Second Language Acquisition

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First of all, it is important to clarify what is Second language acquisition because this investigation is based in the role of “transfer” in SLA. “SLA is the study of how second languages are learned. In others words, it is the study of the acquisition of a non-primary language; that is, the acquisition of a language beyond the native language” (Freeman & Freeman, 2004). In regards to this, learners who study a second language, in our case English, usually have an interference of their native language, in this sense Spanish, so when they are speaking English, they do it like in Spanish. Students in most the cases have mistakes in grammar, word order, vocabulary, plurals, pronunciation and others. According to Susan M. Grass and Larry Selinker, …show more content…
This happens because of the transference of native language rules. First of all, it is important to clarify what is Second Language Acquisition because this investigation is based in the role of “transfer” in SLA. “SLA is the study of how second languages are learned. In others words, it is the study of the acquisition of a non-primary language; that is, the acquisition of a language beyond the native language” (Freeman & Freeman, 2004). In regards to this, learners who study a second language, in our case English, usually have an interference of their native language, in this sense Spanish, so when they are speaking English; they do it like in Spanish. Students in most the cases make mistakes in grammar, word order, vocabulary, plurals, pronunciation and others. According to Susan M. Grass and Larry Selinker, “individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language” (2008). English scholars make mistakes like “the car red is very nice” instead of “the red car is very nice” because in Spanish is not used the adjective before the noun as in English. Although the sentence “car red is very nice” is grammatically incorrect, it makes sense. Pupils commonly commit mistakes in the pronunciation of words. In English, the words are not pronounced as they are written whereas in Spanish, there is one relationship between the pronunciation of the words and the way they are written. It is common an English student pronounce the words like they are written. “The main claim with regard to transfer is that the learning of task A will affect the subsequent learning of task B. What is of the interest is how fast and how well you learn something after having learned something else” (Gass & Selinker, 2008). The native language is the base to learn other languages, so
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