Scribd
Upload
55 views

First Language Influence On Language

This document discusses the influence of a learner's first language on learning a new language. It presents a case study of a Saudi Arabian student learning English as a foreign language in England. The researchers conducted a contrastive analysis of the student's language learning process and created a language learner profile based on the data collected. They then developed activities to help the learner improve skills like reading and listening by taking his first language and needs into account. The purpose was to demonstrate how understanding the influence of a student's first language can help teachers plan better lessons tailored to their students' specific backgrounds and requirements.

Uploaded by

roopa sri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
55 views

First Language Influence On Language

This document discusses the influence of a learner's first language on learning a new language. It presents a case study of a Saudi Arabian student learning English as a foreign language in England. The researchers conducted a contrastive analysis of the student's language learning process and created a language learner profile based on the data collected. They then developed activities to help the learner improve skills like reading and listening by taking his first language and needs into account. The purpose was to demonstrate how understanding the influence of a student's first language can help teachers plan better lessons tailored to their students' specific backgrounds and requirements.

Uploaded by

roopa sri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

First Language Influence on Language

Perspectives on language learning and teaching bring a wide range of important aspects
that need to be considered; some of them include culture and native langu age. These two
features play an important role that might be overseen once language teachers start
instructing. The first language or L1 (regardless of the country) becomes the first source
for a learner to understand how a language works, specially to young learners who are
in the concrete operation phase, as they tend to monitor how they acquire and learn
foreign languages.
Interestingly, the learning of foreign languages helps students to understand their native
one, and they resort to their schemes of L1 to relate to the L2. In this sense, it is relevant
to point the importance of students’ first language when learning a foreign or second
language.
Different researchers, such as Kramsch (1993), Byram and Grundy (2003), and
Pulverness (2003) have recently studied the relationship that exists between culture and
language learning. Holmes cited in Byram and Grundy (2003) for instance shows how
culture is encoded in the conceptual metaphors speakers of a language are
convinced of.
In other words, these encodings are not equal for all languages and for this reason,
language instructors need to be aware of this situation in order to understand how the
students learn, depending on the place they come from and the language they have as
mother tongue.
This paper presents a case study carried out by two English Teachers with a Saudi
Arabian student who belonged to a group of twelve learners learning English as a foreign
language at a language institute in Southampton,
England. Students’ age range from 15 to 20.
The research group asked for a volunteer and explained the purpose of the study having
as a result a Saudi Arabian student who volunteered to be part of the study.
This study had the purpose of conducting a Contrastive Analysis (CA) about the language
learning process developed by the learner chosen in order to create a Language Learner
Profile (LLP) based on the data collected.

After identifying different needs, wants and lacks in this Saudi Arabian Learner, the
researchers created a set of activities to help the learner cope with skills such as reading
and listening. The importance of this piece of research is intended to raise awareness
about a major inquiry underlying the teaching process dealing with
planning, a phase in which instructors need to consider the heterogeneity of the target
audience and the complexity of each students’ needs.
1.1 How Does the First Language Have an Influence over the Learning of a New
Language?
Language is essential if we want that habits, institutions and beliefs acquire the meaning
of what we call culture.
In fact, these aspects must have meaning to become culture. According to Kramsch
(2013) language, not seen as a linguistic system, but seen in context is: “a coherent
symbolic system for making meaning” (Kramsch, 2013:
62). In this sense, we cannot separate the study of language and language learning from
culture and the context that surrounds the learner, especially when we refer to the learning
of a foreign language.
Besides culture, the first language (L1) of a learner might have an influence over foreign
language learning, either by acting as a source for the learner to understand how the
language works when the first language and the foreign language are similar (transfer), or
by being a factor of interference if the two languages are very different
Although some authors such as Krashen (1982) and Dulay and Burt (1974) claim that the
process of learning the L2 is similar to the one of learning the L1, some researchers like:
Kellerman and Sharwood-Smith (1986) use the term “Crosslinguistic influence” to re fer
to aspects of language learning such as: transfer, avoidance and
borrowing renewing the ideas of transference that appeared in the 50`s and 60 ́s giving
some support to the ideas stated by Lado (1957) who stays that: “individuals tend to
transfer the forms and meanings (...) of their native language and culture to the foreign
language and culture” (Lado, 1957 cited in Celaya, n.d. :1)
The following case study presents an analysis on how the first language of a Saudi
Arabian student learning English had an influence over his language learning process.
The purpose of this analysis was to show English teachers how having an understanding
of the influence that the L1 has over the learning of a second language can
help to select better teaching materials, prepare more suitable lessons and give more
effective instructions to our students

You might also like