous studies on collocations which have largely focused on testing classroom learners, this study compares the use of English collocations by both naturalistic learners and classroom learners to explore which learning environment enhances collocation development more. Thirty-six Libyan learners participated in this study (18 formal classroom learners and 18 informal naturalistic learners); they were asked to complete production and reception tests of English collocations. A questionnaire and a vocabulary recognition task (VRT) were additionally used to facilitate interpretation of the data, by eliciting information about learners’ degrees of exposure to informal, naturalistic English and their knowledge of the individual words in collocations. The results showed that collocations are a problematic aspect of language for all L2 learners in the study. However, a naturalistic setting was found to provide a better learning environment for collocation development than a classroom setting. Additionally, the native language of the learner was also found to have an effect on their L2 collocational knowledge. This influence had more of a positive effect on naturalistic learners’ knowledge, and a more negative effect on classroom learners’ knowledge. The findings also revealed a strong correlation between learners’ collocational knowledge and their amount of exposure to informal, naturalistic English.

This article concentrates on the impact that cross-linguistic influences have on second language acquisition. It investigates the importance of the learner's native language (L1) in written production of a second language (L2), particularly the use of L1 linguistic rules by Spanish speakers when they are writing in the target language (L2). This exploratory research focuses on the production errors made by students relative to specific subsystems such as semantic and syntactic areas. Errors are studied with respect to the differences between Spanish and English through a contrastive analysis between both languages in problematic linguistic areas. In this article only semantic errors will be considered as a first approximation to the study of transfer in written production. The results indicate that transfer is a reality and an important determinant in the process of second language acquisition. Teachers in an EFL context should be able to identify this phenomenon in order to prevent the errors which may arise from it.

Being a minority European language, Polish has not attracted the attention of second language research (SLA) very much. Most studies in the area focus on English and other major languages describing variables and process observed in learners’ interlanguage development. This article looks at the language performance of elementary learners of Polish as a foreign language with a view to diagnosing areas of difficulty at the initial stages of language instruction. It is a case study of five learners’ written production after a year of intensive language instruction in the controlled conditions of a classroom. The objective of the study presented here is: 1. to determine the types of error produced in a short translation task at different levels of language (morphosyntactic, lexical) 2. to observe manifestations of crosslinguistic influences between languages the subjects know (interlingual transfer) as well as those related to the language learnt itself (intralingual transfer).The small sample of texts produced does not allow for any generalized observations and conclusions, however, at the level of elementary competence in any foreign language, as other research shows, the amount of individual variation is not the most significant factor. Thus the incorrect forms produced may testify to some more universally error-prone areas of language. The value of this kind of analysis lies in this direct application to the teaching of Polish as a synthetic language. The study also demonstrates the fact that communicative teaching has a limited contribution to make in the case of this family of languages. It suggests that overt and explicit teaching of a synthetic language will give a sounder basis for further development of language competence in its communicative dimension

On Austro-Dutch and the origin of Afrikaans A widely accepted view of the origin of Afrikaans holds that the new language developed autochthonously, after 1652 when the language of the early Cape settlers was influenced by imported slaves speaking Malay and Portuguese, and by the pidgin talk of the Cape Khoikhoi. This “autochthonous hypothesis”, however, does not take cognizance of the fact that shortened (deflected) Dutch verb forms found in Afrikaans, for instance, are also found in loan words in the Ceylon-Portuguese creole, as well as in Indonesian, and Malay-influenced languages of Indonesia. Moreover, large numbers of Dutch East India Company sojourners, who had acquired an “adapted” form of Dutch during their stay in the East, spent a significant time at the Cape on their return voyage. The argument is put forward that they brought with them a number of language features clearly comparable with “distinctive features” in incipient (and developed) Afrikaans, such as the shortened verb and the use of the perfect instead of imperfect verb forms to indicate a simple past tense. The variety of Dutch spoken by them is called Austro-Dutch, which, it is argued, forms the basis of an “oceanic hypothesis” to add a new dimension to theories about the formation of Afrikaans.

This study examines the role of previously known language in L3 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) object expression acquisition. It investigates the claims of the main models of L3 transfer, the cumulative enhancement model (CEM) (Flynn et al. 2004), the L2 status factor (Bardel and Falk 2007) and the typological proximity model (TPM) (Rothman 2011) in both comprehension and production tasks. It also aims at measuring the extent of transfer effects in comprehension and production. Participants (N = 33) were divided into three groups, a mirror image group of L3 BP learners who already knew English and Spanish, and a native control group. They performed a self-paced reading task and a story telling task, which focused on object clitics in BP. Results indicate early convergence to the BP grammar by the L3 learners in what refers to object expression. They also suggest that, although no major effects of transfer were obtained, clitic placement errors in the production task and preference for inanimate and non-specific contexts for null objects can be traced to Spanish, independent of order of acquisition, providing evidence in favor of the TPM. Finally, comprehension seems to override the effects of language transfer earlier than production.

Introduction: This presentation addresses the post-intervention change in frequency and type of code switching (CS) in two of the weaker languages (Spanish and Norwegian) of a multilingual individual with mild aphasia who reported proficiency in 11 languages. CS is typical among multilingual speakers who share the same languages, although for multilingual people with aphasia, CS behavior may reflect word-finding difficulties (Ansaldo et al., 2010) or impairment of language control (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). Method: Our participant, a 64-year-old male who sustained a left CVA and subsequent aphasia 12 months prior to enrollment, was given two courses of intervention approximately six months apart. The first was a modified ORLA (oral reading for language in aphasia) treatment in his native Dutch (Flemish) of 30 hours over 6 weeks. The second “intervention” was a language-learning course in Russian of 40 hours over 4 weeks. The participant was tested three times on separate days for each baseline prior to and following each of the interventions in seven of his languages via Skype over a 5-6 day period. Results of two tasks are reported: an action-description task in which the participant described six individual action pictures with a sentence, and an answering-questions task that required a short response to six “wh” questions. Responses were analyzed for frequency and type of CS from pre to post testing. We differentiated “whole-word” CS (e.g., birthday/cumpleaños) from “within-word” CS (e.g., /livel/ blend of “level” and “nivel”) and compared the pattern of responses following each intervention for a change of over 15%. Results: Spanish: Post-Dutch intervention we noted an increased frequency of CS in both the action-description (25.4%) and answering-questions tasks (20.2%); this was accounted for largely by the relative change in whole-word CS type (action-description: 21.1% vs. 4.4% within and answering-questions: 37.3% vs. -17.1% within). Following Russian intervention, an increase in CS was evident, 50.8% for action description and 40.9% for answering questions, reflective of a within-word CS increase (action-description: 39.7%) and more evenly distributed for the latter task. For CS, the non-target language was primarily Italian. Norwegian: Following Dutch treatment, the proportion of code-switched responses remained the same for action description and answering questions. The type of CS changed with a decrease in whole-word CS (-19.1%) for the answering-questions task. Post-Russian intervention, no production differences were noted in CS frequency for action description, although within-word type increased (16.7%). On the answering-questions task, CS frequency decreased (-33%), particularly whole-word CS (-26%). Across baselines non-target whole- and within-word transfer included English, German, Danish, Swedish and Dutch. Discussion: We suggest the increase in CS in Spanish following treatment in Dutch and post-Russian language introduction likely reflects increased lexical inhibition. In contrast, in Norwegian, the proportion of code-switched responses decreased or remained the same and the proportion of within-word CS increased, suggestive of improved lexical access following both interventions. The contrasting effect (see Figure 1) may be due to relative proficiency (greater in Spanish than in Norwegian) or the differential lexical similarities between the target language and the language of intervention.

The processes that take place in the mind of a multilingual person during the second language acquisition are mostly shrouded in mystery. We can only observe traces of these processes manifesting themselves in the interpenetration of two or more linguistic systems. The current study aims to recognize how the knowledge of L1, in this case Spanish, influences on the acquisition and usage of the target language – Portuguese (L2), and how to take advantage of the interferences to make the L2 learners succeed. The possibility of linguistic influences grows with each acquired language. There are also important contributing factors such as a degree of similarity between the languages, a level of proficiency in each of them, and the manner and time of a language acquisition. During the Portuguese course at the Spanish Philology, we can observe such phenomena as: code switching or total displacement, hybrids, false friends, multi-word units calquing, and morphogrammatical transfer. Although one of the factors that affects the L2 acquisition is the level of proficiency, the students hardly take advantage of their mother tongue, selecting the language typologically closer to Portuguese, Spanish. The students use the previously acquired knowledge to create analogies that should be considered as an intermediate step in the acquisition of L2, not as something negative, but rather a means for providing a starting point for the analysis of error which, consequently, leads to improvement.

The study investigated the nature of the listener confusion that occurs when Black South African English (BSAE) speakers communicated a list of common English words to speakers of Standard South African (StdSAE) English. Specific difficulties with vowels, diphthongs and consonants are discussed in terms of their effect on intelligibility. It is suggested that all segmental features of BSAE relate to two distinct levels: a functional (meaning) level and an aesthetic level. This study focused on the functional level, and aimed to describe the segmental features of BSAE speech that affect meaning. Such a distinction has particular relevance for speech and language therapists who need to have a clear rationale for their work with BSAE-speaking clients. Treatment of speech problems due to first language transfer, is discussed in terms of this emerging client group within South Africa, and more generally.

Common errors are examined in subject expletive pronouns use with unaccusative predicates in the written production of Spanish high-intermediate adult students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in an institutional setting. What these errors have in common is that they do not respond to L1 surface transfer in the sense of not corresponding to a mere L2 relexification of L1 syntax. They rather involve a process of construction of the L2 grammar which results in structures different from both the L1 and the L2. It is suggested and argued that they originate in the interaction of Universal Grammar principles and both L1 and L2 influence in a restructuring process of the L1. As these errors seem to be developmental - since they are also made by L2 students from other L1s, some cognitive strategies are suggested in order to help in the production of standard surface structures.

Learning invariably proceeds by relating new facts to the already familiar and present in the conceptual structure. In the context of FL study the familiar is, of course, the student’s mother tongue. Drawing on the learner’s L1 (or another mastered tongue) and showing comparisons and contrasts between the languages mirrors, facilitates and accelerates the processes which occur independently in his/her mind. At the same time, when in a new situation, we look for familiar orientation points and similarities owing to our instinctive need for safety. This is also why the target language should literally be taught in the framework of the learner’s L1. Instruction in the Language Interface Model (LIM; Gozdawa-Gołębiowski 2003a,b, 2004a,b, 2005) proceeds from an explication of how relevant rules operate in the students’ L1 through an explanation of corresponding L2 rules and subsequent interface formation, modifying the L1 rule to accommodate L2 data, with practice first expecting the learner to apply the FL rules to L1 examples before moving to more traditional exercises, to finally end with competence expansion – integrating the two competences, leading to the development of multicompetence and allowing for the obliteration of the rules governing the structure of the utterance from the learner’s conscious mind.

In this paper we will discuss how economy principles interact with cues in the input in bilingual first language acquisition. We will look at the acquisition of verb placement in a child acquiring English and Norwegian simultaneously. Based on data from this child, it will be argued that when faced with ambiguous cues with respect to the verb movement parameter, children do not necessarily adopt the default, less marked setting. Rather, they may opt for a setting which yields an overall consistent grammar, even when this grammar contains operations that are more costly than those used in the target language. We will suggest that economy in acquisition may involve consistency in a grammar in correlation with economy in the more traditional sense within minimalism, where moving an element in general is considered more costly than not moving it (Chomsky 1995).