First language's interferences on the second language in the syntactic structure of the second learner's writing: a study of Kikuyu and Kamba secondary school students in Kitui S.D.A school
Abstract
Transfer is a pervasive term and this has led to diverse interpretations and research practices of it. This study looks at the related literature and studies on L 1 interferences on the syntactic structure of the L2. It also makes a survey about approaches in transfer studies, with the aim of unfolding the mystery behind poorly written English essays by secondary school students often blamed on L1 interferences on the learning of L2.
More so, this investigation too aims at edifying the assumed positive transfer that could ease learning of L2, plus dig out other probable remedies to the Negative transfers to be noted to interfere in the learning of L2.The research will focus on Form 2 and Form 3 students from Kitui S.D.A School. Key theories to guide this study will be Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Error Analysis (EA). Data for the study will be collected through interviews, participant observation, use of archival documents and feedback sessions.
Students' composition scripts will be used as the main tool together with oral skills exercise sessions. Data collected will be analyzed by simple statistical procedures of accumulating the errors, finding their mean, mode and medians, then making conclusions and classifying them according to the speculated classifications given in the conceptual framework.
Keywords: transfer or interference, linguistic transfer, second language acquisition, positive transfer, negative transfer, contrastive analysis(CA),error analysis (EA),mother tongue(Ll ),target language or second language(L2), and interlingual transfer.
Publisher
University of Nairobi, Kenya