1. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. How the structures of Romance language specifically assist or detract from the acquisition of English 2. How the grammatical, vocabulary, and sound systems of Romance languages affect the acquisition of English. You will be able to: 1. Assist learners from a romance language background in overcoming their L1 distractors

2. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTRODUCTION In the mid-twentieth century, common language acquisition theory held that a comparative structural analysis of two languages would reveal contrasts that could then be used to accurately predict second-language learners’ difficulties – this theory became known as the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) CAH emphasized native language transfer (both positive and negative) from the L1 to the L2. Various linguists developed hierarchies to predict the relative difficulty of learning various aspects of the target language depending on the native language. CAH had some major weaknesses: It was over-simplified and over-generalized - precise predictions were difficult to make and not verifiable

3. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTRODUCTION Beginning the 1970s, linguists began moving towards the idea of Cross-Linguistic Influence (CLI). Linguists moved away from prediction and started using their knowledge of LI influences to understand and correct learner errors as they occurred. CLI recognizes that there is considerable variation among L2 learners and that individual factors influence second-language acquisition. We will look at how the characteristics of Romance languages typically assist or detract from English acquisition, and consider techniques to address L1 interference.

4. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ITALIAN (with information obtained from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm Italian is an Indo-European language that is closely related to French (89% lexical similarity), Spanish (84% lexcial similarity), as well as Portuguese. Italian speakers have an advantage because much English syntax and vocabulary is of Latin origin. Italians’ consciousness of L1 grammar can be useful in L2 learning; however there are differences that can lead to problems.

5. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ITALIAN ALPHABET (with information obtained from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm Use the same 26 letters as in English, although the letters j, k, w, x and y are considered foreign and are only used in import words. Learners may misspell dictated words containing the English letters r and e, which sound like Italian letters a and i. Some words that are capitalized in English (days, months, languages, etc) are not capitalized in Italian.

6. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ITALIAN PRONUNCIATION (with information obtained from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm Problems with the vowel differences in minimal pairs such as sheep/ship, bet/bat, cup/cap Tendency to 'swallow' weak vowels in English causes difficulties both in listening comprehension and the production of natural-sounding speech. Pronunciation of consonants can be difficult (/θ/ /ð/ sounds often pronounced as /d/ or /t/). Italians often fail to aspirate the ‘h’ in words such as house, hill, hotel ….or to add an aspirated h to all words beginning with a vowel. Most Italian words end with a vowel - leads Italian learners to affix a short vowel sound to in English ending with a consonant. This, together with temptation to give full value or emphasis to all syllables, results in sentences that sound like: I at ə soup ə for lunch ə.

7. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ITALIAN GRAMMAR (with information obtained from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm 5 inflected tense forms: for the present, simple past, imperfect, future and conditional. The other tenses are formed with auxiliaries. The auxiliary do, however, has no equivalent in Italian, which leads to mistakes such as: What you do? or I no like German food. Does not use perfect tenses to make a connection to the present in the same way that English does. This results in problems such as I have done my homework on the bus. A similar lack of correspondence in the use of tenses in the two languages leads to interference errors such as: What will you do when you will leave school? or I live in Germany since 1999. Shades of meaning, which are shown in English by varying the modal verb (must/should/ought to/might want to, etc.) are typically conveyed in Italian by an inflected form of the verb dovere (must). This often results in an overuse of must when Italians speak English.

8. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ITALIAN GRAMMAR (with information obtained from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm In English the meaning of a clause is largely dependent on the order of words in it (typically Subject Verb Object). Italian, being a more inflected language, allows greater variations in word order. Furthermore, adjectives in Italian usually follow the noun, not precede it as in English. These differences can result in non-standard syntax of Italian learners of English. Italian learners frequently have problems with the correct use of articles in English. Although both the definite and the indefinite article exist in both languages, their use often does not coincide. As a result it is common to hear sentences such as: Is he teacher? or The health is the most important in the life. The subject pronoun is not required in colloquial Italian, so learners may say sentences such as: Is impossible.

9. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ITALIAN VOCABULARY (with information obtained from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/italian.htm Italian and English share many words that are derived from Latin. This facilitates the acquisition of vocabulary, but comes with the associated problem of false friends. For example: ‘bravo’ means good or clever (looks like brave in English) ‘fame’ means hunger (looks like fame in English) Italian is a phonetic language. For this reason Italian learners suffer the usual problems that native speakers of such languages have with English. Namely, that they cannot predict with confidence the spelling of any new word that they hear, or the pronunciation of any new word that they read.

10. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm Like other Romance languages, Spanish is an indo-European language, which means that L1 Spanish speakers may benefit from lexical similarities with English. False cognates, grammatical differences and pronunciation are often challenging. Spanish is a major language, with up to 400 million native speakers in Spain, Latin America and the USA.

11. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - ALPHABET (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm Spanish uses the Latin alphabet. The vowels can take an acute accent, and there is the additional letter ñ. When spelling English words or writing them from the teacher's dictation, beginning Spanish students may make mistakes with the English vowels a, e, i. The consonants h, j, r, y may also cause trouble, since they have significantly different names in Spanish. The English writing system itself causes no particular problems to Spanish learners. Beginners, however, may be tempted to punctuate questions or exclamations as follows, since this is how it is done in Spanish: ¿What is your name? / ¡What a goal! Punctuation of direct speech may also be a problem because quotation marks are not used in Spanish.

12. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - PRONUNCIATION (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm The phonological system of Spanish is significantly different from that of English, particularly in the aspects of vowel sounds and sentence stress. These differences cause serious obstacles to Spanish learners being able to acquire a native-English-speaker accent. Spanish has 5 pure vowels and 5 diphthongs. The length of the vowel is not significant in distinguishing between words. This contrasts with English, which has 12 pure vowel sounds and 8 diphthongs and where the length of the vowel sound plays an important role.As a result, Spanish learners may have great difficulty in producing or even perceiving the various English vowel sounds. Specific problems include the failure to distinguish the sounds in words such as ship/sheep, bat/bet/bought, pool/pull

13. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - PRONUNCIATION (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm Common pronunciation problems include: failure to pronounce the end consonant accurately or strongly enough ; e.g. cart for the English word card or brish for bridge or thing for think problems with the /v/ in words such as vowel or revive difficulties in sufficiently distinguishing words such as see/she or jeep/sheep/cheap tendency to prefix words beginning with a consonant cluster on s- with an /ε/ sound; so, for example, school becomes eschool and strip becomes estrip the swallowing of sounds in other consonant clusters; examples: next becomes nes and instead becomes istead. Spanish is a syllable-timed language. When Spanish speakers transfer the intonation patterns of their mother tongue into English, which is a stress-timed language, the result can be barely comprehensible to native English speakers. This is because the meaning or information usually conveyed in English by the combination of stress, pitch and rhythm in a sentence is flattened or evened out by the Spanish learner.

14. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - GRAMMAR (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm Although Spanish is a much more heavily inflected language than English, there are many aspects of verb grammar that are similar. The major problem for the Spanish learner is that there is no one-to-one correspondence in the use of the tenses. So, for example, a Spanish learner might incorrectly use a simple tense instead of a progressive or a future one: She has a shower instead of She's having a shower; I help you after school instead of I'll help you after school. Problematic for beginners is the formation of interrogatives or negatives in English. The absence of an auxiliary in such structures in Spanish may cause learners to say: Why you say that? / Who he saw? / Do you saw him? / I no see him. / I not saw him. Spanish word order is generally Subject-Verb-Object, like English. However, Spanish allows more flexibility than English, and generally places at the end of the sentence words that are to be emphasized. This may result in non-standard syntax when Spanish learners speak or write English.

15. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - GRAMMAR (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm There are numerous other minor differences in the two languages that may result in negative transfer. Here are a few examples. The way that things are done in Spanish can be inferred from the mistake in English: Do you have sister? It's not easy learn English. Where's my pencil? Have you seen him? I am more tall than my brother. Was snowing when I got up. She took off the glasses.

16. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - VOCABULARY (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm Due to shared Latin influence English and Spanish have many cognates, and the corresponding collection of false friends, such as eventual (English translation > possible) or particular (English translation > private). Since the Latin-derived words in English tend to be more formal, the Spanish student will benefit when reading academic text. He or she may sound too formal, however, if using such words in everyday spoken English. Conversely, phrasal verbs, which are an essential aspect of colloquial English, are difficult for Spanish learners and may obstruct listening comprehension. Long noun groups such as the standard language classroom teacher- student interaction pattern, commonly found in academic English text, are troublesome for Spanish speakers, whose language post- modifies nouns.

17. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPANISH - SPELLING (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm Spanish has a strong correspondence between the sound of a word and its spelling. The irregularity of English in this respect causes predictable problems when Spanish learners write a word they first meet in spoken language or say a word first met in written language. A specific problem concerns the spelling of English words with double letters. Spanish has only 3 double-letter combinations cc, ll, rr. English, in comparison, has 5 times as many. Spanish learners often reduce English double letters to a single one, or overcompensate by doubling a letter unnecessarily; for example hopping for the present participle of hope.

18. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm As another Indo-European language, French shares syntactical and lexical similarities with English. Differences in phonology can cause difficulties in understanding and being understood in English.

19. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH - ALPHABET (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm The French alphabet contains the same 26 letters as the English alphabet, plus the letters with diacritics: é (acute acent) è à ù (grave accent), ç (cedilla), â ê î ô û (circumflex), ë ï ü (diaeresis). French ESL students may have interference problems in class when the teacher spells out words. For example, beginners commonly write i or j when the teacher says e or g.

20. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH - PRONUNCIATION (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm There are some differences in the sound systems of the two languages that can cause French learners problems of comprehension and speech production. Spelling errors may result from the frequent lack of correspondence between the pronunciation of English words and their spelling. A typical pronunciation problem is the inability to correctly articulate the vowel sounds in minimal pairs such as ship/sheep, live/leave, full/fool. Because the tip of the tongue is not used in speaking French, learners often have problems with words containing the letters th (/θ/ /ð/), such as then, think and clothes.

21. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH - PRONUNCIATION (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm Frequent omission of the /h/ sound at the beginning of words. This sound does not exist in French and leads to problems such as 'Ave you 'eard about 'arry?, or overcompensation by pronouncing the /h/ in words like hour, honour. French learners typically have problems with the unpredictable stress patterns of English words, particularly of cognates. (Word stress in French is regular.) Learners may also be unwilling to engage in the prevalent vowel reduction of unstressed syllables in English. Consider, for example, the way that English native speakers swallow the first syllable of the word tomorrow (t'morrow). These problems result in the stereotypical staccato French accent of beginning learners.

22. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH - GRAMMAR (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm French and English verb grammar have considerable areas of overlap. Both languages, for example, have auxiliaries, participles, active/passive voice, past/present/future tenses. However, there are some differences that can cause interference in the production of English. A typical problem is the wrong choice of tense. Despite the external similarities of verb grammar, there are frequent occasions when French uses a different tense to convey a particular meaning than English. Some common examples are the following faulty sentences: I have played tennis yesterday. I can't play now. I do my homework. I live in London since last year. I will tell you as soon as I will know. Because French does not use the auxiliary do, learners may have problems in asking questions. For example, they may simply make a statement and use question intonation: He is rich?, or they may invert subject and verb: How often see you her?

23. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH - GRAMMAR (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm Although English and French share the same basic Subject-Verb-Object syntax, there are numerous variations in the word order of sentences more complicated than the I bought a new car type. Here are a few common errors: I play sometimes golf. I have too much eaten! It was the film the best I have seen. Do you know what is the time? Article use in French is similar but not identical to that in English. French pronouns are based on the gender of the noun they are associated with; and the possessive adjectives agree with the nouns they qualify. Interference in these areas will lead to mistakes such as: He is doctor. This is the John's car. What stupid thing to do! The German is easier than the English. Do you like my umbrella. He was very cheap. I met John and her wife for dinner.

24. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute FRENCH - VOCABULARY (with information from http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm)http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/FRENCH.htm A large number of words in the two languages have the same Latin roots and are mutually comprehensible, although this applies more to academic/technical words than to everyday vocabulary. The problem, however, is the significant number of false friends. Here are just a few example: ‘cave’ means cellar in English ‘isolation’ means insulation in English ‘demander’ means ask in English ‘sensible’ means sensitive in English ‘ignorer’ means to not know in English

25. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Question 1 in the Task Journal. Task Journals can be submitted via email to paula@llinstitute.com (preferred) or printed and handed in. paula@llinstitute.com