Negative transfer

Language transfer (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and crosslinguistic influence) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from one language to another language. It is the transfer of linguistic features between languages in the speech repertoire of a bilingual or multilingual individual, whether from first ('L1') to second ('L2'), second to first or many other relationships. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language. Language transfer (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and crosslinguistic influence) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from one language to another language. It is the transfer of linguistic features between languages in the speech repertoire of a bilingual or multilingual individual, whether from first ('L1') to second ('L2'), second to first or many other relationships. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language. When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer: here, the 'correct' meaning is in line with most native speakers' notions of acceptability. An example is the use of cognates. However, language interference is most often discussed as a source of errors known as negative transfer, which occurs when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not the same in both languages. Within the theory of contrastive analysis, the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities, the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected. For example, in English, a preposition is used before a day of the week: 'I'm going to the beach on Friday.' In Spanish, instead of a preposition the definite article is used: 'Voy a la playa el viernes.' Novice Spanish students who are native English-speakers may produce a transfer error and use a preposition when it is not necessary because of their reliance on English. According to Whitley, it is natural for students to make such errors based on how the English words are used. Another typical example of negative transfer concerns German students trying to learn English. Since the German noun 'Information' can also be used in the plural – 'Informationen' – German students will almost invariably use 'informations' in English, too, which is grammatically wrong.From a more general standpoint, Brown mentions 'all new learning involves transfer based on previous learning'. That could also explain why initial learning of L1 will impact the learning of L2. The results of positive transfer go largely unnoticed and so are less often discussed. Nonetheless, such results can have a large effect. Generally speaking, the more similar the two languages are and the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur. For example, an Anglophone learner of German may correctly guess an item of German vocabulary from its English counterpart, but word order, connotations and collocation are more likely to differ. Such an approach has the disadvantage of making the learner more subject to the influence of 'false friends'. In addition to positive transfer resulting in correct language production and negative transfer resulting in errors, there is some evidence that transfer from the first language can result in a kind of technical, or analytical, advantage over native (monolingual) speakers of a language. For example, second-language speakers of English whose first language is Korean have been found to be more accurate with perception of unreleased stops in English than native English speakers who are functionally monolingual because of the different status of unreleased stops in Korean from English. That 'native-language transfer benefit' appears to depend on an alignment of properties in the first and the second languages that favors the linguistic biases of the first language. During the 1950s, memory research began investigating interference theory. This refers to the idea that forgetting occurs because the recall of certain items interferes with the recall of other items. Throughout the 1950s, researchers provided some of the earliest evidence that the prior existence of old memories makes it harder to recall newer memories and he dubbed this effect 'proactive interference'. During the same time, researchers began investigating negative transfer. Negative transfer concerns itself with a detrimental effect of prior experience on the learning of a new task, whereas proactive interference relates to a negative effect of prior interference on the recall of a second task. The most obvious and used proactive interference and negative transfer paradigm from the 1950s and 1960s was the use of AB-AC, or AB-DE lists. Participants would be asked to learn a list of paired associates in which each pair consists of a three letter consonant-vowel-consonant, nonsense syllable (e.g. DYL), used because it was easy to learn and lacked pre-learned cognitive associations, and a common word (e.g. road). In this paradigm two lists of paired associations are learned. The first list, (commonly known as the AB list) would consist of nonsense syllables as a primer (which constituted the 'A' term), followed by a word (which constituted the 'B' term). The second list would consist of either the same nonsense syllable primer and a different word (A-C list) or a different nonsense syllable primer and a different word (D-E list). The AB-AC list was used because its second set of associations (A-C) constitutes a modification of the first set of associations (A-B), whereas the AB-DE list were used as a control. Shortly afterwards proactive interference was demonstrated with the Brown-Peterson paradigm. A single Brown-Peterson trial consists of a study list, a retention interval and then a recall period. Each list may consist of a handful of related items and are presented individually every few seconds. For the duration of a short retention interval, subjects are then asked to perform an engaging distractor task such as counting backwards in sevens, or thinking of an animal with every letter in the alphabet to minimize rehearsal. Subjects are then asked to recall the items from this second list. Although the lists from previous trials are now irrelevant, the fact that they were studied at all makes it difficult for subjects to recall the most recent list. Negative transfer was examined by researchers in the 60s and found differential learning between trials. Specifically, differences in the learning rates of list 2 provided clear evidence of the negative transfer phenomenon. Subjects learned an A-C paired association list to a criterion of all associations correct, following learning a list of A-B paired associations to criterion. Ultimately, it was found that those subjects took an increased number of trials to complete the learning task compared to subjects who did not learn the A-B list or from subjects who had to learn a D-E list.