Читать книгу Social research applied to english language teaching in Colombian contexts - Wilder Yesid Escobar Alméciga - Страница 14

As has been demonstrated in the prior examples, the typological structure of motion events often varies between languages and, as a consequence, may present specific challenges to the language learner within this realm. Students whose first language is verb-framed (e.g. Spanish) may have difficulty conceptualizing a motion event in the manner of a satellite-framed language such as English (Ionin & Zubizarreta, 2010). The challenge, as a result, would be for L2 English learners to begin to think of verb constructions in a new way, a task which has been shown to increase the processing load of the mental faculty (Larrañaga et al., 2011). Thus, it can be assumed that miscues will be abundant, as the processing load will require a higher degree of cognitive dedication to the computation of learned rules and the production of grammatical sentences. This may be especially true for those learners who lack the understanding of language typology and the differences between languages. In a study designed to target the effects of L1 transfer, Cadierno (2004) sought to determine how second-language learners come to express motion events in an L2 with differing typology. Her results suggest that L2 learners often use knowledge from their L1 when they are confronted with situations in which they lack the knowledge to express themselves appropriately. Such findings support the concept of explicit instruction in the second-language classroom in order to minimize L1 transfer. The consequence of such transfer is non-native speech production, particularly evident within multi-motion event constructions requiring various satellites. In order to combat this non-native production, the importance of the direct instruction of satellite framing has been suggested so that the fossilization of the L1 structures can be avoided (Spring, 2010).

Unfortunately, many educators are unfamiliar with the linguistic typology paradigm and, therefore, often neglect any direct instruction in the syntactic constructs of English phrasal verbs. Formal instruction in this realm often affects performance in a second language as the comparison of linguistic forms may prove beneficial to the L2 learner. Such cross-linguistics inferencing is often ignored in the language classroom, yet the consideration of such syntactic differences may provide L2 English learners with the necessary tools for success (Kao, 2001).