logo ELT Concourse teacher training
Concourse 2

Comparing languages: Stage 1, 1st language influences

influence

There's no right answer ...

... but there are a number of reasons.  Essentially they boil down to one of two things:

The second reason doesn't seem very sensible, given that the writer has got most of the sentence right.  What seems to have happened is that the writer has carried over structures (or a lack of them) from his/her first language into English.  This is usually known as first language (or L1) interference.

think write Question: What percentage of learners' errors (excluding pronunciation) do you think are caused by interference from L1?
Write down a number before you click here.

So, between one third and a half of all errors were caused by 1st language interference.
Note that the lowest figures are for the youngest learners.  Why should this be?

The assumption has been made that young children have fewer expectations about language but adults compensate for a lack of knowledge by assuming that the language they are learning will behave roughly in the same way as the language(s) they already speak.

Ellis also wrote: "there is now clear evidence that L1 acts as a major factor in L2 acquisition” but there are other good reasons for learning about other people's languages;

There is a guide on this site to language interference and language facilitation which provides a good deal more detail (new tab).

Before we go on ...

think write Question 2: How many languages are spoken in the world?
Write a number on a piece of paper and then click here to go to Stage 2.

Index Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 The lesson