CROSS LINGUISTIC

INFLUENCE AND
LEARNER
LANGUAGE
CHAPTER 9

Erika Santos
Cathlene Joy Sibucao
Mira Mae Sulayao
 THE CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS
HYPOTHESIS
• Deeply rooted in the behavioristic and structuralist approaches.

• Clifford Prator (1967) captured the essence of the grammatical

hierarchy (Stockwell, Bowen, and Martin, 1965) in six categories of
difficulty -it was applicable to both grammatical and phonological
features of language.
 SIX CATEGORIES OF HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY (A
NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER LEARNING SPANISH AS L2)

Level 0 - Transfer
No difference or contrast is present between the two languages. The learner can simply
transfer a sound, structure, or lexical item from the native language to the target language.

Examples: English and Spanish cardinal vowels, word order, and certain words (mortal,
inteligente, arte, americanos).
If these words were being heard by a native English speaker, they will be easily understood.
 SIX CATEGORIES OF HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY (A
NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER LEARNING SPANISH AS L2)

Level 1-Coalescence two items in the native language become

coalesced into essentially one item in the target language.

Example: When an English speaker learning French must

overlook the distinction between teach and learn and use just the
one-word apprendre in French
 SIX CATEGORIES OF HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY (A
NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER LEARNING SPANISH AS L2)

Level 2 -Underdifferentiation - an item in the native language is

absent in the target language.

Example: English learners of Spanish must "forget" such items as

English do as a tense carrier, possessive forms of wh- words (whose),
or the use of some with mass nouns.
 SIX CATEGORIES OF HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY (A
NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER LEARNING SPANISH AS L2)

Level 3-Reinterpretation - an item that exists in the native language is

given a new shape or distribution.

Example: New phonemes require new distribution of speech

articulators or An English speaker learning French must learn a new
distribution for nasalized vowels.
 SIX CATEGORIES OF HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY (A
NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER LEARNING SPANISH AS L2)

Level 4- Overdifferentiation - a new item entirely, bearing

any similarity to the native language item, must be learned.

Example: English speakers must learn the use of

determiners in Spanish-man is mortal/El hombre es mortal.
 SIX CATEGORIES OF HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY (A
NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER LEARNING SPANISH AS L2)

Level 5- Split - one item in the native language becomes two or more in the
target language requiring the learner to make a new distinction.
FROM THE CAH TO CLI (CROSS-LINGUISTIC
INFLUENCE)
• Predictions of difficulty by means of contrastive procedures had many
shortcomings. The process could not account for all linguistic problems or
situations not even with the 6 categories. Lastly, the predictions of
difficulty level could not be verified with reliability.
• The attempt to predict difficulty by means of contrastive analysis was
called the strong version of the CAH (Wardaugh, 1970) -a version that he
believed unrealistic and impractible.
CAH TO CLI
• Wardaugh also recognized the weak version of the CAH-one in which
the linguistic difficulties can be more profitably explained a posteriori by
teachers and linguists. When language and errors appear, teachers can
utilize their knowledge of the target language and native language to
understand the sources of error.

• The so-called weak version of the CAH is what remains today under the
label cross-linguistic influence (CLI) -suggesting that we all recognize
the significant role that prior experience plays in any learning act, and
the influence of the native language as prior experience must not be
overlooked.
MARKEDNESS AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

• Eckman (1977,1981) proposed a useful method

for determining directionality of difficulty
markedness theory. Markedness Differential
Hypothesis/ Markedness Theory.
 MARKEDNESS
• Celse-Murcia and Hawkins (1985:66) sum up
markedness theory:
It distinguishes members of a pair of related forms or
structures by assuming that the marked member of a pair
contains at least one more feature than the unmarked
one.
LEARNER LANGUAGE
• CAH stressed the interfering effects of L1 on L2 learning and claimed, in its
strong form, that L2 learning is primarily a process of acquiring whatever
items are different from the Ll.
· This narrow view of interference ignored the intralingual effects of
learning. Learners are consciously testing hypotheses about the target language
from many possible sources of knowledge.
• knowledge of the native language
• limited knowledge of the target language itself
• knowledge of communicative functions of language
• knowledge about language in general
• knowledge about life, human beings, and the universe.
LEARNER LANGUAGE
• Learners act upon the environment and construct
what to them is a legitimate system of language in
its own right.

• It follows that the study of the speech and writing of

learners is largely the study of the errors of learners.
ERROR ANALYSIS

• They form an important aspect of learning virtually any skill or

acquiring information.

• Language learning is like any other human learning.

• L2 learning is a process that is clearly not unlike L1 learning in

its trial-and-error nature.
ERROR ANALYSIS
• Corder (1967) noted: “a learner's errors are significant in that they
provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired,
what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of
the language.”
MISTAKES AND ERRORS
 MISTAKES ERRORS

A performance error Noticeable deviation and a particular

lacking in an area in grammar

 A slip of the tongue, a particular Committed repetitively

lapse

Mistakes can be self-corrected. Errors cannot be self-corrected by

the speaker of the L2.
 2013 (Sawalmeh)
2008 (Ellis)
Analysis of the errors committed by L2
learners comparing the learners’ acquired
norms with the target language norms and
explaining the identified errors.

a tool for
investigating how
learners acquire an

Error Analysis L2.

provided the researcher with evidence of how

language was learnt, and also that they served
as devices by which the learner discover the
rules of the target language (TL).

2008 (Corder in Ellis)

  Correcting errors that the correct utterances in
the L2 go unnoticed.
Errors  Overemphasis on production data.
in
Error Analysis  EA fails to account for the strategy of
avoidance.
 EA can keep us too closely focused on specific
languages rather than viewing universal aspects
of language.
(“Unlike English and romantic languages, verbs, nouns, or
adjectives do not have to agree with each other in tense in
Chinese. Additionally, there does not exist plural and singular
forms of words. Instead a number is added to the sentence to
tweak the meaning.” –Exploring China)
 Corder’s Model for Procedure in Identifying Errors
in Second Language Learner Production Data (1971)
Sources of Errors

Interlingual Transfer
Richard (1974) reiterated that interlingual transfer occurs when a learner
made a mistake in the target language because of his mother tongue.
According to Al-Kresheh (2010), interlingual errors are committed by
literal translation.
Intralingual Transfer

An error that takes place due to a particular misuse of a particular

rule of the target language.
The early stages of language learning are characterized by
predominance of interference (interlingual), but as the learner
progresses, more and more intralingual transfer is manifested.
Context of Learning

In a classroom context, the teacher or the textbook can make faulty hypotheses
about the language.
 Students often make errors because of a misleading explanation from a teacher,
faulty presentation of a word in a textbook, or even because of a pattern that’s
rotely memorized but improperly contextualized.
The Sociolinguistic context of natural, untutored language acquisition can also
give rise to certain dialect acquisition that may be cause of error itself.
STAGES OF LEARNER
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
According to Corder (1973), there are four stages based on
observations of what a learner does in terms of error alone
 RANDOM ERRORS
 EMERGENT
 SYSTEMATIC
 POSTSYSTEMATIC STAGE
 VARIATION IN
LEARNER LANGUAGE
 Tarone (1988) suggested four
categories of variation.
 Linguistic Context
 Psychological Processing factors
 Social Context
 Language Function
FOSSILIZATION AND
STABILIZATION
ERRORS IN THE CLASSROOM: A
BRIEF HISTORY
 Research
Findings and

Teaching
Implications
 FORM FOCUSED INSRUCTION
Implied in the definition of range of approaches to form
a continuum are explicit, discrete point metalinguistic
explanations and discussion of rules and exceptions.
On the other end of the continuum are (1) implicit,
incidental references to form; (2) noticing (Ellis, 1977;
Schimdt 1990); (3) grammar consciousness raising.
 CATEGORIES OF
ERROR TREATMENT
 TYPES OF FEEDBACK
1. RECAST- An implicit type of corrective feedback
that formulates or expands an ill-formed or
incomplete utterance in an obtrusive way.
(L) I lost my road
(T) Oh, yeah, I see, you lost your way. And then
what happened?
2. CLARIFICATION REQUEST- An elicitation of
reformulation of repetition from an student.
(L) I want practice today, today.
(grammatical error)
(T) I’m sorry? (clarification request)
3. METALINGUISTIC FEEDBACK- provides comments,
information, or questions related to the well-
formedness of the students utterances (Lyster,
2004).
(L) I am here since January.
(T) Well, okay, but remember we talked
about the present perfect tense.
4. ELICITATION - A corrective technique that
prompts the learner to self- correct. Elicitation and
other prompts are more overt in their request for a
response.
(L) [to another students ] What means this
word?
(T) Uh, Luis, how do we say that in English?
What does…?
(L) What does this word mean?
5. EXPLICIT CORRECTION- A clear indication to the student
that the form is incorrect and provision of a correct form.
(L) When I have 12 years old…
(T) No, not have. You mean, “when I was 12 years
old…“
6. REPETITION- The teacher repeats the
ill- formed part of the students utterance,
usually with change in intonation.
(L) When I have 12 years old…
(T) When I was 12 years old…
RESPONSES TO
FEEDBACK
 UPTAKE
 REPAIR
 REPETITION
Cross-linguistic Influence: Its
Impact on L2 English
Collocation Production

S U PA K O R N P H O O C H A R O E N S I L ( 2 0 1 3 )
Research Findings:

This research study investigated the influence of learners’ mother

tongue on their acquisition of English collocations.
The subjects of the study were 90 freshman Thai EFL students at
Thammasat University, Thailand. Two groups of Thai EFL learners
differing in English proficiency level were used in this study.
The participants’ first language is Thai, and they had learned English
as a foreign language (EFL) for at least 12 years.
Research Findings:

The following instances illustrate how an omission of

preposition causes a deviation in L2 English.
(1)*I listen music all the day without feeling bored in my room.
(2) *He always takes care me when I need help.
(3) *I must stay dormitory at Thammasat Rangsit Campus.
 Conclusion

Native language transfer is evidently a very common strategy Thai students adopt when they produce collocations in
L2 English. The learners, on the whole, apparently depend on L1 equivalents when they are unable to find the
appropriate lexical items, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, or the grammatical items, e.g. preposition, in the target language.
Their great reliance on L1 often causes collocational errors in L2.
It is also worth noting that not only low-proficiency learners but also those with high proficiency levels rely on
transfer from L1 collocational knowledge.
As clearly shown in this article, the learners’ native language plays a key role in their L2 collocational acquisition. In
other words, most of the students’ collocational errors are attributed to L1 transfer.
(The findings of the present study are in consistent with those of a large number of previous studies (e.g. Bahns, 1993;
Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Fan, 2009; Huang, 2001; Koya, 2003; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005; Ying, 2009). Moreover, the
research findings of this project also gives support to studies on Thai EFL learners which indicated strong evidence of
L1 interference (e.g. Boonyasaquan, 2006; Mongkolchai, 2008; Yumanee, 2012).