Language transfer: How much do EFL learners perform collocation conventions in English?

Abstract

Contrastive linguistics is a field of linguistics that reflects applied linguistics to foreign language learning. It aims to compare a mother tongue and a foreign language, to identify the differences and contrasts between them, and thus to provide effective foreign language teaching methods. In resetting parameter language learners transfer linguistic features into two distinct system. Accordingly, while some features of the foreign language can be transferred to the mother tongue, it is also possible for the mother tongue to affect the target language. This phenomenon is called transfer. Transfer has both a positive and a negative side. Its negative side is called interference and its positive side is called positive transfer. While positive transfer makes learning easier, interference makes it difficult. This study aimed at analyzing Turkish EFL learners’ L1 interference on L2 collocational errors that they uttered in written production. Errors that participants made were categorized under three headings a) errors involving L1 word order; b) errors involving prepositions; and c) errors involving wrong word choice. The data was gathered by two writing tasks and translation. The findings suggested that L1 interference is observed in all of the tasks regardless of the level of the students. However, wrong word choice error is among the most recorded type of error in all levels of students. Besides, lower proficiency level students do more errors than those who have higher proficiency level. However, regardless of the proficiency level, all participants make crosslinguistic errors involving wrong word choice in their L2 writing productions.

Keywords

• interference
• collocation
• cross-linguistic influence
• second language acqusition
• error analysis

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