L1 Interference on L2 Acquisition:

A Case Study of a Chinese Learner in the U.S.

Rahmah Fithriani

, Muhammad Dalimunthe

, Tien Rafida

, Sholihatul Hamidah Daulay

and Maryati Salmiah

Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara, Jl. Willem Iskandar, Medan, Indonesia

Keywords: First language, English as a lingua franca, expanding-circle country, second language acquisition, World

Englishes

Abstract: The significance of first language (L1) interference on second language (L2) learning has always been an

interesting topic of discussion related to language acquisition. This topic of discussion is particularly

important in expanding-circle countries in the context of English learning, particularly after the theory of

World Englishes (WEs) emerged in 1986. WEs advocate to embrace various interferent varieties of English

which are much influenced by the speakers’ L1. This study aims to investigate how L1 influences L2

acquisition in various linguistic aspects. The findings reveal that despite the participant’s being a student in

an English speaking-country university, Chinese as his first language still interferes his English in terms of

phonology, morphology, and syntax. Thus, they may serve twofold; first as a reminder that English teaching

and learning should not be aimed to develop students’ English competence similar and/or equal to the native

speakers of the language and two, as an advocate to raise awareness and to embrace WEs as the pluralistic

reality of the language.

1 INTRODUCTION

The relation of first language (L1) and second

language (L2) acquisition has been the focus of

research for decades. Gass and Selinker define L1

acquisition as the process a child acquires her first

language, while L2 acquisition as the process of

learning another language after the acquisition of the

first language (Gass and Selinker, 2008). One of the

focuses of research under this topic is how L1

influences L2 acquisition. This influence occurs

because when an L2 learner wants to communicate

in the target language either in spoken or written

form, she tends to rely on her first language

structures. Thus, if the structures are much different,

she will likely make a lot of errors indicating the

interference of L1 on L2 acquisition (Decherts,

1983).

L1 interference on L2 acquisition and vice versa

is inevitable. The interferences are even more

obvious in the acquisition of English as a second

language since it serves as a lingua franca, meaning

it is much used by people of different mother

tongues and countries of origin as a language of

contact in immediate interactions. The use of

English as lingua franca (ELF) by multicultural

people with a range of fluency and deviation from

the so-called Standard English in various linguistic

aspects has resulted in nativized and distinct

varieties of English spoken worldwide, which are

known as World Englishes (WEs) (Kachru, 1986).

However, despite the emergence of WEs and its

popular recognition worldwide, English teaching

and learning in outer circle countries, where English

plays no official role but is usually taught and

learned in schools such as in China, Japan, and

Indonesia, still holds the belief of native speaker

competence as a golden standard to reach (Fithriani,

2018). In relation to this belief, this study was

conducted to investigate various interferences of L1

on the English development of a Chinese learner

studying in a university in the United States. This

study is also aimed to provide evidence that the L1

interference on L2 acquisition is inevitable even for

those staying in English speaking countries. It is

hoped that the findings of this study raise awareness

of WEs particularly in the English teaching and

learning in Indonesia. In relation to the purposes of

this study, the research question can be formulated

584

Fithriani, R., Dalimunthe, M., Raﬁda, T., Daulay, S. and Salmiah, M.

L1 Interference on L2 Acquisition: A Case Study of a Chinese Learner in the U.S..

DOI: 10.5220/0008890805840588

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (ICMR 2018) - , pages 584-588

ISBN: 978-989-758-437-4

as follows: “what linguistic aspects of a Chinese

learner’s L1 that interfere his English acquisition?”

2 THE STUDY

This study used a qualitative approach. The data

were collected using two instruments: observation

and open-ended interview. The observation was

conducted in the participant’s English 101 class in a

state university in the Northeast area in the US for

half a semester (approximately 7 meetings). The

interview was conducted after the observation

ended, audio recorded, and later transcribed

verbatim (look at Appendix for the transcription).

The data were analysed using Structural Coding

which is defined as ‘acts as a labelling and indexing

device… to quickly access data likely to be relevant

to a particular analysis” (Namey at al. 2008, p. 141).

In this case, the labels were phonological,

morphological, and syntactic interferences. To

maintain the trustworthiness of the data analysis, a

native speaker of Chinese who is also an English

instructor was consulted as a peer for the peer

debriefing. The peer also served as an informant to

provide information related to common influences of

Chinese language on English learning.

2.1 The Participant

The participant of this study was Shine (a

pseudonym), a 19 years old student from Chengdu,

China. He was a native speaker of

Chinese/Mandarin who came to the US in the

beginning of August 2016 to study computer science

at a state university in the US. It was his second time

to be in the US. His first visit was when he

participated in a scientific competition for one

month long which also gave him the first

opportunity to practice his English in an English-

speaking community. Since he shared an apartment

with two other Chinese students, he spoke Chinese

for daily communication. He only used English in

classrooms or when he communicated with people

from different countries.

Just like most other students in expanding circle

countries, Shine learned English for the first time at

school when he was six years old. He admitted that

the reason he learned the language because he had

no choice as English is a compulsory subject for all

students in China. He also explained that his sole

purpose to learn English was to pass the test, so he

could avoid punishment from his English teacher as

well as his parents. During his study, he did not

practice his spoken English much as there were not

many people speaking the language in his

hometown. He used his English only in class or in

the English centre in his hometown.

3 FINDINGS

As an L2 speaker of English, Shine speaks English

fluently and his English can be considered good

overall. Although Shine was aware of being

recorded, he did not try to speak more slowly or in a

lower voice. He spoke in the same pace as he usually

does in his class and maintained the pace during the

interview. There were times when he had longer

pause while talking, but that was not because he did

not know what to say, he just needed more time to

think what to say. However, as most other L2

speakers of English, he made some mistakes and/or

deviation in his English due to some interferences

from his L1. The following is the analysis of Shine’s

L1 interferences on his English from three linguistic

aspects; Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax.

3.1 Phonological Interference

There are some sounds that most people speaking

English may find “unique” when listening to Shine’s

English. The term unique is chosen in this case

because these sounds do not appear as incidental

mistakes but more like a constant pattern which

comes repeatedly. Two of those sounds are /s/ sound

which is used to replace /θ/ and the /l/ sound at the

end of words which is pronounced in three different

variations.

The first unique sound appears every time Shine

says the words ‘think’ (L6, L25, L28, L33, L38,

L45, L48, L50, & L57) and ‘thing’ (L8 & L45). He

pronounces those words /sɪŋk/ and /sɪŋ/ instead of

/θɪŋk/ and /θɪŋ/. For the second unique sound /l/, first

it is omitted such as in the words ‘school’ (L4 &

L16) and ‘call’ (L61). So, /skul/ is pronounced /sku/

and /kɒl/ becomes /kɒ/. When Shine pronounces the

word ‘feel’ (L23), the /l/ sound is replaced by /n/ so

/fil/ becomes /fin/. Interestingly, for the word ‘fail’

(L61), the /l/ sound is pronounced clearly as /fel/.

During the debrief, the Chinese peer explained

that these interferences occurred because of Chinese

language influences on his English pronunciation.

She stated that most Chinese speakers learning

English have significant difficulty in pronouncing

some sounds in English such as /θ/ and /ð/ because

those sounds do not exist in Chinese and are likely

to be substituted by similar sounds appeared in their

L1 Interference on L2 Acquisition: A Case Study of a Chinese Learner in the U.S.

585

mother tongue (H. Y. Chang, personal

communication, November 10, 2017). In this case,

Shine substitutes the /θ/ with /s/ (personal

communication, November 10, 2017). Furthermore,

she said that the /l/ sound can only appear syllable-

initially in Chinese language. That is why most

Chinese speakers have more trouble with an /l/

sound at the end of a word, so what they typically do

is either to drop the final consonant sound or to

substitute it with the similar sound in their mother

tongue.

3.2 Morphological Interference

There are two significant morphological errors that

Shine constantly makes when using his English. The

first one is related to the verb conjugation confusion.

The term “confusion” is used because it is found that

he sometimes can use the verb correctly in simple

past when talking about his past experience in

learning English, for example the verb ‘forgot’ (L9).

However, most of the times he does not add the

inflectional morpheme –ed in the verbs to denote

past tense, like in the verbs ‘study’ (L10), ‘start’

(L12), and ‘ask’ (L16).

Sometimes Shine uses the auxiliary verb ‘do’

functioning as do-support which is used to support

the construction of the negative (Biber, Conrad &

Leech, 2002) in its present form when he talks about

his childhood experience in learning English (L5 &

L32-L33). There are also times when he does not

conjugate the verbs at all to indicate the tense, for

example the verb ‘teach’ (L4) is neither used in its

correct form ‘taught’ nor added the inflectional

morpheme –s ‘teaches’ to make it in agreement with

the third person singular subject ‘the teacher’ if he

wants to make it in the present tense. The

morphological error took place several times during

the interview as seen in the verbs ‘ask’ (L16 & L59)

and ‘call’ (L61).

The other error is gender confusion. Shine uses

the function morphemes ‘he’ and ‘she’

interchangeably when talking about the same person.

When he talked about his high school teacher who

helped him the most in learning English, he uses the

pronoun ‘she’ (L58) at first but uses ‘he’ (L61) later

to refer to the same person.

To get explanation why these morphological

errors take place, the Chinese peer was again

consulted to find out whether they have any relation

with Chinese language system. She explained that

there is no such thing as verb conjugation to denote

tenses in Chinese (H. Y. Chang, personal

communication, November 10, 2017). For example,

Chinese speakers know only a single word that

means go. If they want to use the present tense, they

simply say "I go", "yesterday I go" for the past

tense, and "tomorrow I go" for the future. She

furthermore said that verb conjugation is one of the

most difficult parts of the English language for

native Chinese speakers to master, simply because

there are so many tenses, and each can only be

properly used in select situations. The same reason

can be used to explain the gender confusion Shine

has when using personal pronouns, ‘he’ and ‘she’. In

Chinese, the separate gender pronouns do not exist.

Thus, when Chinese speakers learn English, they

often forget to use the appropriate pronouns to

indicate gender.

3.3 Syntactic Interference

The data analysis also reveals two points of L1

syntactic interference on Shine’s English. The first

one is the use of definite and indefinite articles

(‘a/an’ and ‘the’). It is interesting to see that Shine’s

mistakes in this particular part of speech happen

because he inserts the articles, especially the definite

article ‘the’, in places where it does not belong, for

example when he says, ‘the Chinese’ (L7) and ‘the

English’ (L9). However, in general he does not find

much difficulty to use articles in obligatory contexts

like in ‘the teacher’ (L4) and ‘a language’ (L32-

L33).

The second interesting syntactic aspect from

Shine’s speech is the reduplication he makes when

he wants to emphasize the meaning of particular

words. This pattern appears twice in the interview

when he explains the importance of memorization

for him in learning English (L59–L64). Instead of

using adverbs to intensify the verb ‘remember’ (L59

& L63), he repeats it twice which makes it awkward

not only to say but also to hear.

The Chinese peer seemed surprised when reading

the result of this analysis, especially the one related

to the use of article. Chinese has bigger number and

more complicated articles compared to those in

English, so articles should not be a problem for

Chinese speakers learning English (H. Y. Chang,

personal communication, November 10, 2017). She

had no explanation for these phenomena. Her

assumption is that Shine does not have the

vocabulary to use to emphasize the meaning, so he

repeats it twice.

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4 DISCUSSIONS

There are three theories that can be used to explain

these linguistic errors made by the participant in this

study. The first is the interlanguage or

developmental errors. The term interlanguage is

used by the American linguist Larry Selinker to refer

to learners’ developing second language knowledge

(Larry Selinker, 1972). Lightbown and Spada

furthermore argue that one of the characteristics of a

student’s interlanguage analysis is the omission of

function words and grammatical morphemes that

seem to be general and to occur in all interlanguage

system. That is why Shine sometimes can use the

verbs correctly, but some other times he makes

mistakes by either using the wrong form of the verbs

or not conjugating the verbs at all (Lightbown and

Spada, 2013).

The second one is overgeneralization errors, that

is, errors caused by trying to use a rule in context

where it does not belong (Lightbown & Spada, p.

44, 2013). The overgeneralization might be the best

reason used to explain the article insertion made by

the participant.

The last theory is simplification errors, where

elements of a sentence are left out or where all verbs

have the same form regardless of person, number or

tense (Lightbown & Spada, p. 44, 2013). The

simplification errors might explain the verb

conjugation confusion.

5 CONCLUSION &

IMPLICATION

L1 has a significant influence on the learning of L2

and research has much been conducted to show the

interference of L1 on L2 acquisition. This present

study particularly highlights some difficulties that

Chinese speaking learners may face to learn English,

which include phonological, morphological, and

syntactic interferences. This study may contribute to

the growing body of research showing how L1

influences L2 acquisition. The findings of this study

could also be used to inform English teachers in

expanding countries like Indonesia who still hold the

belief that native-like English competence is the

golden standard to reach that students’ L1

interferences are inevitable. Thus, they should

advocate the recognition of WEs in their classroom

practice and not focus too much on helping students

have the ability to use English like the native

speakers.

REFERENCES

Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Leech, G., 2002. Longman

student grammar of spoken and written English.

England, UK: Pearson Education.

Dechert, H. W., 1983. How a story is done in a second

language. In C. Faerch & G. Kasper (Eds.), Strategies

in Interlanguage Communication (pp. 175-196). New

York, NY: Longman.

Fithriani, R., 2018. Discrimination behind nest and nnest

dichotomy in ELT professionalism. In The 1st Annual

International Conference on Language and Literature,

KnE Social Sciences & Humanities, pp. 741-755.

DOI: 10.18502/kss.v3i4.1982.

Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L., 2008. Second language

acquisition: An introductory course (3rd ed.). New

York, NY: Routledge.

Kachru, B. B., 1986. The alchemy of English: The spread,

function, and models in nonnative English. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Lightbown, P. M. & Spada, N., 2006. How languages are

learned: Oxford handbook for language teachers.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Namey, E., Guest, G., Thairu, L., & Johnson, L., 2008.

Data reduction techniques for large qualitative data

sets. In G. Guest & K. M. MacQueen (Eds.),

Handbook for team-based qualitative research (pp.

137-161). Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

Selinker, L., 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of

Applied Linguistics, 10, 209–231.

APPENDIX

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION

1. Keys to the transcription:

a. RF = Rahmah Fithriani (the interviewer)

b. S = Shine (the participant)

c. L = Line

d. [..] = short pause

e. [….] = extended pause

f. ( ) = non-verbal responses

g. ... = The participant dragged the words spoken

h. XXXXX = Inability to understand the words

spoken

2. Transcription

RF: L1: Okay. Let’s start with ‘when did the first

L2: time you learn English’?

S: L3: Maybe in my six years old in [..] in my

L4: school and the teacher teach English but

L5: do not really hmmm pay attention to this

L6: [..] to this class because I think it’s just

[..]

L7: just mess and the Chinese is most

L1 Interference on L2 Acquisition: A Case Study of a Chinese Learner in the U.S.

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L8: important thing so I [..] so I forgot it and

L9: forgot to hmmm study the English. So

L10: actually I really study English is in my

L11: hmmm about maybe [….] 12 years old

L12: and the [..] that is real time I start to

learn

L13: English.

RF: L14: why did you learn English?

S: L15: Because (laughed) (looked at his friend)

L16: the school ask me to have to (laughed

L17: louder) study English.

RF: L18: How did you feel when the first time

you

L19: learned English?

S: L20: How (looked at me and frowned) what

L21: [..] (lower voice) excuse me?

RF: L22: How did you feel?

S: L23: Feel?

RF: L24: Aha

S: L25: I think [..] I almost forget but [..] I think

L26: it’s just [….] ac…actually I…I will

need L27: XXXXX not know what kind of

people

L28: you see in that time so I just think that’s

L29: mmmm ehmmmm it’s just [..] just like

L30: other class and errrr just learn it and do

L31: not errrr [….] pay more attention to it

L32: errrr I… I do not even know it’s just a

L33: language I just think it is just for test

L34: (laughed) and the [..] and the class so

L35: (lower voice) (stopped talking)

RF: L36: so what part of English do you think the

L37: most difficult to learn?

S: L38: Ooo I think [..] let me see [….] I think

the

L39: words. To remember the words

RF: L40: The vocabulary?

S: L41: oh ya ya hmmm no hmmm [….] our

L42: Chinese got have completely different

L43: hmmm language system so it’s hard for

L44: me to remember one a, b, c, d, e, f, g

L45: errrr this thing is hard I think it’s hard

L46: (laughed) but maybe for other countries

L47: or or our language but the same

language

L48: system errr like French people they

think

L49: that maybe it’s easy to remember the

L50: word but I think it’s difficult. Ya.

RF: L51: Okay. Because now you speak fluent

L52: English, who helped you the most?

S: L53: Who helped me the most? (lower voice)

L54: (looked at his friend)

RF: L55: Who or what helped you the most in

L56: learning English?

S: L57: Who? maybe [….] I think it’s my high

L58: school teacher. I [..] hmmmm she

always L59: ask me to remember remember

and if you L60: do not pass [laughed] usually

fail to

L61: remember or fail the test he he call my

L62: mom [laughed] so [laughed louder] I

L63: have to remember remember but it’s

L64: good for me. It’s right.

RF: L65: I think that’s all. Thank you very much

L66: for your time

S: L67: Sure

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