TITLE:
The Influence of L2 Transfer on L3 English Written Production in a Bilingual German/Italian Population: A Study of Syntactic Errors
AUTHORS:
Helen Forsyth
KEYWORDS:
Cross-Linguistic Influence, L3 Classroom, Syntactic Errors
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.4 No.3,
August
28,
2014
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.