A Study of How the First Language Interferes with the Process of Second Language Acquisition Among Chinese Learners of English – Focusing on the Speech Acts Apology and Compliment Response

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-004-6_83How to use a DOI?

Keywords

L1 interference; L2 acquisition; Chinese learners of English; speech acts

Abstract

The process of acquiring a second language (L2) takes place where the first language (L1) has already been established, so people more or less will experience L1 interference while learning the target language. Chinese learning English as a second language (ESL) have shown some linguistic issues related to their L1 interference, which has drawn many scholars’ attention in this field. Previous research focused more on how L1 interfered with L2 in terms of language patterns. This study mainly investigated the interference at lexical, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels among Chinese learners of English to give a more comprehensive picture and view. L1 interference was examined based on four analytical tools Contrastive Analysis (CA), Interlanguage Analysis (IA), Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) and Error Analysis (EA). The data of speech acts, apology and compliment response, was collected through Discourse Completion Tasks. The findings showed that the output of L2 was influenced by L1 in terms of lexicons, semantics, syntax and pragmatics, which was evidenced by the high frequency of inappropriate direct translation from L1, grammar errors and punctuation mistakes committed in L2. In the end, this paper would give some potential suggestions, e.g. learning the target language in context, for achieving successful communication in the target language.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kaiying Shen
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/03/01
TI  - A Study of How the First Language Interferes with the Process of Second Language Acquisition Among Chinese Learners of English – Focusing on the Speech Acts Apology and Compliment Response
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Education, Language and Art (ICELA 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 672
EP  - 682
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-004-6_83
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-004-6_83
ID  - Shen2023
ER  -