N. K.

The First Language——A stumbling Block in Second Language Learning

In New York, there are many Chinese immigrants, most of whom are adults.

Because they did not learn English in China or just have little idea about English,

which is considered to be the main communicative language in America, many

Chinese adults flood into classes of English, which is regarded as their second

language (L2). However, all of these adults get used to communicating in Chinese

(L1). Under this circumstance, the first language (Chinese) needs to be considered

during their process of learning English. This is what we call “the role of the first

language in second language learning.” For some people, the first language is not as

highly valued in second language learning because they think that many errors in

adult second language performance spring from their first language. Nevertheless, for

some others, the native language is very important for a second language learner. In

their opinion, the first language helps a great deal for the learners to understand and

remember the second language. Is the first language playing a constructive role in

second language learning or just holding the learners back?

In the history of second language research and practice, many linguists have

focused on the topic of "first language interference", that is, “in the procedure of

learning a second language, learners transfer the elements of one language to another

at various levels, such as the first language influencing the second in terms of order,

borrowing some words from one language and converting them in another.” (Skiba,

1997)According to Stephen D. Krashen, "first-language-influenced errors clearly do

exist in second language performance,” and in his research on second language

acquisition he finds that "this influence appears to be strongest in complex word order

and in word-to-word translations of phrases.” (P.65) The first language is presumed to

be the major source of syntactic errors in adult second language learning because

researchers have found a high incidence of inter-lingual problems in translation.(P. 64)

They believe that adult second language learners substitute their mother tongue word

by word into the second language. Errors in sentence construction often come out in

this way because of the difference between English and Chinese. Krashen points out

that "syntactic errors made by adult second language students are common to them

because of their different linguistic backgrounds. (P. 64)

In opposition to the idea of "first language interference", some scholars state that

the phenomenon of "first language equivalence" does exist in second language

learning. Many adults would like to convey the meaning of the second language

lexical items by associating the words with their equivalent meanings in their native

language. In Jimmy Thomas’s research, he admits that "association between the first

language and second language is more direct than any other approaches for the

learners to catch the meaning of new words because this association places referent

and signifier by direct physical contact." (P.405) Even though sometimes this

association is superficial, this way of learning the vocabulary is good for an adult

second language learner. Some research has shown that many of the skills learned in

the native language can be transferred easily to the second language. These skills, of

course, include the concepts of lexical items. In second language classes, the students
like to use the bilingual vocabulary lists because these lists can save them time in

understanding what the words mean. They don’t need to define the words in the

second language since they all have ideas what these items actually are.

In the study of a second language, translation is inevitable and plays a very

important role. Many errors can be traced back to the process of translation. A very

common error, when students are doing L1 to L2 translation, is the syntactic error,

which mainly indicates error of word order and sentence construction. When the

performers translate their first language into the second language, they always tend to

translate in the order of native words according to their concepts of the structure of

first language. Duskova (1969) provides some evidence for word-for-word translation

errors. He studied some written errors in the English compositions of Czech

postgraduate students and concluded that interference from the mother tongue was

plainly obvious in errors of word order and sentence construction. An example for the

placement of the direct object after an adverb, which occurs in the sentence "I met

there some Germans”, is a word-for-word translation of the Czech way of expression

into English. (Cited from Krashen, P.65) Even though Duskova's research was not

about Chinese, we can quote his idea into Chinese-to-English learner. Because of the

different structure between Czech and English, students easily make mistakes in

translation. Chinese, like Czech, is a language very different from English. Chinese

adults would make the same mistakes as the Czech students do. For example, a

Chinese adult student would say “she every day goes to school,” not “she goes to

school every day.” The reason why the second language learners make these errors is,
"they are called on to perform before they have learned the new behavior (English).

The result is padding, using old knowledge (L1), and supplying what is known to

make up for what is not known." (Krashen, p.67) Generally speaking, second

language learners do not have perfect ideas about the second language. When they

need to perform in this unfamiliar language, they always rely on their first language,

which they have gotten used to and have a great deal of knowledge about. They fail to

recognize that the L1 is not the same as the L2. Substitution from the first language

generates syntactic errors in word-for-word translation into the second language.

Even if the students can translate in the right word order into the second

language, there is still a problem in the translation from the L1 into the L2. Since

adult students associate the English words with Chinese words, in this process, a

question is raised by Thomas as to "whether or not the meaning of a given second

language can be adequately conveyed by associating the unit with the equivalent

native unit." (p.403)The association between the first language items and second

language items in bilingual vocabulary is direct for a learner to catch the referent and

signifier, but this directness is superficial. There are many words in English that have

the same translation in Chinese. For example, "table" and "desk" both mean a piece of

furniture with a flat top supported by legs. Chinese students may mix up them because

they don't notice the difference between these two words. So while translating the L1

into the L2, they would make a mistake such as saying "kitchen desk" instead of

"kitchen table". The students would choose any of the synonyms to fill up the

sentence. But in fact, this equivalence doesn't express the right meaning exactly in the
students' original meaning because there is still a difference between two words even

though they have the same Chinese meaning. "The complication caused by different

ranges of meaning or different degrees of overlap can and do cause misunderstandings

in other contexts than for the one where lexical equivalence was perfectly adequate

and legitimate." (Thomas P. 407) Even students can make up a perfect sentence in

their native language, after this equivalent translation, they may choose synonyms

which do not match the context to substitute their native words. We can not deny that

the bilingual vocabulary is very useful for a second language learner at the first stage

of English learning; but in a later stage of the L2 learning, students can not rely too

much on the bilingual vocabulary. They need to remember the lexical differences in

the words. Otherwise, they would be confused because of their native language.

Influence from the native language doesn't only appear in the students' written

English, but also can be observed in spoken language and communication. Chinese

adult students, who get used to the grammar-translation method where the L1 plays an

important role, have little ability to speak and understand English. (Yu, P.195)

Because of understanding the foreign language in the first language, students try to

express every sentence by translation. In this way, they neglect the spoken English,

slang and idioms. The native language makes the students less communicative. With

English taught in their native language, students tend to rely primarily on the first

language and then transfer to the second language. Under the influence of Chinese,

adult learners would say "give you" instead of "here you are,” which is a common

spoken expression in communication. They would express the meaning of "an apple
of one's eye" by saying "a pearl on one's hand,” which is translated from Chinese. In

fact, "an apple of one's eye" is an idiom, which cannot be translated by other

languages. So in this circumstance, the L1 prevents students from fully understanding

English.

When I communicate with some Chinese-adult English learners, I have found

that the bad influence of the L1 is greater than the good effect. Take the word order as

an example. I ask them to express their deep love for something in English. They all

say "I very much love you". In fact, we would say "I love you very much" in correct

English. It is not unreasonable to explain this situation. In Chinese, intensive adverbs

are put prior to the verb, while English would put them at the end of the sentence.

Besides this problem, I find that students easily make errors in use of some words

which are of similar or same meanings. For example, there are many words in English

are translated into Chinese to describe the behavior of using eyes to notice something,

such as "see", "watch", and "read". But they all go with different objects in English.

We can say "watch TV", not "see TV", and "see a film", not "watch a film". Students

are so confused when they are using synonyms or near synonyms. Similarly, an

English word can be used in different terms but translated differently in the first

language. Once in class we talked about the verb "play", which can match with

different objects and describe different behavior in Chinese. We can say "play the

piano", "play basketball", "play computer", and "play cards.” But when the students

were asked to describe these different behaviors, they have never thought that all of

them can be said with the same word because in their native language all the verbs are
different words. Generally, this situation exists in second language learning.

According to all the research and evidence, first language tends to lead the

learners into an inferior position. Even though it helps the performers understand

some basic knowledge in the L2, generally speaking, the influence of the first

language is not as good as what we think. The bad influence of "first language

interference" is a stumbling-block for the second language learners. Because of the

difference between the L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English), errors can be easily made by

transferring from L1 to L2. If the students want to make great progress in L2, they had

better try their best to get rid of the bad influence from native language.
 Work Cited

Krashen, Stephen D, Principles and Practice in Second Language Learning and

Acquisition, California, Pergamon Press Inc. 1981

Skiba, Richard, “Code Switching as a Countenance of Language Interference”, The

Internet TESL Journal, 3.10, Oct. 1997

<http://iteslj.org/Articles/Skiba-CodeSwitching.html>

Thomas, Jimmy, “Translation, Language Teaching, and the Bilingual Assumption”,

TESOL Quarterly, 10.4, page 403-410, Dec. 1976

Yu, Liming, “Communicative Language Teaching in China: Progress and Resistance”,

TESOL Quarterly, Volume 35, NO.1, page 194-197, Spr. 2001