Marisol Cota 313567 9th B Review of Literature Cross-linguistic Influence on SLA Cross-linguistic influence refers to the effect of a language on another, an issue that concerns students who speak Spanish as a native language currently learning English as a second language. Ortega (2008) found that cross-linguistic influence is in fact a recurring issue on second language acquisition, the results of her research point out the importance of a native language and the syntactical transfer that occurs in second and even third language acquisition. Spanish resulted to be the main source of influence on English oral production, as the subjects produced Spanishbased words and expressions in English. The influence of a second language can be seen in many aspects of the language, from pronunciation to grammar. For a native speaker of Spanish who is learning English, CLI may lead to Spanish-sounding pronunciation when speaking English (e.g., pronouncing “zoo” like “soo”), Spanish word or sentence order when writing in English (e.g., writing “The car red is mine,” instead of “The red car is mine”), or comprehension of Spanish words that look or sound similar to English words (e.g., “turista” = “tourist”) (James, 2012). It might be an issue that can’t be completely erased from the learning process of the students, but it can be diminished when facing the right strategies. This cross-linguistic influence is present not only in Spanish native speakers learning English as a second language, but also in native speakers of English. Native language influence takes places in the target language writing of both native Spanish and American students. In fact, errors documented in the data collected contribute to show the importance of native language semantic structure in learning a second language process (Del Mar & Torrijos, 2009). This research gives evidence that this is an issue that is not limited to one specific source or target language. Achieving Native-like Fluency The cross-linguistic influence on second language acquisition could in some cases be discouraging in the thought of not being able to achieve native-like fluency at an old age. Statistics provided by IMCO (Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad) and Comité de Investigación del grupo de trabajo de Inglés para la competitividad y la movilidad social (2013) show that public schools in mexico do not provide the appropriate resources for young students to start their process of second language acquisition of English when they are still inside the critical period for second language acquisition, most students who are interested in learning the language do so with their own resources. This issue leaves the students with the only option of joining an English course at an older age, already out of the already mentioned critical period for second language acquisition. Looking through the data, it’s quite clear that there is a statistical advantage to starting your learning earlier, however looking more closely at the data for the students who started learning after the age of 20, there are a lot of late learners who outperformed many native English speakers (Chacon, 2018). This study gives hope to those students who started their learning process at an older age to overcome the challenges of the cross-linguistic influence of their native language, and it also gives ESL teachers hope to help those students achieve their goals. Teaching pronunciation is often left aside in the hope of learning it as one learns the other important parts of a language. Success in pronunciation learning may be closely linked to exposure factors. Pronunciation teachers should encourage their learners’ involvement in real-life language situations (for example, interaction with native speakers) where the students are exposed to input- rich contexts (Barrera, 2004). It was previously mentioned how the age can be discouraging for students when it comes to achieving fluency; however, the teacher has a big role in that process. The types of activities the students need have to be adequate to the level of fluency the students want to achieve, especially because pronunciation can take longer than just learning grammatical rules. When you learn a second language, you may have difficulty with sounds that don't occur in your native language (Birner). The role of the teacher is critical to inform the differences and difficulties learning a new language will have, as well as to provide the appropriate resources to make it possible. Mistakes and Linguistic Discrimination Making mistakes when learning a new thing is acceptable, languages are not an exception; nevertheless, accepting mistakes could lead to students disregarding the importance of correcting them. In an appropriate environment with enough input of a second language, students will learn the language and they will make mistakes along the road, but it is important to be corrected by someone and learn from those mistakes (Kryeziu, 2015). Looking closer at the speech native speakers of any language produce even expecting a perfection, one will find irregularities. This research is not seeking perfection, but to know how to correct the mistakes a first language can cause. A factor that can either motivate or discourage students to improve their language skills in English as a second language is linguistic discrimination. Several attitudes towards a second language learner can make them stop wanting to practice and continue with their learning process. As Vanegas and colleagues (2016) found, discriminatory attitudes trigger responses such as fear, segregation, anxiety, and apprehension, among others. This restrains and limits class participation, quality of interaction, new concept and knowledge appropriation, and motivation towards the language and the course. The thought of not being able to achieve what they want, sets a barrier that actually impedes an effective learning process. Mocking people for having a foreign accent and making mistakes in a language is a problem bilingual people have dealt with for centuries. Basic human decency, politeness, and kindness aren’t the only reasons why people should abstain from mocking somebody else’s accent. From a scientific point of view, there can be no such thing as the “correct way how to speak.” Once linguists got over their bigotry, their job became descriptive—instead of telling people how they ought to speak, linguists started researching and documenting how people actually speak, without making value judgments or trying to establish normative rules. This means accepting that no language, dialect, regional variation, sociolect, or accent can be superior to another one—all the prestige associated with some languages is an imaginary social construct. Moreover, nobody should arrogantly proclaim that they have no accent—General American English and Received Pronunciation are also accents (Avester, 2019). Acknowledging our mistakes regarding crosslinguistic influence on second language acquisition has become more acceptable, since now bilingual people are more recognized than monolingual people. Embracing the differences between a native speaker and what a student can do as a foreign language speaker certainly reduces the hopes of improving those areas. References Ortega, M. (2008, February 11). Cross-linguistic influence in multilingual language acquisition: The role of L1 and non-native languages in English and Catalan oral production. Scielo. http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0123-34322008000100007 Del Mar, M., & Torrijos, R. (2009). Effects of cross-linguistic influences on second language acquisition: A corpus-based study of semantic transfer in written production. [https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/2993230.pdf] IMCO & Comité de Investigación del grupo de trabajo de Inglés para la competitividad y la movilidad social. (2013). Inglés es posible. IMCO. [https://imco.org.mx/wpcontent/uploads/2015/04/2015_Documento_completo_Ingles_es_posible.pdf] Chacon, S. (2020, April 22). MIT Scientists prove adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as children. Medium. https://medium.com/@chacon/mit-scientists-prove-adults-learnlanguage-to-fluency-nearly-as-well-as-children-1de888d1d45f Barrera, D. (2004, October). Can pronunciation be taught? A review of research and implications for teaching.ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/39436299_Can_pronunciation_be_taught_A_re view_of_research_and_implications_for_teaching Birner, B. (n.d.). Why Do Some People Have an Accent? | Linguistic Society of America. Linguistic Society of America. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/why-do-some-people-have-accent James M.A. (2012) Cross-Linguistic Influence and Transfer of Learning. In: Seel N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-14419-1428-6_702 Kryeziu, L. (2015, June). Learning from Errors. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307820706_Learning_from_Errors Vanegas, M., Fernández, J. J., González, Y. A., Jaramillo, G. J., Muñoz, L. F., & Ríos, C. M. (2016, June). Linguistic Discrimination in an English Language Teaching Program: Voices of the Invisible Others. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305789186_Linguistic_Discrimination_in_an_ English_Language_Teaching_Program_Voices_of_the_Invisible_Others Avester, A. (2019, November 9). Why You Shouldn’t Mock, Imitate or Joke About Other People’s Accents. Art of Andreas Avester. https://andreasavester.com/why-you-shouldntmock-imitate-or-joke-about-other-peoples-accents/
