Blog Post #3 - Bethanny

Which transfer problems like these have you noticed in the writing of second language writers?

While I can only think of the students that I have had in the Spanish Writing Center, transfer problems seem to also be apparent in the process of learning Spanish. There are some phonological transfer when it comes to the letter 'h'; while the letter is silent in Spanish, students would usually pronounce it like they would in English. Pronouncing single and double 'r'  also seems to be an issue sometimes. There are also grammatical transfers such as the use of articles; the definite article (el & la) is used frequently in Spanish, and it can be hard for students to know when to use them. Regarding discourse transfers, like Chinese, Spanish also has two ways in saying 'you' depending on our relationship with the person. When speaking with our peers, we use 'tú'. However, when speaking with someone's parent or a teacher, we would be required to use 'usted'. The phrase "have fun" in English is also an issue because in Spanish it is actually a verb ('divertirse'). Students would usually say "tener divertido" which literally means 'have fun', but that phrase is not used in Spanish.

 I did my undergrad in Taiwan and had to learn Chinese. I realized after a few years, I also experienced transfer problems in my discourse. In Chinese, sometimes the verb is used twice in a sentence, and some of my peers would make this addition in English as well. Instead of saying "let me see", they would say "let me see see". I thought this was very interesting.

Comments

  1. KathFebruary 11, 2020 at 7:22 AM

    Hi Bethany,

    This is very interesting to consider, particularly thinking about how to teach sentence structure in English writing, when the grammar follows different rules and requires layers of mental pivoting. I especially found your explanation of how a relationship can impact how the use of "you" in a language to be of interest, considering how we teach writing for an audience during our courses, and have to consider a variety of potential relationships as our audience.

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