LANGUAGE TRANSFER

Dolly Ramos G

Transfer every day activities

Weinreich (1953: 1

• “transfer is evidenced as those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language”

Transfer from other authors

• Mother tongue influence (Corder, 1967)

• Native language influence (Gass, 1996)

• Cross-linguistic influence (Kellerman and

Sharwood-Smith, 1986; Odlin, 1989)

• Cross-linguistic generalization (Zobl, 1984)

LANGUAGE TRANSFER

Language transfer

TRANSFER AS A STRATEGY

• Newmark and Reibel (1968) adult learners do not substitute what he knows in the NL for the TL; instead: to fill in their gaps, they refer for help to what they already know

• What these authors qualify as "ignorance hypothesis“ (no knowledge in L2)

Borr

owin

g Co

rder

(198

3)

• Borrowing is not simply a case of NL and TL relationship:a) It should be the same in any lg for all ss

however borrowing is variable.

IMPORTANT1. Transfer strategies are not used by all learners.2. It depends on the learning phase they are going

through.3. Strategy to discover the L2 structure & to help in

communicative performance.

TRANSFER AS A CONSTRAINTThis view implies

• Transfer acts as a constraint in the development of learners' language

• Leading them to non-target-like production• a constraint is sth that prevents a ss from being aware

of similarities or from deciding that the similarity is real. Odlin (2002)

• This hypothesis testing process. (Schachter, 1983). lt is both:– Facilitating– limiting conditions

TRANSFER AS A PROCESS• Kohn (1986) considers transfer as a 'learning

process' and a 'production process‘

• Transfer as a process is part of the learner's ínterlanguage behaviour: – creative transformation of the input – meaningful output

INTERFERENCE LEVELSThe effect can be on any aspect of language

NEGATIVE TRANSFERwhen speakers and writers transfer items that are

not the same in both languages. EX: False cognates.

WEL-COME

PEOPLEWEL-COME

PEOPLE

Mr. Well

POSITIVE

• When learning from situation assists leaning in a another

• unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production. EX: True cognates.

Effective ways to promote positive transfer

Provide opportunities to

practice , applications

Teach subject matter in

meaningful.

Promote positive attitudes toward subject matter

MECHANISM

CONSCIOUS

Learners or unskilled translators may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language.

UNCONSCIOUS

Learners may not realize that the structures and

internal rules of the languages in

question are different.

MULTIPLE ACQUIRED LANGUAGE

Transfer can also occur

between acquired

languages, when people

are learning two languages

simultaneously they may

assume that a structure or

internal rule from one

language is the same in

the other language.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

no useful learning takes place unless positive transfer occurs

http://else.econ.ucl.ac.uk/papers/uploaded/281.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_transfer

ROSA ALONSO ALONSO* University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. TRANSFER: CONSTRAENT, PROCESS, STRATEGY OR INERT OUTCOME?