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Abstract

The effect of first language transfer on second language acquisition and learning has been a major theoretical concept in second language research and pedagogy since the 1950s. In order to give a historical perspective, the authors offer a brief presentation of some of the major topics from the broad spectrum of issues that have been examined by the applied linguistics research community during the past six decades and some significant developments in neuroimaging and cognitive science that have allowed researchers to investigate the role that first language plays in transfer to second language during neural activity and cognitive processing. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications for second language instructors.

Keywords

Contrastive analysis error analysis interlanguage language distance neuroimaging

Introduction

We believe that transfer has been and remains a major theoretical concept in second language (L2) research and pedagogy for the following reason: ‘Studies have repeatedly shown that L2 learning is affected by previously acquired competencies’ (Koda, 2014: 303; see also Hamada and Koda, 2008). Because of transfer's impact on L2 research and pedagogy, we think that a review of some of the major developments in L2 transfer research would be helpful to the L2 pedagogical community, to researchers, and to graduate students in applied linguistics programs. We included information on transfer from some contemporary neuroimaging studies that address how first language (L1) experience can shape L2 processing. Scholars who conduct research on transfer and English teachers who utilize the results of such research also need to be aware, in our opinion, that neuroimaging work involving how language operates in the brain provides a deeper understanding of the mechanics, processes, and behavioral data associated with language processing.

Major developments to be reviewed include the contrastive analysis hypothesis, error analysis, markedness, the Speech Learning Model, morpheme-acquisition order, the natural order hypothesis, interlanguage, the Competition Model, the role of L1 knowledge in acquiring L2 grammar, cross-linguistic perspectives on L2 reading and L2 writing and access to universal grammar, and neuroimaging studies. Unfortunately, all these pieces of information are in different places and there is a lack of a synthesis or a narrative review of these developments. In this paper, we intend to review them, and, as a follow-up on these developments, we conclude our paper with some pedagogical implications for L2 instructors, keeping in mind that ‘translating research into practice is not an easy task because not all insights brought to light in empirical studies can be taught directly or even have direct utility in increasing instructional efficiency’ (Koda, 2014: 313).

L1 Transfer

One of the earliest claims that L1 influences L2 learning began in the late 1950s (e.g. Lado, 1957). Proponents of the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) believed that transfer from the learner's L1 could result in errors, and the greater the distance between the L2 and the L1 for a particular structure, the greater the probability for error and/or learning difficulty. The need for pedagogically relevant language teaching material was a rationale for much of the contrastive analysis work that was conducted in the 1950s and in the 1960s (Gass and Selinker, 2001).

There was a strong version and a weak version of the CAH. The strong, predictive version was associated with predictions based on a comparison of the L1 and the L2. The weak, explanatory version began with an analysis of the errors in learners’ production of the target language and then attempted to account for those differences on the basis of the L1–L2 differences identified by the contrastive analysis. The weak version evolved into what became known as error analysis.

In terms of phonology,

L2 pronunciation errors were explained in terms of a comparison of the phonemes and their distribution within the respective NL [native language] and TL [target language], and although phonemes figured prominently in the predictions of the CAH, a large role was also played by allophones. (Eckman, 2014: 92)

Maximal learning difficulty in L2 pronunciation was a focus for Lado and for Stockwell and Bowen (1965). Lado claimed that an L2 learner's re-categorizing two or more native language (NL or L1) allophones into different L2 phonemes might pose a learning difficulty and lead to mispronunciations. Stockwell and Bowen also investigated maximal learning L2 pronunciation difficulty and extended CAH predictions. They compared L1 and L2 sounds to determine whether a sound was phonemic, allophonic, or absent in either language. The maximum phonological difficulty was determined to be an L2 learner having to master an L2 allophone not found in the L1 (Eckman, 2014).

Stockwell et al. (1965a, 1965b) extended the maximal learning difficulty framework by creating a hierarchy of the different ways in which languages can differ. The different ways in which languages can differ can be conceptualized as categories or types of difficulty. As Gass, Behney, and Plonsky (2013) point out:

The most difficult category is that in which there is differentiation: The native language has one form, whereas the target language has two. Second and third types of differences between languages occur when there is a category present in language X and absent in language Y. A fourth difference is found in situations in which the opposite of differentiation occurs: that is coalescing. Correspondence occurs when two forms are used in roughly the same way. (Gass et al., 2013: 89–90)

Corder’s (1967) seminal paper established the importance of regarding learners’ errors as evidence of an underlying, predictable, rule-governed system which L2 learners use to impose regularity on the target language and to process L2 data. Error analysis researchers made no predictions; instead, they produced detailed descriptions of different kinds of L2 learners’ errors. Comparisons were made between the errors produced and the target language form itself:

There are two main error types within an error analysis framework … Interlingual errors are those that can be attributed to the NL (i.e. they involve cross-linguistic comparisons). Intralingual errors are those that are due to the language being learned, independent of the NL. Intralingual errors are also known as developmental errors. (Gass and Selinker, 2001: 79–80)

Both types of errors were considered to provide evidence of the state of a learner's current competence in the L2.

Continuing the theme of the effects of L1 transfer on L2, some researchers considered markedness as a measure of relative difficulty between the L1 and the L2, while other researchers considered the similarity between the L1 and the L2. Influenced by Trubetzkoy (1939) and the Prague School of Linguistics’ concept of typological markedness, Eckman (1977) developed the markedness differential hypothesis which incorporates typological markedness as a measure of relative difficulty. According to typological markedness, ‘[a] structure X is typologically marked relative to another structure, Y if every language that has X also has Y, but every language that has Y does not have X’ (Eckman, 2014: 94).

Flege (1992, 1995) continued the line of L1 transfer research by emphasizing the similarity between the L1 and the L2 as a potential source of difficulty for L2 learners. L2 sounds that are similar or equivalent to L1 sounds may pose a learning difficulty because they may be difficult to perceive or classify as different and the L2 learner does not set up a new category of contrast.

Flege's (1995, 2007) Speech Learning Model attempted to account for differences in the learnability of L2 phonetic segments by examining both perception and production. The accuracy of the perception of segments determines an upper limit on the accuracy of the production of the same segments. A learner can establish phonetic categories. The Speech Learning Model also hypothesizes that the perceived phonetic dissimilarity of an L2 sound from the closest L1 sound is a determinant of whether a new phonetic category will or will not be established for the L2 sound. The more distant from the closest L1 speech sound an L2 speech sound is judged to be, the more likely it is that L2 learner—regardless of age—will establish a new category for the L2 sound (Flege, 2007: 15).

Here is a final note on phonology. Gass et al. (2013: 184) reported that an L2 learner's L1 in part shapes the L2 syllable structure because

learners attempt to maintain their NL syllable structure. When the TL permits syllable structures that are not permitted in the NL, learners will make errors that involve altering these structures to those that would be permitted in the NL (Broselow, 1987).

In the 1970s, L2 researchers began to notice that the contrastive CAH lacked predictive validity. Some L2 learners did not produce the errors that the CAH predicted, and sometimes, L2 learners made errors that were not predicted by the CAH. In many cases, the L2 errors looked very similar to the development errors that L1 children make (e.g. overgeneralization errors such as she eated an apple).

Influenced by Roger Brown's (1973) longitudinal study of the language development of three children, L2 researchers began to conduct ‘natural order’, developmental sequence, morpheme-acquisition order studies of morpheme suppliance in obligatory contexts (e.g. Perkins and Larsen-Freeman, 1975). L2 researchers utilized subsets of the morphemes that Brown's group used, some of which included

present progressive -ing

plural -s

possessive -s

third person singular present tense -s

irregular past tense verb forms

copular be

auxiliary be

articles the and a

regular past tense -ed.

The results of these studies indicated that both L1 and L2 learners pass through sequences of development, and these sequences of development of morphology and syntax were similar in L1 acquisition and L2 acquisition from learners from different language backgrounds (Lightbown and Spada, 2013). L2 researchers suggested that the accuracy order of the morphemes supplied in obligatory contexts could not be explained by L1 transfer, which led some researchers to claim these findings as strong evidence against the CAH. The role of transfer was diminished by the morpheme-acquisition order studies that revealed a ‘natural order’ or morpheme acquisition or a developmental sequence that cut across various L1 backgrounds of the study participants (Lardiere, 2014).

Krashen’s (1982) Monitor Model and Selinker's (1972) interlanguage hypothesis evolved from the contrastive analysis hypothesis’ lack of predictive validity and established new paradigms for L2 acquisition research and pedagogy. Krashen’s (1982) Monitor Model of L2 acquisition which was influenced by Chomsky's theory of L1 acquisition contained five hypotheses, one of which was the natural order hypothesis. Krashen based the natural order hypothesis on L2 research findings that L1 and L2 acquisition of morphology and syntax unfold in predictable sequences. It should be remembered that the morpheme-acquisition order studies focused on a very limited number of grammatical morphemes (a very small segment of the English language) and that the implications of these studies may have been overgeneralized to acquisition in general.

Another development that evolved from the contrastive analysis hypothesis lack of predictive validity and the development of error analysis was Selinker’s (1972) notion of IL. L2 researchers assume that L2 learners create a systematic, dynamic language system (i.e. an interlanguage) containing elements from the learner's L1, elements from the target language, and other elements whose origin is neither the L1 nor the L2 (Gass and Selinker, 2001; Gass et al., 2013). In an L2 learner's interlanguage, function words and grammatical morphemes are frequently omitted. Interlanguages continually evolve because ‘restructuring of the IL grammar is input-driven, occurring when there is a mismatch between the initial (L1) representation and what is needed to parse or accommodate the L2 input’ (Lardiere, 2014: 111; Wu et al., 2020).

The continuum toward attained L2 proficiency is not smooth; it is sometimes discontinuous (Perkins et al., 1996), because learners revise their hypotheses about the interlanguage as they receive more input. Some features in the L2 learner's interlanguage may stop changing, which Selinker termed fossilization. According to Lightbown and Spada (2013: 43), fossilization may occur due to the fact that ‘exposure to the second language does not include instruction or the kind of feedback that would help them to recognize differences between their interlanguage and the target language’.

MacWhinney's (2005, 2007, 2014) Competition Model and its revision, the Unified Competition Model, offered some interesting insights on the transfer of L1 effects onto the L2. The Competition Model holds that during language comprehension, a learner must detect a set of cues. Reliability and availability determine a cue's strength. Underlying cue-driven learning is a ‘process of acquiring coalitions of form-function meanings and adjusting the weight of each mapping until it provides an optimal fit to the processing environment’ (MacWhinney and Bates, 1989: 59). Although L2 acquisition relies on the same mechanisms as L1 acquisition, the L2 cue-driven process of learning is seen to be more difficult than L1 learning because of a previously established set of relationships (Morgan-Short and Ullman, 2014). ‘When the forms align well, mapping an L1 form to L2 will result in positive transfer’ (MacWhinney, 2014: 220). Obviously, if there are mismatches between L1 and L2 forms, negative transfer may occur. According to MacWhinney (2014), L2 learners will attempt to transfer any pattern having a functional or perceptual match between L1 and L2.

MacWhinney (2014) stated that there should be ease of transfer for the basic pragmatic functions that help structure conversations, lexical meaning, auditory and articulatory patterns, and lexical semantics. On the other hand, MacWhinney posited difficulty or improbability of transfer for item-based syntactic patterns and formal conjugational or declensional patterns. Given a choice of several possible L1 candidate forms for transfer to L2, L2 learners are likely to prefer the least marked forms.

According to Lardiere (2014: 110), most generative researchers recognize the critically important role of prior-language knowledge in accounting for L2 grammatical acquisition. Generative research has focused on two questions:

To what extent (if any) does the grammar of the L1 constitute the initial ‘departure point’ for a learner's assumptions and representation of the L2 grammar?

To what extent (if any) is the ultimate attainment of the L2 circumscribed by the categories and features of the L1?

Research by Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994, 1996) and Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) addressed these questions.

Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994, 1996) studied Korean and Turkish L1 speakers learning L2 German. These researchers focused on the L2 learners’ production of functional elements in spoken German and hypothesized that only L1, open-class lexical categories such as noun phrases and verb phrases were transferred to the L2. This hypothesis became known as the Minimal Trees Hypothesis which holds that L1 syntactic categories including case and tense will not transfer and would have to be acquired in the target language.

Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) proposed the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis, an argument that L1 complementizer phrases, inflectional phrases, determiner phrases, and associated feature specifications such as aspect, agreement, case, tense, etc. make up the initial state of the L2. It may be the case that L2 learners have not acquired the functional morphemes associated with these categories in the L2. A particular feature that is required by the L2 but not previously activated in the L1 will not be acquired (Hawkins and Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).

Transfer and access were also addressed in discussions about access to universal grammar. White (2000) presented five possible positions concerning the availability of universal grammar to L2 learners, and those positions have access and transfer as their loci:

Full transfer/partial (or no) access: the initial state of learning is the L1 final state. One has access to UG [universal grammar] through the L1.

No transfer/full access: … the starting point for acquisition is UG.

Full transfer/full access: This position, like the first one, assumes that the starting point for L2 acquisition is the final state of L1, but unlike the first position, assumes the availability of UG.

Partial transfer/full access: The partial-transfer/full-access position argues that both L1 and UG are available concurrently.

Partial transfer/partial access: … ultimate attainment of an L2 is not possible because there is permanent impairment in the acquisition system (as cited in Gass and Selinker, 2001: 176–178).

In the previous sections of the paper we have reviewed studies of the effects of L1 transfer on L2 phonology, morphology, and grammar. In the following sections, we review studies of L1 transfer in reading comprehension and the relationship between students’ L1 and L2 writing development.

Research on cross-linguistic perspectives on L2 reading comprehension includes transfer as a major theoretical concept:

Based on this notion of transfer, L2 reading research generally assumes that L2 reading skills are shaped jointly by transferred first language (L1) skills, L2 linguistic knowledge, and L2 print input. L2 reading is cross-linguistic, entailing continual interaction and assimilation of L1 and L2 factors. (Koda, 2014: 303)

There are four hypotheses that are germane to cross-linguistic perspectives on L2 reading comprehension: developmental interdependent hypothesis, central processing hypothesis, script-dependent hypothesis, and orthographic depth hypothesis.

Cummins’ (1979, 1991) developmental interdependence hypothesis was based on his research on bilingual children in Canada. He posited a common underlying proficiency between two languages which, purportedly, could help pre-kindergarten to 12th grade (PreK-12) students achieve high levels of literacy. Cummins’ assumption was that, all other things being equal, native language literacy would assist L2 literacy (Lems et al., 2017); in other words, ‘prior literacy experience affects L2 reading development’ (Koda, 2014: 313). These observations must be tempered by the fact that L2 reading comprehension depends on a broad spectrum of factors, including some aspect of L1 literacy (Birch, 2015; Hamada andKoda, 2008; Koda, 2005; Lems et al., 2017; Van Gelderen et al., 2007).

Koda (2014) advanced two hypotheses to explain how language-specific and non-language specific skills affect reading development in an L2: the ‘central processing’ hypothesis and the ‘script-dependent’ hypothesis.

The central processing hypothesis (Da Fontoura and Siegel, 1995) is related to the concept of common underlying proficiency in Cummins’ (1979, 1991) developmental interdependence hypothesis. As we pointed out in a previous section of this paper, Cummins proposed that L1 reading proficiency largely determines L2 proficiency. The ‘central processing’ hypothesis posits that

children who are good readers in their first language have a much better chance of achieving higher reading proficiency in a second language. Conversely, children with specific reading disability in one language are likely to experience similar difficulties in another language. (Koda, 2014: 306)

The importance of orthographic transparency has been captured in the ‘script-dependent’ hypothesis (Gholamain and Geva, 1999) that advances the notion that phonological transparency of a writing system facilitates decoding development. Phonological transparency or the lack thereof is one factor that can explain variations in L2 reading comprehension acquisition: ‘L1 and L2 distance determines the extent of adjustment necessary for the assimilation of transferred L1 skills in L2 reading’ (Koda, 2014: 307).

Linguistic distance (degrees of similarity) between two languages is explained by the orthographic depth hypothesis which was proposed by Katz and Frost (1992). The orthographic depth hypothesis was intended to explain how children learn to read. Children having transparent orthographies were expected to decode and to spell with more proficiency than children having opaque orthographies. It can therefore be concluded that readers having different orthographies engage different processes in learning to read.

Along a similar line of research, L2 writing researchers have also examined extensively the relationship between students’ L1 and L2 writing development (Connor, 1996, 2004; Liu and Du, 2018). The focus has not only been on the possible transfer from the L1 to the L2 on the lexical and syntactic levels but also on high-order discourse levels. Kaplan’s (1966) early work has laid a solid foundation for the research activities investigating the effects of different cultural patterns on L2 language production (see also Matalene, 1985; Mohan and Lo, 1985). Based on this work, further advances have been made to look deeper into the real issues facing L2 writers in addition to the cultural patterns that were simply regarded as separable and incompatible with the L2 writing norms (see e.g. Wei et al., 2020; Zhang, 2021; Zhang and Cheng, 2021; Zhang TF et al., 2021; Kirkpatrick, 1997). For example, Sheldon (2011) reported that in L2 writing there is always the influence of the L1 rhetorical traditions that naturally come into play and these L1 rhetorical patterns have impacts on L2 writing schemata, so much so that these L1 rhetorical features will highly likely exhibit themselves in L2 texts (see Wei et al, 2020; see also Zhang, 2013, for further comments). Nonetheless, such transfers have not been always necessarily regarded as an interference by some scholars despite the expectations of having to follow the conventions in L2 writing (Connor, 2004; Kubota, 2010). It has been generally agreed that rhetorical transfer is a mental activity that L2 writers go through and in all likelihood it is a psycholinguistic phenomenon (Kellerman, 1983; see also Gass, 1988; Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008). When transfer is regarded as a psycholinguistic process, it is usually understood that the structural relation between the target language and the source language is not the only factor that imposes constraints on crosslinguistic transfer in L2 writing. Given that writers have to show their individual traits in their writing, even though they write in their L2, they have the opportunity to make choices with regard to how they should produce their written text. Cognitively speaking, such decision-making processes of L2 writers result from utilization of their integrated cognitive capacities (Odlin, 2003; Yu and Odlin, 2015). According to Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008: 387), the process of transfer is a rather unique cognitive process undergirding L2 acquisition. The centrality of L2 learners in the occurrence of transfer has been recognized in that it is the learners who make transfer possible as a ‘transferor’ (Lobato, 2006: 438) or, to use Larsen-Freeman's (2013) words, L2 learners are agents who need to make decisions in the context of task environments. The idiosyncratic patterns become obvious when each individual's language production is scrutinized (Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008: 208). In other words, at the individual levels, different learners have varying degrees of success in the transferring process, as pointed out by Rinnert et al. (2015) and Rinnert and Kobayashi (2016). The investigation into how these individual factors contribute to the transfer helps deepen our understanding of the complexity of L1-to-L2 rhetorical transfer in L2 writing, which should not be simply viewed as interference (seet Kabayashi and Kinnert, 2012; Wei et al., 2020). One typical line of research that has been intensively and extensively carried out in the field of L2 writing is written corrective feedback (WCF) (see Zhang and Cheng, 2021; Bitchener and Ferris, 2012).

A suitable coda for the previous section of the paper is the following quote from MacWhinney (2014: 212): ‘The fact that L2 learning is so heavily influenced by transfer from L1 means that it would be impossible to construct a model of L2 learning that did not take into account the structure of the first language.’

Contemporary Neuroimaging

We believe that it is important to include an introduction to neuroimaging studies in our review of work on the effect of L1 transfer on L2 acquisition and learning because neuroimaging offers a new window on how language operates in the brain and offers novel opportunities to study the role of transfer. Many important discoveries, other than the transfer studies we will introduce, have already been reported. For example, evidence has shown that convergence of print and speech processing across a network of primary left-hemisphere regions of the brain is a predictor of future reading skills in children and a marker of reading ability in adults (Zou et al., 2021). Functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that reading disabilities are associated with reduced activation in the phonological and orthographic regions such as the left temporoparietal region and the left occipito-temporal gyrus, respectively: ‘There is rising interest in bilingual children with reading difficulties, because research on bilinguals with reading disabilities provides important opportunities to examine origins of reading difficulties in different languages’ (Yan et al., 2021: 3).

The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study brain activity is approximately 20 years old. Consequently, it is a relatively new field in cognitive neuroscience, medicine, and neuropsychology. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of language processing have been conducted to study the cortical representation of language in the brain and to produce an indication of the neural regions that are thought to be involved in language processing (Perkins and Jiang, 2019).

We present brief summaries of four articles which report that:

The L1 brain network can be carried over to L2.

Influenced by the L1, the brain can adapt to different L2s during reading.

Language distance between L1 and L2 played a role in brain activation during a short-term training study in which English speakers learned Chinese and Spanish simultaneously.

L1 experience shapes L2 processing.

Tan et al. (2003) used fMRI to study Chinese-English bilinguals’ brain activation during the phonological processing of Chinese and English. Chinese has a logographic writing system which is considered morpho-syllabic because each character maps to a syllable and a morpheme (Cao, Sussman, et al., 2017; Cao, Wang, et al., 2019). English has an alphabetic writing system. Tan et al. (2003) conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, Chinese-English bilingual learners were asked to decide whether a pair of synchronously exposed Chinese characters or English words rhymed with each other. In the second experiment, native English speakers were asked to make the rhyme decision on the same set of English words that were used by the Chinese subjects.

In the first experiment, 12 male, native Chinese speakers from China who started to learn English as their L2 after age 12 participated in the study. Their ages ranged from 29 to 39 years. They began using their L2 at 12 years and had received at least a minimum of 12 years of formal training in English. Twelve male, native English speakers, aged 25 to 38, participated in the second experiment in which the design and procedures were identical to those in the first experiment, except that the native English speakers did not view nor respond to the Chinese stimuli.

The results indicated that the bilingual subjects were applying the L1 system to L2 reading. The phonological processing of Chinese recruited a neural system known to contribute to spatial information representation and working memory. The researchers assumed that the peak activation of this system was relevant to the unique feature of Chinese that a logographic character has a square configuration that maps onto a monosyllabic unit of speech. When the bilingual subjects performed a phonological task on English words, this neural system was most active. The brain areas mediating English monolinguals’ fine-grained analysis were only weakly activated.

Kim et al. (2016: 25) tested the hypothesis that ‘language distance between first language (L1) and second language (L2) influences the assimilation and accommodation patterns in Korean-Chinese-English trilinguals’. It was assumed that the distance between English and Korean is less than that between Chinese and Korean because of orthographic transparency. English and Korean have alphabetic writing systems; Chinese has a logographic writing system.

In the context of this research, an assimilation pattern means that the L1 reading network has sufficient procedures to accommodate the graphic demands of the L2 without change. With an accommodation pattern, the reading network must add neural resources to accommodate the graphic demands of the L2 (Nelson et al., 2009).

Two groups of subjects were recruited in Beijing and one group was recruited in Chicago. There were 31 native Korean speakers whose L2s were Chinese and English (mean age = 21.6). Different participants within the Korean group performed a rhyming task in Korean, in Chinese, and in English. Acronyms identify the Korean subgroups as follows: the first letter represent the F1; the second letter, the language of the task: KK group = 27, KC group = 27, KE group = 16. A second group of 20 native Chinese speakers (mean age = 21) was recruited in Beijing; this group only performed the Chinese task (CC). A third group of 24 native English speakers (mean age = 21.5) was recruited in Chicago, and they only completed the English task (EE).

The stimulus words for the sequentially presented visual word pairs in Chinese and English contained two rhyming conditions: one with similar orthographic and phonological endings (O+P+) and one with different orthographic but similar phonological endings (O-P+). The non-rhyming conditions presented similar orthographic but different phonological endings (O+P-) and different orthographic and phonological endings (O-P-). The English words were monosyllabic without homophones. The Chinese words were two characters long with no homophones at the word level. The researchers defined similar orthography as the same phonetic radical for the second character of the word. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, the subjects were asked to perform a rhyming judgment task on sequentially presented word pairs in Chinese, English, or Korean.

The results of the study suggest that the native Korean speakers engaged their L1 network while learning English; on the other hand, however, they engaged a network similar to native Chinese speakers while learning Chinese. The researchers also conducted regions of interest (ROI) studies and found that the left middle frontal gyrus was more activated when the native Korean participants read Chinese than when they read Korean or English. The left middle frontal gyrus plays a crucial role in the coarse-grained mapping between orthography and phonology. This study provides evidence that linguistic distance between L1 and L2 in terms of writing systems has an effect on whether assimilation or accommodation is engaged.

Cao et al. (2019) conducted a short-term training study in which English speakers learned Chinese and Spanish simultaneously. The study addressed the effects of orthographic transparency and opacity and the dual-route model. The dual-route model involves assembled and addressed phonology. Assembled phonology refers to the process of converting each grapheme to a phoneme and then assembling the phonemes into a syllable. Addressed phonology refers to the process of directly retrieving a stored phonological representation for the entire word.

Seventeen adult (mean age = 19.47) native speakers of English were trained to learn Chinese and Spanish words during 10 training sessions, each lasting an hour and a half, over a 2-week period. Three different training methods were used: handwriting learning, phonological learning, and passive viewing learning. Participants were taught 72 Chinese characters and 72 Spanish words. The participants were split into three groups, and they received a different set of words for each method.

The fMRI analysis revealed greater activation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) for Spanish reading compared to Chinese reading. On the other hand, the researchers found greater activation in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and in the bilateral middle occipital gyrus (MOG) during Chinese reading compared to Spanish reading. The researchers concluded that Spanish and English are associated with different processing mechanisms and that learning Chinese relies on the inferior frontal gyrus, and learning Spanish relies on the superior temporal gyrus. They believe these findings are consistent with the language distance between the two languages’ orthographic transparency. The lexical route is predominant in Chinese because of there being no grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rule, and consequently, a Chinese learner must connect the whole character with the whole syllable. There is a more consistent one-to-one grapheme-phoneme mapping system in Spanish so learning Spanish relies on a sub-lexical pathway for phonological assembly.

Cao, Sussman, et al. (2017) and Cao, Wang, et al. (2019: 9) conducted an fMRI neuroimaging study of the brain mechanism of Chinese and English speakers learning Spanish words using speech-based and handwriting-based lexical learning approaches. The research focused on ‘how people with different L1 reading experiences utilize different mechanisms within the brain in response to specific learning methods for L2 lexical learning’.

Cao, Sussman, et al. (2017) and Cao, Wang, et al. (2019: 255) found evidence that L1 influences learning; that is, a transfer effect from L1. In the handwriting-learning condition, English L1 speakers engaged a phonological network including the left inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and superior temporal gyrus to a greater extent in the handwriting-learning condition than in the speech-based learning condition. The results suggest that handwriting facilitates sub-lexical phonological processing in Spanish word reading. On the other hand, the highly skilled Chinese L1 speakers engaged a right fusiform gyrus network in the handwriting-based learning condition. The researchers maintain that the engagement of different brain mechanisms depends on the type of L1 reading experience. Cao, Wang, et al. (2019) stated that ‘When L1 is alphabetic, handwriting facilitates the phonological network; when L1 is logographic, greater reliance on visuo-orthographic analysis is carried over from L1 to the new language, even when the new language does not have a heavy demand on visuo-orthographic analysis.’

The four neuroimaging studies reviewed here suggest that:

The L1 brain network can be carried over to L2.

Influenced by the L1, the brain can adapt to different L2s during reading.

Language distance between L1 and L2 can play a role in brain activation during a short-term training study.

L1 experience shapes L2 processing. As the neuroscience research community produces more language-based neuroimaging studies, we are confident that more brain-based research on the effect of L1 transfer on L2 acquisition and learning will appear.

Pedagogical Implications

Based on our review of the effects of L1 transfer on L2 acquisition and learning, we offer the following pedagogical implications for L2 instructors.

General

‘The impact of L1 knowledge (and processing routines) in acquiring a second language cannot be denied’ (Lardiere, 2014: 120). Researchers such as Lardiere (2014) and Ringbom and Jarvis (2009) assume that learners depend on perceiving L1-L2 similarities between individual items and their functional equivalences between two underlying grammatical systems. Therefore, teachers should focus on similarities between the L1 and the L2: ‘In general terms, a good strategy would be to make use of, and even overuse, actual similarities at early stages of learning’ (Ringbom and Jarvis, 2009: 114). An implication is that the fewer the similarities, the more difficult it would be for L2 learners to establish correspondences between L1 and L2 units.

Reading

‘L2 reading research generally assumes that L2 reading is shaped jointly by transferred first language skills, L2 linguistic knowledge and L2 print input’ (Koda, 2014: 303). Koda suggested that teachers could address the disparities between L1 and L2 by incorporating diagnostic reading assessments. Diagnostic data would permit a comparison of requisite reading skills across diverse learner groups. By doing so, teachers could identify deficiencies in the requisite skills. Teachers’ awareness of long-term impacts could serve as a guide for constructing assessment tasks and for interpreting the assessment data.

Writing

At least two implications follow from a review of the effect of L1 transfer on L2 acquisition and learning. First, ‘if it is the case that certain tasks elicit more complex language, then this should inform teachers and writing assessors who may want to vary writing tasks accordingly’ (Polio, 2014: 328). Second, cultural and social preferences for specific ways of organizing information in written texts vary from culture to culture. A person's L1 and culture may influence writing in an L2. Teachers may want to present simplified descriptions of writing styles from different global language groups to their writing students to help them understand how different language groups have their own preferred ways of organizing information in written texts (Perkins and Jiang, 2020; Grabe and Stoller, 2002).

Phonology

Two important pedagogical implications for L2 instructors who teach L2 phonology follow. First, Eckman (2014) proposed that learning how to pronounce a target language involves much more than simply learning the phonetic sounds of the target language. Eckman recommended that a pedagogical strategy to address some pronunciation errors must be based on the nature of the interlanguage phonological system, not on the sounds produced by the learner. The rationale for this recommendation is that a deeper phonological analysis would reveal the nature of the phonological representation stored in the learner's mental lexicon that underlies the errors produced. Teachers should also become aware of the differing distributions of formal features among morphological items in the L1 and the L2 and then focus on the contextual conditioning environments for expressing those features. Second, speech visualization technology is being used in prosodic instruction: ‘Results suggested that learners who received audio-visual feedback demonstrated improved perception and production of intonational contrasts in L2’.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Kyle Perkins

Lawrence Jun Zhang

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The Effect of First Language Transfer on Second Language Acquisition and Learning: From Contrastive Analysis to Contemporary Neuroimaging

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

L1 Transfer

Contemporary Neuroimaging

Pedagogical Implications

General

Reading

Writing

Phonology

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

References