Points for discussion
Chapter 4 “The role of the native language” (Gass & Selinker, 2008)
1) In this chapter we have been concerned with the role of the native language in the formation and use of interlanguage. We have chosen to discuss this factor early in the book and in great detail because it is a factor that has been debated for centuries. The earliest known reference is in the book of Judges, where in chapter 12 the famous story is told of “the men of Ephraim” who went out to battle and did not do so well. In order to detect who was a fleeing Ephraimite and who was not, the Gileadites set up a very practical language test for the Ephraimites, who tradition says could not pronounce the sound sh. The actual passage reads as follows:
Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.” The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth’,” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time. (Judges 12:4–6. The Holy Bible, New International Version, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1988)
Evaluate this story in light of the information on the effect of native language influence presented in this chapter. Can you think of other important cases where identification of a person by native language accent has played an important role?
Answer: In the case of native Spanish speakers that are learning English, it is found that they have a tendency to replace the voiced consonants /v/ and /z/ by the voiceless consonants /b/ and /s/ having as result the pronunciation of words such as violet /ˈvaɪəlɪt/ as /ˈbaɪəlɪt/ and rose /rəʊz/ as /rəʊs/. Since the voiceless dental fricative consonant /θ/ does not exist in Spanish pronunciation in Latin America, Latin American people will find the words thanks /θæŋks/, thought /θɔːt/, thin /θɪn/ or theme /θiːm/ very hard to pronounce.
Native Spanish speakers also have a tendency to add the vowel sound /e/ at the beginning of a word that has a cluster with the voiceless alveolar fricative phoneme /s/ in initial position (Shoebottom, n.d.). For instance, the words school, story and skateboard are pronounced as /eskuːl/, /ˈestɔːrɪ/ and /ˈeskeɪt bɔːd/ instead of /skuːl/, /ˈstɔːrɪ/ and /ˈskeɪt bɔːd/, respectively.
In the case of native French speakers learning English, they tend to pronounce the English alveolar approximant /r/ as the French voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/. Therefore, the words right, red, lorry and great are pronounced as /ʁaɪt/, /ʁed/, /ˈlɒʁɪ/and /ʁed/ instead of /raɪt/, /red/, /ˈlɒrɪ/ and /red/, respectively (Hudson, 2013).
Regarding native Portuguese speakers, since the ‘th’ sounds /θ/ and /ð/ do not occur in Portuguese, those speakers may commonly use /s/ or /z/ instead. They would pronounce the sentence ‘I think three of them are Northerners’ as /aɪ zɪŋk sriː əv ðəm ə ˈnɔːzənəz/ instead of /aɪ θɪŋk θriː əv ðəm ə ˈnɔːðənəz/ (Cheung, 2015).
2) As described in this chapter, beginning second language learners produce sentences such as He comed yesterday where regular rules are extended to irregular cases. What does this suggest about the formation of early interlanguage? Can you think of cases in your own language learning where you have tried to impose such regularity improperly? Relate your characterization to the strengths and weaknesses of the contrastive analysis hypothesis.
Answer: It suggests that many times the learner makes errors that go beyond other errors both in their surrounding speech and in their native language as it mentioned in this chapter; therefore, it is important to highlight that contrastive analysis theory does not always predict accurately what errors the leaner will make because learners do not always transfer the structures of their native language to the target language. In Spanish, the past form of the verb to come (venir), which is “vino” for third person, is also irregular as it is in English (“came”). As we can see, there is no way to predict accurately the errors that non-native speakers will make.
In my own experience, I spent some time learning the past form of the irregular English verbs ‘take’ and ‘buy’. In Spanish, the past form of the verbs ‘tomar’ and ‘comprar’ are regular ‘tomó’ and ‘compró’ but in English, those verbs have an irregular past form ‘took’ and ‘bought’. Therefore, that could be a strength of the contrastive analysis hypothesis as it is seen that native Spanish speakers who are starting to learn English could say ‘taked’ and ‘buyed’ instead of ‘took’ and ‘bought’ as they would transferring those structures form Spanish to English.
3) Consider the two types of interference discussed in this chapter: retroactive and proactive. In terms of the former, under what circumstances might it be possible to lose some of your native language fluency? What parts of the native language might you predict would be most affected?
Answer: It might be possible to lose some of the native language fluency in situations such as moving to another country when the L1 is not spoken or when interacting most of the time only in the L2 in spite of the fact of living in your native country. I might predict that the part of the native language that would be the most affected is the lexicon because, from my point of view, when you are using the L2 much more than your L1, there is a tendency to forget the L1 equivalent of some L2 vocabulary items such as idioms or phrasal verbs. Besides, when translating, some information is likely to lose their meaning. For example, if you translate “My cousin is one smart cookie when it comes to chemistry” to Spanish, it would make no sense to say “Mi primo es una galleta lista cuando se trata de química”. Consequently, the L2 speaker, whose native language is Spanish, might forget the L1 equivalent of the idiom “to be one smart cookie” (“ser un duro”) because of having getting used to saying the L2 idiom as he/she is interacting in their L2 most of the time.
4) Consider the process of looking at structures across languages. Do you agree that one can easily note similarities of structures and differences of structures? Do you agree that these cannot equal ease and difficulty of learning? In what circumstances might similarities/ differences be compatible with ease/difficulty of learning?
Answer: I think that both similarities and differences of structures are easy to notice as long as the languages being compared bear resemblance. For instance, I can easily notice the similarities and differences between Spanish and Portuguese as, to my mind, those languages bear resemblance. However, noting the similarities and differences between languages that bear no resemblance at all such as Chinese and Spanish would be more difficult. I think that similarities/differences might be compatible with ease/difficulty of learning when the L1 and the L2 bear a high level of resemblance such as in the case of Spanish and Portuguese.
5) Describe the two major positions of contrastive analysis: a priori and a posteriori. In what ways is this a useful dichotomy? Suppose we were to say that in reality we are not dealing with a dichotomy, but with a continuum, where each of the named positions reflects one of the extremes. Does this conceptualization alter your belief in the usefulness of these positions? Can one then say that the former is predictive, whereas the latter is explanatory?
Answer: The a priori view, which is also known as the strong view or the predictive view, compares each structure of the L1 and the L2 in order to predict the errors that L2 learners may make (Gass & Selinker, 2008). The a posteriori view, which is also known as the weak view or the explanatory view, takes learners’ real errors, instead of predicting them, as the basis for further study (Gass & Selinker, 2008). This dichotomy is useful because it makes a distinction between the view that predicts the errors based on the differences between the L1 and the L2 (the a priori view) and the view that analyses the learners’ real errors (the a posteriori view).
If we were not dealing with a continuum instead of a dichotomy, this conceptualization would not alter my belief in the usefulness of these positions and it could be said that the a priori view is predictive whereas the a posteriori view is explanatory because, as Gass & Selinker (2008, p. 97) say, the relevant contribution of the weak version (the a posteriori view) to learner data, such as error analysis, was “the emphasis it placed on learners themselves, the forms they produced, and the strategies they used to arrive at their IL forms.” Therefore, it might be said that the weak version attempts to explain the forms produced by the learners and the strategies used by them to produce those forms.
6) As noted in this chapter, there is a lack of bidirectionality in cases such as the French–English word order of pronouns. In light of this, evaluate the following French sentences produced by native speakers of English:
(i) Il veut moi de dire français à il. He wants me to say French to him. Correct form: Il veut que je lui parle français (“He wants that I to him speak French.”)
(ii) Un chalet où on va aller à. A cottage where one goes to go to. Correct form: Un chalet où on va aller.
From context we know that the intention of these sentences is:
(ia) He wants me to speak French to him. (iia) A cottage that we’re going to go to.
Weinreich (1953), in discussing similar examples, claimed that examples of interference such as these are plentiful. Do you want to characterize these as interference? Why or why not?
Answer: According to this chapter (page 94), there are two types of transfer: positive transfer and negative transfer, which is also known as interference. The example given on page 94 says that the utterance ‘Eats well the baby?’ produced by a native Spanish speaker is incorrect and it is therefore a negative transfer. Taking the information mentioned above into account, I would characterize those French sentences produced by native English speakers as interference because those sentences are incorrect utterances where a negative transfer is evident.
7) Compare the approaches to the analysis of second language data discussed in this chapter, contrastive analysis and error analysis, with regard to the following:
- a) There may be covert errors. A classic example from Corder (1981) is the German speaker who says “You must not take off your hat” when the intent is “You don’t have to take off your hat.” In what sense is this an error? In what sense is it not?
Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) à The distinction between “must” and “have to” in English (L2) does not exist in German (L1)
Error Analysis (EA) à Since the German speaker lacks L2 knowledge regarding the difference between the auxiliaries “have to” and “must”, he is not able to correct that error yet, which is likely to happen again as the speaker is not aware of the error he is making.
- c) It is not always possible to provide a single explanation for interlanguage data.
CAH –> It does not take the learner’s interlanguage into account. As Gass & Selinker (2008) state, “The major source of error in the production and/or reception of a second language is the native language.” The focus is on the native language (NL) and the target language (TL).
EA –> It does take the learner’s interlanguage into account as the comparison is made between the learner’s interlanguage (IL) and the target language (TL). The error could be interlingual (attributed to the NL) or intralingual (attributed to the TL) (Gass & Selinker, 2008).
8) A number of problems arise with the incorporation of the concept of “transfer” from psychology into SLA. Primary among them is the emphasis on controlled experimentation in a laboratory setting within the framework of the psychology of learning. To apply this to a second language situation is difficult because many other variables come into play in second language acquisition that are difficult to control. For example, controlled material presented in a laboratory setting differs from a second language learning situation in the complexity of what is being learned. What other differences can you think of between actual second language learning and experimental learning?
Answer: A difference between actual second language learning and experimental learning is that in a laboratory you can choose the people that has the background that you want them to have in terms of languages known, age, aptitude and attitude (Gass & Selinker, 2008) whereas in an informal setting, you cannot choose a specific group of people that fulfill the requirements you want them to fulfill in order to experiment.
9) In the discussion of errors, it was pointed out that errors are only errors from an external perspective (i.e., a teacher’s or a researcher’s). Is it possible that there are consistently incorrect forms (i.e., errors) that a learner recognizes as errors but that remain as errors because a learner does not know how to correct them? Do you think that these would be forms “ripe” for change? Or are they likely to fossilize?
Answer: Yes, it is possible that a learner recognizes consistently incorrect forms as errors and those incorrect forms would remain as errors because, as it is said, the learner does not know how to correct them. If the learner produced those incorrect forms only once and if they were able to correct them, those incorrect forms would be mistakes. However, since the incorrect forms are produced several times and the learner does not know how to correct them, those incorrect forms are errors. In my opinion, those errors will not fossilize as long as a teacher helps the learner to correct those errors.
10) Four compositions follow. First, do an error analysis of each. Describe the difficulties you encounter in doing this. Are there ambiguities? How could you resolve them? Do you know what the NLs are of these writers? What features determine your choice?
Note: I chose Composition 2 «Family and its power!»
In society there (lack of non-referential there) exists exist various groups and one of these is family. Family has an important meaning but sometimes (wrong word spelling) we misunderstand what really is! Surely, the (the article is lacking) standard family consists of a husband, and a wife and children but his its (wrong pronoun) sense is wider. Family are we us (object pronoun. No subject pronoun), family are friends that who (wrong relative pronoun) share emotions, family is my grandfather, family is my class; it exists everywhere in any place where people join together and form a group sharing everything. In this last month I have had a lot of opportunity ies (use of plural noun after the quantifier “a lot of”. No singular noun) to read and learn about it. For instance, I read the book Nightjohn, as well as seeing the movie, and saw the movie as well. I spent a lot of time in sharing thoughts with my classmates about this topic. The most cruel cruelest (wrong spelling of the superlative form of the adjective “cruel”), but most significant, example that I can use to explain family and its power is the reason why slave owners commonly broke up slave families. They White slaveholders (use of pronoun instead of adj + noun, which is better) had to maintain black people mentally weak to so that they could continue to liveing in their white status, and In order to reach such bad goal, (comma is lacking) they separated it’s the members of the slave families to prevent rebellions. They had fear were afraid to lose power and money.
In fact, they those white people had big cotton plantations and they owned black people; this , which gave them power in the (the article is lacking) society and power on the slaves. They had this privileged life, for they hadn’t did not have (wrong use of the auxiliary verb “have to”) to work but they had to scrutinize the slaves’ works (singular noun because the noun “work” is uncountable in this case) only. They were completely served and believed that their white status was superior of to (wrong preposition) the black one. All this these (wrong demonstrative pronoun as there is agreement between this + plural noun) characteristics make made (past form of the verb is better) them trust to be believe that they were powerful, and to have that they had the right to continue in such behavior. In the book there is a passage that I want to quote because it explains why white people had so fear were so afraid of rebellion. “’Cause to know things, for us to know things, is bad for them. We get to wanting and when we get to wanting it’s bad for them. They think we want what they got (39).” What they got was power, and they were so afraid to lose it that they (lack of pronoun) didn’t hesitate in whipping slaves until death.
Another reason was money. Having a plantation and owning slaves meant to be rich because every slave has money value and all together formed the muster’s wealthy. I want to narrate a passage in (wrong preposition) from the Nightjohn that impressed me. The scenario developed in a (lack of article) church among an argument between muster and slaves. He was furious and menaced to shot them with the gun, and, all of the sudden, Sarny stood up and cried out loud to shouted that didn’t have fear to be shouted, (no comma before the word ‘because’) because they were his wealth and he would never shot. Slaves worked in plantation that produced cotton; more over what is more, they were money and could be traded if there was good opportunity. Indeed, Sarny’s mother was sold because she was a good breeder and muster did a good trade.
In the reason why master broke up slaves family lay hidden the family’s power Family’s power was the main reason why slave families were broken up. Family is the place where the individual can find his their (the pronoun ‘they’ can be used for both genders) own identity and to (no preposition ‘to after a modal verb such as ‘can’) develop a sense of power. Identity is very important because everyone needs to know their (lack of possessive adjective) own root. This teaches us who we are and what are our values and our rights are. In family we are socialized and we learn how to behave and what to aspect from our environment to socialize, to behave and to respect the environment. Furthermore, everyday by sharing emotions, ideals, dream we grow and become stronger and capable to accept sufferance every day by sharing emotions, ideals and dreams.
I’m positive with family. I met my wife seventeen years ago and we immediately got (lack of the verb ‘to get’ in past) engaged and. After seven years, (lack of comma) we got married. Nine months ago Viola, my sweetie daughter, was born nine months ago and I feel to I have achieved what I had ever always dreamed from of in my life. Power and money are nothing without love and family.
Maybe this can seem a common sentence, but if you are in my condition, you know what I’m talking about. I can’t imagine a life without my family, I get lost without it and I need to thank GOD for such luckiness.
I want to finish this essay remembered by remembering Nightjohn movie when Delie said him, “You have a new family now and everywhere you go you’ll find a new one.” This is a big truth! In life everyone have has good and bad moments, but what is really important is to have someone to share with. Remember that family is everywhere! Family are friends, family are parents, family are strangers and family are my wife and my Viola.
Describe the difficulties you encounter in doing this. Are there ambiguities? How could you resolve them? Do you know what the NLs are of these writers? What features determine your choice?
Regarding difficulties, some pieces of information were a little bit awkward because of the order in which they were written as it happened in the case of the sentence “In the reason why master broke up slaves family lay hidden the family’s power.” Regarding ambiguities, the writer has some problems in the structure of say to somebody and tell and by + verb –ing as it happened in the sentence “I want to finish this essay remembered Nightjohn movie when Delie said him”. I resolved the ambiguities in the text by trying to imagine what the writer wanted to say and then write it like I thought it should be written. I guess that the learner’s native language is Spanish because of some patterns that are applied in Spanish such as “In society exists various groups and one of these is family.” (En la sociedad existen (…) )”. The English non-referential there before the verb “exist” does not exist in Spanish. Besides, the writer did not make the distinction between the subject pronoun “we” and the object pronoun “us” in the sentence “Family are we (…)”. In addition, the writer did not know about the use of the relative pronoun “who” when referring to people in English in the sentence “ (…) family are friends that share emotions (…)”. I could infer that those erros are product of interference coming from Spanish as the sentence “Familia somos nosotros” and “familia son amigos que comparten emociones” are correct in Spanish and the writer of that composition thought that saying “Family are we (…)” and “ (…) family are friends that share emotions (…)” were also correct in English but, actually, they were not.
References
Cheung, K. (2015, November 11). Portuguese Speakers’ English Pronunciation Errors. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from https://pronunciationstudio.com/portuguese-speakers-english-pronunciation-errors/
Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. New York: Routledge.
Hudson, B. J. (2013, December 6). French Speakers’ English Pronunciation Errors. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from https://pronunciationstudio.com/french-speakers-english-pronunciation-errors/
Shoebottom, P. (n.d.). The differences between English and Spanish. Retrieved July 24, 2016, from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm
Reflective journal "Theories of Second Language Acquisition" 