CHAPTER II

2. REFERENTIAL / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Oral production is an important component to transmit ideas and to be able to carry

out effective communication. Thus, when acquiring a foreign language, it is important to

analyze whether some aspects of the mother tongue interfere with the oral production of the

L2 or target language. There are many aspects that are transmitted from L1 to L2, but these

can make a positive or negative transfer. When the positive transfer occurs, it will not alter

the message in the communication, however, when the negative transfer occurs, many

linguistic aspects will be poorly transmitted, causing confusion in the message of the

learner. The purpose of this research is to analyze the incidence of language transfer at the

time of making an oral production in first semester students.

2.1 Investigative background

Oral production of a foreign language is the main element for effective

communication, however the interference of prior knowledge of the first language

generalizes some rules of writing and speech. In this sense Selinker 1969, was who adopted

for the first time the term of interlanguage in sections of general linguistics where he

mentions that there are errors made by students when they acquire L2 that that could not be

explained by L1 or L2 but had to be analyzed independently.

In 1989 the most outstanding work by Odlin mentioned to Language transfer as a

strategy to acquire the L2. Consequently, this research corresponding to Popa (2016)
explores the process of acquiring an L2 (Catalan and Spanish) and maintaining an L1

(Romanian) in 130 immigrant students of Romanian origin, where the Language transfer, is

used as positive strategy to acquire a foreign language, having students in more contact

with L2 than with their mother tongue. Despite not being English the target language, it

reflects what happens when a student acquires an L2.

Research made by Berta (1998), who carried out a study focusing on the problems

of linguistic interference where the errors of the students are analyzed to later improve the

knowledge regarding the target language. The study confirms that the analysis of the errors,

primarily to distinguish between male and female genders helped to find faster methods to

improve the acquisition of L2 and therefore improve the oral production among non-native

speakers of the target language.

On the other hand, there is the interference of oral production when people learning

a foreign language. This study developed by Keys (2001) is called "Factors and Processes

in the Development of a Second Language Phonology" indicates that there are sounds that

seem identical between two languages, however they can be articulated in different ways,

for example with a different tone of voice. What happens is that the L2 learner will not

produce the correct pronunciation of L2, and it will also not be the same as the L1, due to

the influence of the language transfer, that he could be based. This research is related to the

research proposed since the phonetic influence of L1 is demonstrated when students

associate sounds and believe they see correspondences where they do not exist.

As can be seen in the work of Subandowo (2017), the mother tongue would

inevitably influence the acquisition of the foreign language in many ways and the one that

interests us the most is the ability to speak. This study explains the forms of interference in
the oral production of students who learn English as a foreign language, to identify the

transfer of language in oral production, three classifications of pronunciation in English

were applied which had the following results, most of the students’ made errors in their

pronunciation, 2% of consonants and 3% of vowels. There is a clear need, for more studies

related to Language Transfer and the relationship with oral production to improve speech

output. As a matter of fact, author like Manrique (2013) and Serret (2017). They stated

that Language Transfer, aside from to being an inevitable phenomenon, many students use

it as a strategy to improve the acquisition of an L2 and therefore oral production. Hence, the

students must discover the linguistic errors, that help them to contrast between the mother

tongue and the foreign language and improve their acquisition and speaking skill.

2.2 Theoretical foundation

2.2.1 Steven Krasen’s Theory

Stephen Krashen was a linguistics, specialized in theories of language acquisition

and its development. He studied the Natural Approach that is a methodology for teaching

foreign languages developed by linguists Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell based on

observation and interpretation. So, he said that Language acquisition does not require

extensive use of conscious grammatical rules and does not require tedious drill. On the

contrary the acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language or foreign

language. The SLA requires the natural communication in which speakers are concerned

not with their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding.

Schütz (2007). The disadvantage of this Steven Krashen’s theory is that focus in fluency,

and there is not the opportunity to correct immediately. Therefore, Krashen divided his

theory in five hypotheses, which these are the most important in this research.
The Acquisition-learning

It is the most fundamental Krashen’s hypothesis. Both process acquision and

learning are similar but not identical. Language acquisition is a subconscious process;

language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language but are

only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication. Krashen. (1982).

Language learning is a formal process. A deductive approach in a teacher-centered

setting produces "learning".

The monitor hypothesis

It refers to the internal process. It tries to explain the relationship between

acquisition and learning and determine the influence between them. The monitor hypothesis

is when learners realized about mistakes. Krashen. (1982).

With monitor you must think in the answer, and you must have enough time to

respond something about it. The monitor in acquisition act quickly and immediately. It

declares that acquisition and learning are used in different ways. The acquisition starts with

utterances in a second language and is to oversee fluency. On the contrary, Learning has

only one function, and that is as an editor because the learner can be planning and editing

what he says.

The input hypothesis

It attempts to explain how learner acquires a second language. The Input Hypothesis

bolsters the importance for the learner to understand the language a bit beyond his or her

understanding with an influence such as motivation. Stefansson (2013). In the oral fluency
the unknown words and grammar are defined as situational, that is why Krashen

exemplifies the input hypothesis as follows, one is the speech that parents use when talking

to children (caretaker speech), which he says is vital in first language acquisition, also he

said that second language learners adjust their speech in order to communicate. Finally, this

hypothesis designates that the fact that often the first second language utterances of adult

learners are very similar to those of infants in their first language. Krashen (1985).

Consequently, the comprehensible output is studied at the same time within this hypothesis.

The comprehensible output (CO) hypothesis states that we acquire language when

we attempt to transmit a message but fail and must try again. Krashen (1998). The CO can

facilitate the learning of a second language while there are mental processes connected with

the language of trying to communicate. However, usually the output consists of memorized

language, complete sentences learned as if they were a single word.

2.2.2 Constructivism

Constructivists believe that reality depends on the mind and that it is built through

social and psychological relationships. Constructivism is of the idea that students should

always be actively and reflectively constructing according to O’Donnell (1997). It means

that the knowledge will be built by ourselves. Language, especially, second language is best

acquired or learned when it is taught in the environment where it is used as a means of

social interaction, thereby enabling learners to construct meaning about the language

(Piaget, 1954). In other words, if learn want to acquire a second language, he should have

an active role within the class. According to John (2018) that mentioned to Reinfried,

constructivist language learning should first be action oriented, whereby language is

learned through collaboration, free creation is praised, and learning is achieved by actively
doing projects and self-teaching. Second, it should be learner-centered that supports

individualization of learning and autonomy. In this way, a learner should develop

awareness not only of learning but also of the language itself and the inter-cultural aspect as

well. The learning a second foreign language into the constructivism shows that are both

activities that involve interactions between the teacher and the learner, and teacher must be

a guide and facilitator, in order to learner create the knowledge through of socially

constructed.

2.2.3 Cognitive constructivist theory

Around the 1950s, another paradigm of education about the nature of knowledge

appeared. As I mentioned before, constructivism saw knowledge as something built by

individuals. From this theory is born the cognitive constructivism theory. Piaget (1957),

according to the stages of constructivist cognitive theory, states that “learning is an active

process in which students construct new ideas and concepts from their past and present

linguistic knowledge”. That is, they are based on experience because students are in

interaction of innate capacities and environmental events in order to build their own

knowledge. That is why it can be inferred that one of the reasons language learners make

mistakes time after time is because they tend to compare the given input of the target

language with the structure of the mother tongue.

2.2.4 Communicative approach

When we learn a foreign language, it is important to get to communicate with each

other in a good way, so that the message from one person to another is not distorted, this

way has to do with the communicative approach. Communicative approach is also known

as Communicative language teaching (CLT) this didactic model aims to study foreign
language learners within their real communication and not a created one through of

interaction among learners and teacher. It involves noise and movement and personal and

above all communication, one with another the vital thing so often cut off in a schoolroom.

Ashton (1963). The CLT guides us to learn a foreign language both in class and outside of

class. Learners and teacher will communicate talking about their personal experiences in

order to promote the language skills in all types of situations.

2.2.5 Contrastive analysis

Contrastive analysis arises from the need to find a theoretical explanation of errors

and the didactic interest in preventing them. Charles Carpenter Fries, in his study of

Teaching and Learning English as a Second Language (1945), contended that “he most

efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to

be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the

learner” Fries (1945).

According to Lado (1957) in a comparison of English and Spanish claimed that “we

can predict and describe the patterns that will cause difficulty in learning, and those that

will not cause difficulty, by comparing systematically the language and culture to be

learned with the native language and culture of the student.”

2.2.6 Interlanguage theory

Selinker proposed that in the language of a foreign language learner there is a

linguistic system called interlanguage or IL that is produced primarily by adults when they

attempt meaningful communication using the foreign language. Interlanguage refers to the
intermediate states of a learner’s language system as it moves toward the L2. Selinker

(1972).

Many authors defined to Interlanguage as natural language because it does not

belong to the mother tongue or to the foreign language but rather it is a new language

created by the errors of transference. The Interlanguage, differing from both the native

language of the learner and the Target Language norm is thus seen as a linguistic system,

perhaps a dialect or a pidgin. Adjemian (1976).

It is said that Interlanguage can be systematic and although this has not been fully

verified, the adult student when attempting meaningful communication in a foreign

language is systematic at all levels: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and

pragmatics.

2.2.7 Fossilization

Second language acquisition is a complex non-linear and constantly changing

process within learning. The result of this is the interlanguage. The Interlanguage is the

starting point for this term called fossilization. As Wang and Fan mention that many

Second Language learners fail to reach full target language competence. Fossilization

occurs in most language learners and cannot be remedied by further instruction. Many

learners can correct these errors producing the foreign language in a better way, however

when the subject is difficult and they cannot give meaning to some words, they will return

to the structures of their mother tongue and thus cannot reactivate the "latent structure of

the language". There are some important aspects about fossilization, such as:

-it can be conscious

-it is not experienced as a problem by individuals,

-it is deeply connected to the idea of purpose,

-it is changeable

-it can be modified if purposes and factors vary,

-it is difficult to eradicate and finally, it is unpredictable.

The fossilization occurs principally when the new forms of language are neither in

the native language nor in the target language. Therefore, this term arises from the need to

know what happens in the process of acquiring the second language and because some

learners do not reach the competence of the monolingual native speaker. Nordquist (2019).

2.2.8 Borrowing

The other process related with this phenomenon is the persistence of errors in

learner’s oral production that were L1 like, in other words what Schachter (1978) called

‘resident errors’ and what Selinker (1972) tagged as ‘fossilization’. Corder (1983) argues

that there may be another explanation for this process altogether, what he calls ‘borrowing’.

Borrowing is the learners use some grammar rules from their native language

towards the foreign language and that it could only have been created in order to achieve

success and communicate. Hence, ungrammatical forms that have been generally successful

communicatively speaking will tend to persist in the performance of the learner. Keys

(2001).
2.2.9 Language transfer

Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) say that there are two ways to describe the early

language transfer or interference. One is from a psychological perspective and the second is

from a sociolinguistic perspective, which describes the interactions between two different

linguistic communities.

In the field of applied linguistics, transfer means to a strategy of acquire a foreign in

which students use prior L1 linguistic knowledge and apply it to the language they are

learning. Many authors mention that students use the knowledge of their first language as a

strategy to acquire the second. However, in the attempt to facilitate the learning process, a

negative transfer may occur where elements and structures were transferred, causing errors

and fossilization.

Finally, Faerch and Kasper (1987) define to Language Transfer as a

psycholinguistic procedure by which second language learners activate prior knowledge in

developing or using their interlanguage. The reason is that some learners internalize the

process of acquiring their first language in order to learn a foreign language

2.2.10 Types of language transfer

There are two types of language transfer the positive transfer which eases the

language learning whereas the negative does not. When talking about negative transfer, it is

established that the more differences between L1 and L2 exists the more problems are

encountered now of learning the language (Rangelova, 2015). There are two types of

language transfer: the positive transfer which learners believe that it facilitates the process

of teaching and learning the foreign language whereas the negative does not in the negative
transfer, it is established that the more differences between L1 and L2 exists the more

problems are encountered now of learning the language (Rangelova, 2015).

2.2.11 Mother tongue influence

Language Transfer research has been investigating the way in which L2 students

overcome the effects of the influence of L1 or their mother tongue. The influence of the L1

of the learners is one of the most important factors to consider in the process of acquiring a

second language. In ancient times it was stated that students' errors reflected the

grammatical structures of their L1. The theory that the L2 student does not start the learning

process from scratch was positively valued. Popa (2016).

In this sense, it is inferred that the learner makes use of a common grammatical rule

resorting to his mother tongue, among another linguistic knowledge. The learner to

facilitate the acquisition of the second language will look for similarities between the L1 of

it, to facilitate the learning process. Many studies consider that L2 in the process of second

language acquisition to be considerably different from L1 acquisition.

2.2.12 Cognates

In the context of machine translation, the term cognates denote words in different

languages that are similar in their orthographic or phonetic form and are possible

translations of each other. Kondrak, Marcu and Knight (2003). It means that a cognate is a

word that comes from the same origin as a word from a different language. According to

Cognates Linguistics in 2017, cognates represent at least 25% of the English written words

in the Romance language speakers, and vice versa, when exposed to modern language. For

example, Spanish and English have many cognates because they have a similar history.
 Some similarities are due to a genetic relationship (for example, dentista in Spanish

and dentist in English) or to the borrowing from one language to another (for example,

sprint in English and supurinto in Japanese). Learners must be careful on how to use

cognates. You can find true cognates, which are words in two languages that can have a

similar meaning, spelling and even pronunciation. On the contrary, False cognates, are very

tricky as they might look or sound very similar in one language, but with different meaning.

In a broad sense, cognates include not only genetically related words and

loanwords, but also names, numbers, and punctuation. Virtually all bitexts (parallel

bilingual corpora) contain some type of cognates. If the languages are represented in

different scripts, a phonetic transcription or transliteration of one or both parts of the bitext

is a prerequisite for identifying cognates.

For instance:

True Cognates:
The telephone and el teléfono (Both have the same meaning as well as similar

pronunciation, and spelling)

False Cognates:
Library and librería (Both refer to books, but in English, library is a place you go to

borrow books, while librería is a place to buy books /bookstore)

2.2.13 Phonetics

The phonetics of a given language has to do with the physical sounds when a human

being speaks. in other words, of the sound production of a certain language, or acoustics

Odlin (1989). However, sounds that sound the same between two different languages can
be produced in different ways, such as with different tones or with a different position and

movement of the mouth, for example more or less open.

What often happens during the acquisition of a foreign language is that the learner

develops a form of "engagement", or an approximation to the target sound that is neither

completely like L2 nor equal to the sound of L1 in which the learner is likely to based.

These sounds are influenced by the L1 norms, but the influence of how the L2 sounds are

also reflected.

2.2.14 Phonology

On contrary to phonetic which study the physical sound, phonology study of the

sound patterns that occur within languages. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia (2014).

Phonology is the study of sound patterns in a language and between languages, that is, how

the sounds of speech are organized in the mind and are used to communicate and convey

meaning. Both phonology and phonetics involve sound in natural language.

2.2.15 Oral language production

Developing oral production in foreign language students is a difficult task for

teachers, since it is not only about speaking, but also involves written production, listening

and reading comprehension. As Moreno (2002) mention oral production has a productive or

active nature, since there are receptive and emotional characters when there is a

communication. Learning a foreign language contains different variables that have to do

with communicative skills: listening, reading, writing and orality, which will strengthen the

acquisition of the foreign language, making it very significant for learners. Forero and

Garcia (2019).
 Oral production is linked to the implementation of foreign language learning

strategies so that, the learner reflects the L2 knowledge to make the appropriate use of the

foreign language in terms of concepts, vocabulary, meanings, pronunciation, structure, etc.

Therefore, this process must be guided in a didactic and constant way, in order to the sender

and the receiver can exchange roles and transmit messages in a concise, clear, pertinent and

adequate way, characteristics that are fundamental to the ability to listen and speak.

2.2.16 Communicative competence

Hymes (1972), a sociolinguist concerned with language use in social interactions,

subsequently used the term communicative competence to provide a much broader view of

language use. Communicative competence has to do with a person's grammatical

knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge

about how and when to use expressions appropriately.

2.2.17 Bilingualism

The Bilingualism is the major factor that of life today. According to Crystal (1997)

who estimates that two-thirds of the world’s children grow up in a bilingual environment.

The reason is that bilingualism is present in practically every country in the world. In fact,

it is difficult to find a truly monolingual society. Bilingualism is not only global; it is a

phenomenon that has existed since the beginning of language in human history Grosjean

(1982).

Bilingualism is associated with having effective communication with a foreign

language learner or between people who are not native speakers of L2. Similarly, Siguán

and Mackey (1986) define bilingual education as “an education system where two
languages are used as medium of instruction, of which usually, one is the first language of

the students”. It is the reason why certain negative transfers occur, where the learner resorts

to the grammar of their mother tongue to be able to communicate in the target language.

Although many times the false cognates misrepresent the message leaving it to be clear and

precise.

2.2.18 Approaches to oral production

Fluency

According to a study carried out by Shahini and Shahamirian (2017) mention that

the early age had a great impact on the participants’ speaking fluency and that acquiring

fluency in older ages is more difficult. Fluency is the ability to express yourself correctly

with ease and spontaneity, both in your mother tongue and in a second language; allowing

the speaker to function in a correct way. The greater amount of exposure to the foreign

language allows the fluency to be more precise, however many institutions do not have

enough time or accounts with native teachers that allow them to improve their

pronunciation and grammar, on the contrary, the bilingual teacher exposes the learning in

their own way. mother tongue allowing a negative influence on their oral production.

Accuracy

According to Wang (2014). Speaking accuracy indicates “the extent to which the

language produced conforms to target language norms”. It involves principally the

vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar part. As Levelt (1989), mentions the speaking

processes include conceptualization, formulation and articulation. The conceptualization is

dedicated to the information that is going to be used to express a message in

 communication. The formulation requires the speaker to know what suitable words he is

going to use in the grammatical structure and articulation also requires the speaker to

produce speech with his articulatory organs. It is very possible that students, especially

learners of a foreign language, make mistakes in communication, when one of these three

processes is not considered. Therefore, his speech can be full of "hesitations, false starts,

grammatical inaccuracies and limited vocabulary" (Hughes, 2002). In this sense, both your

fluency and precision of speech can be affected.

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