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In New York, there are many Chinese immigrants, most of whom are adults.
Because they did not learn English in China or just have little idea about English,
Chinese adults flood into classes of English, which is regarded as their second
language (L2). However, all of these adults get used to communicating in Chinese
(L1). Under this circumstance, the first language (Chinese) needs to be considered
during their process of learning English. This is what we call “the role of the first
language in second language learning.” For some people, the first language is not as
highly valued in second language learning because they think that many errors in
adult second language performance spring from their first language. Nevertheless, for
some others, the native language is very important for a second language learner. In
their opinion, the first language helps a great deal for the learners to understand and
remember the second language. Is the first language playing a constructive role in
In the history of second language research and practice, many linguists have
focused on the topic of "first language interference", that is, “in the procedure of
learning a second language, learners transfer the elements of one language to another
at various levels, such as the first language influencing the second in terms of order,
borrowing some words from one language and converting them in another.” (Skiba,
acquisition he finds that "this influence appears to be strongest in complex word order
be the major source of syntactic errors in adult second language learning because
They believe that adult second language learners substitute their mother tongue word
by word into the second language. Errors in sentence construction often come out in
this way because of the difference between English and Chinese. Krashen points out
that "syntactic errors made by adult second language students are common to them
In opposition to the idea of "first language interference", some scholars state that
learning. Many adults would like to convey the meaning of the second language
lexical items by associating the words with their equivalent meanings in their native
language. In Jimmy Thomas’s research, he admits that "association between the first
language and second language is more direct than any other approaches for the
learners to catch the meaning of new words because this association places referent
and signifier by direct physical contact." (P.405) Even though sometimes this
association is superficial, this way of learning the vocabulary is good for an adult
second language learner. Some research has shown that many of the skills learned in
the native language can be transferred easily to the second language. These skills, of
course, include the concepts of lexical items. In second language classes, the students
like to use the bilingual vocabulary lists because these lists can save them time in
understanding what the words mean. They don’t need to define the words in the
second language since they all have ideas what these items actually are.
important role. Many errors can be traced back to the process of translation. A very
common error, when students are doing L1 to L2 translation, is the syntactic error,
which mainly indicates error of word order and sentence construction. When the
performers translate their first language into the second language, they always tend to
translate in the order of native words according to their concepts of the structure of
first language. Duskova (1969) provides some evidence for word-for-word translation
postgraduate students and concluded that interference from the mother tongue was
plainly obvious in errors of word order and sentence construction. An example for the
placement of the direct object after an adverb, which occurs in the sentence "I met
into English. (Cited from Krashen, P.65) Even though Duskova's research was not
about Chinese, we can quote his idea into Chinese-to-English learner. Because of the
different structure between Czech and English, students easily make mistakes in
translation. Chinese, like Czech, is a language very different from English. Chinese
adults would make the same mistakes as the Czech students do. For example, a
Chinese adult student would say “she every day goes to school,” not “she goes to
school every day.” The reason why the second language learners make these errors is,
"they are called on to perform before they have learned the new behavior (English).
The result is padding, using old knowledge (L1), and supplying what is known to
make up for what is not known." (Krashen, p.67) Generally speaking, second
language learners do not have perfect ideas about the second language. When they
need to perform in this unfamiliar language, they always rely on their first language,
which they have gotten used to and have a great deal of knowledge about. They fail to
recognize that the L1 is not the same as the L2. Substitution from the first language
Even if the students can translate in the right word order into the second
language, there is still a problem in the translation from the L1 into the L2. Since
adult students associate the English words with Chinese words, in this process, a
language can be adequately conveyed by associating the unit with the equivalent
native unit." (p.403)The association between the first language items and second
language items in bilingual vocabulary is direct for a learner to catch the referent and
signifier, but this directness is superficial. There are many words in English that have
the same translation in Chinese. For example, "table" and "desk" both mean a piece of
furniture with a flat top supported by legs. Chinese students may mix up them because
they don't notice the difference between these two words. So while translating the L1
into the L2, they would make a mistake such as saying "kitchen desk" instead of
"kitchen table". The students would choose any of the synonyms to fill up the
sentence. But in fact, this equivalence doesn't express the right meaning exactly in the
students' original meaning because there is still a difference between two words even
though they have the same Chinese meaning. "The complication caused by different
in other contexts than for the one where lexical equivalence was perfectly adequate
and legitimate." (Thomas P. 407) Even students can make up a perfect sentence in
their native language, after this equivalent translation, they may choose synonyms
which do not match the context to substitute their native words. We can not deny that
the bilingual vocabulary is very useful for a second language learner at the first stage
of English learning; but in a later stage of the L2 learning, students can not rely too
much on the bilingual vocabulary. They need to remember the lexical differences in
the words. Otherwise, they would be confused because of their native language.
Influence from the native language doesn't only appear in the students' written
English, but also can be observed in spoken language and communication. Chinese
adult students, who get used to the grammar-translation method where the L1 plays an
important role, have little ability to speak and understand English. (Yu, P.195)
Because of understanding the foreign language in the first language, students try to
express every sentence by translation. In this way, they neglect the spoken English,
slang and idioms. The native language makes the students less communicative. With
English taught in their native language, students tend to rely primarily on the first
language and then transfer to the second language. Under the influence of Chinese,
adult learners would say "give you" instead of "here you are,” which is a common
spoken expression in communication. They would express the meaning of "an apple
of one's eye" by saying "a pearl on one's hand,” which is translated from Chinese. In
fact, "an apple of one's eye" is an idiom, which cannot be translated by other
English.
that the bad influence of the L1 is greater than the good effect. Take the word order as
an example. I ask them to express their deep love for something in English. They all
say "I very much love you". In fact, we would say "I love you very much" in correct
are put prior to the verb, while English would put them at the end of the sentence.
Besides this problem, I find that students easily make errors in use of some words
which are of similar or same meanings. For example, there are many words in English
are translated into Chinese to describe the behavior of using eyes to notice something,
such as "see", "watch", and "read". But they all go with different objects in English.
We can say "watch TV", not "see TV", and "see a film", not "watch a film". Students
are so confused when they are using synonyms or near synonyms. Similarly, an
English word can be used in different terms but translated differently in the first
language. Once in class we talked about the verb "play", which can match with
different objects and describe different behavior in Chinese. We can say "play the
piano", "play basketball", "play computer", and "play cards.” But when the students
were asked to describe these different behaviors, they have never thought that all of
them can be said with the same word because in their native language all the verbs are
different words. Generally, this situation exists in second language learning.
According to all the research and evidence, first language tends to lead the
learners into an inferior position. Even though it helps the performers understand
some basic knowledge in the L2, generally speaking, the influence of the first
language is not as good as what we think. The bad influence of "first language
difference between the L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English), errors can be easily made by
transferring from L1 to L2. If the students want to make great progress in L2, they had
better try their best to get rid of the bad influence from native language.
Work Cited
<http://iteslj.org/Articles/Skiba-CodeSwitching.html>