Influence Of First Language Research Articles

Disentangling cross-language orthographic neighborhood from markedness effects in L2 visual word recognition.

Previous research has reported that lexical access in bilinguals is language non-selective. In the present study, we explored the extent to which cross-language orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) effects, an index of language non-selectivity, should be dissociated from markedness effects, a sub-lexical orthographic variable referring to the degree of language- shared (unmarked) versus specific (marked) orthography. Two proficiency groups of French/English bilinguals performed an English (L2) lexical decision task with three word and non-word conditions: (1) English words with large French N-size/unmarked orthography (price), (2) small French N-size/unmarked orthography (drive), and (3) small French N-size/marked orthography (write). Evidence was found for orthographic markedness effects, albeit with a different pattern for word and non-word processing: while marked words were facilitated (responded to faster and more accurately) compared to unmarked words, the opposite pattern emerged for non-words. The pattern of results was comparable in both proficiency groups. No evidence emerged for the influence of first language (L1) neighborhood on L2 word or non-word processing. Thus, the results emphasize the need to integrate orthographic markedness as a relevant psycholinguistic variable in bilingual models of visual word recognition such as BIA/+ and to take it into account when investigating cross- language effects and the issue of language non-selectivity during visual word recognition.

Bilingual adolescent vowel production in the Parisian suburbs

Aims and objectives:The study examines how bilingualism and adolescent identity interact to influence acoustic vowel patterns. This is examined in students at a secondary school in the socially and economically disadvantaged working-class Parisian suburbs.Design:The front, round vowels /y/, /ø/, and /œ/ were analyzed in the speech of ( N = 22) adolescents. Three student groups were juxtaposed: monolingual Franco-French ( N = 9) and two simultaneous bilingual groups, Arabic-French ( N = 6), and Bantu-French ( N = 7). Crucially, unlike French, these contact languages do not have phonemically round front vowels.Data and analysis:To elicit naturalistic speech, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with students speaking in dyads or small groups. Vowel roundedness, derived from acoustic measurements of the third formant and the difference between the third and second formants, was compared across speaker groups.Findings:Results show an effect of bilingual status for male speakers – monolingual speakers pattern differently from both bilingual groups. Still, bilingual Bantu-French and Arabic-French speakers show some distinct patterning. This suggests influences beyond first-language phonology on bilingual speakers’ production of French.Originality:This is one of the first studies to look beyond Arabic substrate influence in emerging Hexagonal urban youth vernaculars. It contributes naturalistic data from those most prone to language change, adolescents, for the study of French in contact. Finally, the study proposes a type of ‘laboratory in the field’: because none of the contact languages contrast vowels by roundedness, first-language influence is controlled for and the effect of social stigmatization upon speech can be isolated.Implications:The findings suggest that the social and ethnic divisions between dominant ethnic groups and minorities of immigrant descent may even be reflected in their phonetic patterning. Because these patterns are present in adolescents, who are the source of much language change, a connection between segregation and language change is drawn.

ACOUSTIC MEASUREMENT ON VOWEL PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE BY INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS

Indonesian is the most widely spoken language in Indonesia. More than 200 million people speak the language as a first language. However, acoustic study on Indonesian learners of English (ILE) production remains untouched. The purpose of this measurement is to examine the influence of first language (L1) on English vowels production as a second language (L2). Based on perceptual magnet hypothesis (PMH), ILE were predicted to produce close sounds to L1 English where the vowels are similar to Indonesian vowels. Acoustic analysis was conducted to measure the formant frequencies. This study involved five males of Indonesian speakers aged between 20-25 years old. The data of British English native speakers were taken from previous study by Hawkins & Midgley (2005). The result illustrates that the first formant frequencies (F1) which correlates to the vowel hight of Indonesian Learners of English were significantly different from the corresponding frequencies of British English vowels. Surprisingly, the significant differences in second formant (F2) of ILE were only in the production of /ɑ, ɒ, ɔ/ in which /ɑ/=p 0.002, /ɒ/ =p 0,001, /ɔ/ =p 0,03. The vowel space area of ILE was slightly less spacious than the native speakers. This study is expected to shed light in English language teaching particularly as a foreign language.Keywords: VSA, EFL, Indonesian learners, formant frequencies, acoustic

Visualizing First and Second Language Interactions in Science Reading: A Knowledge Structure Network Approach

ABSTRACTThe present study considers the potential influence of first language (L1) in reading second language (L2) science text. University mixed proficiency Korean English language learners (n = 136) were asked to complete pre- and post-reading sorting maps in L1 or L2 (e.g., sort Korean, read text, sort English). All of the participants’ pre-to-post sorting artifacts were then converted into Pathfinder Networks (PFnets), a graph-theoretic psychometric scaling approach, to represent the most salient knowledge structure (KS) as their situation model of the L2 text. For the low proficiency readers, the results show that when the L2 science text was reframed by the L2 post-reading sorting map, their L2 post-reading KS was more like their pre-reading KS, a linear L2 KS that had no significant correlation with the comprehension posttest. However, when the L2 science text was reframed by the L1 post-reading sorting map, their L1 post-reading KS was more like the L2 text base, which resulted in a relational KS that was more like the content expert and significantly correlated with the comprehension posttest. In contrast, the high proficiency readers post-reading KSs were like the L2 lesson text and their post-reading KSs were all relational in both languages.

Lower-Level Processing Skills in English-as-a-Second-Language Reading Comprehension: Possible Influence of First Language Orthography

<em>Cross-linguistic studies on second language (L2) reading reveal that component skills of reading such as word recognition, phonemic decoding, spelling, and oral text reading are prone to the influence of first language (L1) orthography but few empirical studies have examined the possible influence of L1 orthography on these skills. This study investigates how adult ESL learners of two different L1 backgrounds (Spanish and Chinese) compare in their performances on word recognition efficiency, phonemic decoding efficiency, spelling, and oral text reading fluency and how these skills are related to their overall ability in reading comprehension. The differences in the learners’ performances on the component skills and the variations in the role of these skills in ESL reading comprehension indicated possible influence of the orthographic features of learners’ first language.</em>

A Study on The First-Language Influence on The Arabic Pronunciation among Terengganuians in Malaysia

This study focuses on exploring the influences of the first-language influence on the Arabic pronunciation among Terengganuian learners. The study has involved five students, who were born in Terengganu, who communicate using the Terengganuian dialect. The students were asked to read some Arabic sentences while the researcher recorded their voices. Then, their pronunciations were transcribed and analysed. The findings showed that the influences of the Terengganuian dialect on the Arabic pronunciation actually exist. The respondents showed their habits unintentionally in pronouncing the sound /ŋ/ while uttering such Arabic words which have been spelt with the letter ‘n’. This phenomenon is very familiar among Terengganuian people in terms of their local dialect.

THE INFLUENCE OF FIRST LANGUAGE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF SECOND LANGUAGE (A CASE STUDY OF THE MEMBERS OF ENGLISH CLUB AT MTS SALAFIYAH SYAFIIYAH MUMBULSARI JEMBER)

The first language will always influence the second language acquisition. The influences involve all parts of language learning such language skills (speaking, reading, listening, and writing) and language components (vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation). In particular, this current study focuses on investigating the influence of first language on the pronunciation of second language. It is found that there is a negative transfer got by most of the members of English club at MTS Salafiyah Syafiiyah Mumbulsari Jember. The respondents make more mistakes or errors because of the interference of their L1 to the L2 as a result of negative transfer. This paper is divided into seven parts. Those are introduction, the definition of LI and L2, the definition and features of pronunciation, research design, and pronunciation test given to the respondent, result, discussion, and conclusion.

THE INFLUENCE OF STUDENTS’ L1 AND SPOKEN ENGLISH IN ENGLISH WRITING: A CORPUS-BASED RESEARCH

Academic writing requires both style and grammatical correctness; however, efforts in improving the quality of English academic writing by non-native students have been focused on grammar. Structures observed in this study were grammatically correct, but considered unnatural in academic writing genre. This research involves a group of non-native English speaking students who were assigned to submit two different kinds of writing to an online repository: a research paper abstract and a free writing article. A survey to understand the sources of English exposure is also conducted. The objectives of this study are to describe unnatural sequences/Multi Words Units (MWUs) used by the students and to identify the motives of using such sequences. The tools for corpus processing used are Unitex and Antconc. Corpus of Contemporary American English and British National Corpus are also used as reference corpora for English while the SEAlang Indonesian Corpus is used to validate the influence of first language (L1). The analysis of these sequences with comparison to reference corpora indicated the influence of spoken English and students’ L1 (Indonesian). This corresponds to the results of the survey that most of the students are exposed to English mostly via spoken, and non-academic sources (songs, movies, social media, etc).

PENGARUH BAHASA PERTAMA TERHADAP BAHASA KEDUA DALAM KARANGAN SISWA KELAS V SD

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" lang="en-ID" align="justify"><span style="font-family: Century Gothic,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="id-ID">Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui dan mendeskripsikan pengaruh bahasa pertama terhadap bahasa kedua yang terdapat dalam karangan siswa kelas IV SD Muhammadiyah 1 Bandar Lampung. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode deskriptif. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis data tes mengarang untuk menentukan tingkat penggunaan pengaruh bahasa pertama terhadap bahasa kedua dalam karangan siswa kelas IV SD Muhammadiyah 1 Bandar Lampung. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah seluruh siswa kelas IV SD Muhammadiyah 1 Bandar Lampung yang berjumlah 25 orang siswa. Sampel penelitian ini adalah sampel populasi. Dalam hasil analisis data tes mengarang siswa kelas IV SD Muhammadiyah 1 Bandar Lampung terdapat pengaruh bahasa pertama dalam karangan sebesar 55,05%. Hal ini berarti pengaruh bahasa Lampung dalam karangan siswa kelas IV SD Muhammadiyah 1 Bandar Lampung yang menggunakan bahasa Lampung dinyatakan rendah.</span></span></span></p>

Advanced learners’ comprehension of discourse connectives: The role of L1 transfer across on-line and off-line tasks

Discourse connectives are important indicators of textual coherence, and mastering them is an essential part of acquiring a language. In this article, we compare advanced learners’ sensitivity to the meaning conveyed by connectives in an off-line grammaticality judgment task and an on-line reading experiment using eye-tracking. We also assess the influence of first language (L1) transfer by comparing learners’ comprehension of two non-native-like semantic uses of connectives in English, often produced by learners due to transfer from French and Dutch. Our results indicate that in an off-line task transfer is an important factor accounting for French- and Dutch-speaking learners’ non-native-like comprehension of connectives. During on-line processing, however, learners are as sensitive as native speakers to the meaning conveyed by connectives. These results raise intriguing questions regarding explicit vs. implicit knowledge in language learners.

A Review Study of Interlanguage Theory

The influence of first language (L1 hereinafter) in the learning of second language (L2 hereinafter) has witnessed an intense debate during the past years, resulting in the prevalence of Error Analysis (EA hereinafter) over Contrastive Analysis (CA hereinafter). A great number of empirical studies indicated that neither L1 nor L2 was always responsible for learners' errors (Bailey et al. 1974; Krashen et al. 1978, 2003; Larsen-Freeman, 2002; 2003). CA and EA paved the way for Interlanguage theory (IL hereinafter) in describing L2 learners' errors in the acquisition process of L2. IL, which has been in vogue for the last years, has witnessed huge criticism by different researchers and linguists from various L1 backgrounds. They all came to state that there are many points in this theory which are not clear. In light of this, this study aims at reviewing and discussing the role of IL in describing and explaining learners' errors in the process of acquisition of L2. Therefore, theoretical foundations, theoretical assumptions, limitations and significance of this theory are discussed in detail. This review reveals that IL theory is almost no longer valid in the field of second language acquisition (SLA hereinafter) for numerous reasons.

Processing collocations in a second language: A case of first language activation?

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the possible influence of first language (L1) collocational patterns on second language (L2) collocational processing. A lexical decision task was used to assess whether collocational patterns acceptable in the L1 but not the L2 would still be activated when processing language entirely in the L2. The results revealed no such activation. Furthermore, L2 speakers did not produce accelerated processing for control collocations that were acceptable in the L2 but not the L1. Based on these findings, we put forth some theoretical suggestions regarding recent research indicating accelerated processing for congruent over incongruent collocations. Finally, our NS control group revealed some unexpected tendencies that cannot be easily accounted for with our current understanding of L1 language processing.

Cross‐linguistic influence of first language writing systems on brain responses to second language word reading in late bilinguals

Introduction How human brains acquire second languages (L2) is one of the fundamental questions in neuroscience and language science. However, it is unclear whether the first language (L1) has a cross-linguistic influence on the processing of L2. Methods Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activities during L2 word reading tasks of phonographic Japanese Kana between two groups of learners of the Japanese language as their L2 and who had different orthographic backgrounds of their L1. For Chinese learners, a L1 of the Chinese language (Hanji) and a L2 of the Japanese Kana differed orthographically, whereas for Korean learners, a L1 of Korean Hangul and a L2 of Japanese Kana were similar. Results Our analysis revealed that, although proficiency and the age of acquisition did not differ between the two groups, Chinese learners showed greater activation of the left middle frontal gyrus than Korean learners during L2 word reading. Conclusion Our results provide evidence that strongly supported the hypothesis that cross-linguistic variations in orthography between L1 and L2 induce differential brain activation during L2 word reading, which has been proposed previously.

Developing new ‘thinking-for-speaking’ patterns in Greek as a foreign language: the role of proficiency and stays abroad

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of first language thinking-for-speaking patterns on the acquisition of Greek as a second language (L2), as well as to determine whether proficiency level and stays in the target-language country have an effect on such influence. The participants (N=50) were Spanish/Catalan learners of Greek who belonged to different proficiency groups (from A2.1 up to B2.1 of the Common European Framework of Reference) and had had stays in Greece of various durations (from a few weeks up to several years). The participants performed two tasks in their L2: a grammaticality judgement task and a picture description task, which included expressions that are encoded as a single verb in Greek but as a periphrasis in Spanish/Catalan, as well as in English (e.g. to be hungry, to be sleepy, to be embarrassed, etc.). A group of Greek native speakers (N=15) also did the same tasks. The results indicate that L1 patterns were transferred to the L2 and that the performance of the L2 learners was significantly different from that of the native speakers'. Moreover, proficiency and time in Greece played a significant role in the acquisition of the patterns under analysis.

Teaching reading to English language learners: insights from linguistics

Big Ideas and Research That Guide the Profession. First-Language Influence in Second-Language Acquisition. ELL Oracy: Listening Comprehension and Oral Language Development. Learning to Read, Write, and Spell Words in English as a New Language. Using Morphemes to Learn Vocabulary. Word Formation Processes, Cognates, and Collocations. The Same, but Different: Reading Fluency in English as a New Language. Achieving Comprehension in L2 English Reading. Writing to Learn in English across the Curriculum. Glossary.

Influence of L1 Orthography on Spelling English Words by Bilingual Children: A Natural Experiment Comparing Syllabic, Phonological, and Morphosyllabic First Languages

This study examined the influence of first language (L1) orthography on bilingual children's spelling performance in their second language (L2), English. The subtests of spelling and letter-word identification from the Woodcock Proficiency Battery were administered to a sample of 285 six-year-olds in Singapore. All children received literacy instruction in English through the “look-say” method. Analyses of covariance showed a statistically significant effect of L1 on conventional spelling but not on phonological spelling, controlling for reading proficiency. The Chinese (morphosyllabic) group not only scored higher than the Malay (alphabetic) and Tamil (syllabic) groups overall, but also made more real-word substitution and transposition errors. The results are discussed in terms of the influence of L1 orthographic depth on spelling, and how learning disability specialists can utilize the information while evaluating the spelling/literacy skills of English L2 learners.

Filling In the Missing Piece in Research on Lexicalization Patterns

For more than a decade, studies on second language (L2) lexicalization patterns of motion events have examined crosslinguistic differences in encoding semantic elements (e.g., motions, paths, manners) into surface forms (e.g., verbs, prepositions, adverbial clauses). Ultimately, these studies examine the transferability of the L1 form-meaning relationships to interlangauge (IL), claiming that there is an underlying influence of first language (L1) based cognition on L2 acquisition (for a review of previous studies, see Slobin, 2004). This claim of L1 cognitive influence arose from the perspective of linguistic relativity, specifically from Slobin’s (1996) thinking for speaking hypothesis, which asserts that linguistic demands influence how speakers conceptualize motion events.

First language polysemy affects second language meaning interpretation: evidence for activation of first language concepts during second language reading

The present study investigates the influence of first language (L1) lexicalization patterns on the processing of second language (L2) words in sentential contexts by advanced German learners of English. The focus was on cases where a polysemous word in the L1 is realized by independent words in the L2, e.g. German Blase realized by English bubble and blister. An anomaly detection task was used in which participants had to indicate whether a target word formed an acceptable completion to a sentence. The critical condition was where the other sense ( blister) of the translation equivalent Blase was appropriate, but the word ( bubble) did not complete the sentence meaningfully, e.g. 'His shoes were uncomfortable due to a bubble.' This was compared to a control condition in which neither sense of the L1 translation made sense, e.g. 'She was very hungry because of a bubble.' Factors of word type (noun vs. verb) and degree of relatedness of L1 senses (high vs. moderate) were also manipulated. Relative to native speakers of English, advanced German learners made more errors and displayed longer correct response times in the critical condition compared to the control condition. An effect of meaning relatedness was obtained for nouns but not verbs. The results are discussed in terms of the role of lexical-level translation connections in activating L1 concepts from L2 words, even in highly proficient learners and in all-L2 tasks.

Native Cantonese Listeners' Perception of Word-Final Stops in English and Thai

AbstractThis study examined the discrimination of word-final stop contrasts (/p/-/t/, /p/-/k/, /t/-/k/) in English and Thai by 13 native speakers of Cantonese [C]. The C participants' discrimination accuracy was c ompared to the results previously obtained from two groups of 18 participants (Australian English [AE], Thai [T]) in order to assess the influence of first language (L1) on cross-language speech perception. The second aim was to examine how difference in familiarity with stimulus languages might affect the C participants' discrimination of stop contrasts.Word-final stops in Cantonese and Thai are unreleased whereas they may be released in English. This may enable the C participants to discriminate Thai final stops more accurately than the AE participants, but a lack of familiarity with Thai may keep them from reaching their optimal discrimination accuracy.A discrimination test with an oddity design was used to test participants' discrimination of stop contrasts. The C group did not show an advan...

Influence of First Language Orthographic Experience on Second Language Decoding and Word Learning

This study examined the influence of first language (L1) orthographic experiences on decoding and semantic information retention of new words in a second language (L2). Hypotheses were that congruity in L1 and L2 orthographic experiences determines L2 decoding efficiency, which, in turn, affects semantic information encoding and retention. College‐level English L2 learners with typologically similar (Korean) and dissimilar (Chinese) L1 backgrounds were participants. Their decoding efficiency was measured by a pseudoword naming task with phonologically regular and irregular conditions. They learned the meaning of the pseudowords paired with pictures. Subsequent recall tasks showed that the Korean group had better overall retention but greater impairment with the irregular pseudowords. These findings suggest that L1 orthographic distance influences L2 word learning processes.