Keywords:
Second language acquisition, grammar, learning strategies, interference.
Introduction
Learning
strategies, which have been defined as "specific actions, behaviours, steps,
or techniques used by learners to enhance their own learning" (Scarcella
and Oxford, 1992, p. 6), are often considered essential in facilitating the acquisition
of a foreign or second language. More specifically, if teachers intend to maximise
learners' potential, efforts need to be made to train learners to use strategies
that can improve their learning effectiveness (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). This leads
us to consider the possible ways in which strategy training should be conducted.
If strategies are taught in ways that are not suited to the needs of the learners,
it may be difficult to expect any desired result in strategy training over the
short term. It is therefore important to look into various factors affecting the
learning process before attempts are made to design strategy training.
One of the
factors influencing the learning process and the use of strategies mentioned above
is interference or negative transfer, which may be defined as "the use of
a negative language pattern or rule which leads to an error or inappropriate form
in the target language" (Richards, Platt and Platt, 1992, p. 205). The term
'interference', however, has also been used to refer to transfer of a learner's
previous or existing knowledge of the target language (TL) while learning the
same language. Errors may therefore occur as a result of such intralingual interference,
which involves an application of general learning strategies similar to those
manifested in first language acquisition (Richards, 1971; Lim, 2003a, 2003b).
In relation to this, this paper studies the extent to which interference occurs
interlingually and intralingually in the acquisition of the present continuous,
a verb form frequently used in daily conversations. More specifically, it discusses
these two categories of interference in an attempt to find out what possible learning
strategies can be taught to learners so as to minimise the effects of interference
on the acquisition of English tenses.
Given that strategies may also have
to be designed on the basis of our knowledge of interference, which is an important
linguistic factor affecting the acquisition of a second or foreign language, it
is now appropriate at this juncture to place the present research in the context
of other studies by using a framework for second language acquisition (SLA). With
regard to this, Ellis (1994) has pointed out that SLA may be investigated in some
areas including (1) descriptions of the characteristics of learner language, and
(2) learner-internal mechanisms affecting the acquisition and/or the use of their
resources in communication. This study involves a detailed description of the
deduced characteristics of the learners' errors. They are 'deduced' in
the sense that the errors were not obtained from the sentences that learners constructed
in compositions, but from the answers elicited through multiple-choice questions
that had been specially prepared on the basis of findings obtained in past research
and the researchers' personal experience in teaching the learners concerned. The
present study also involves an investigation into learner-internal mechanisms
that are largely mental in nature. Such mechanisms may involve the transfer of
knowledge from their first language, or interference from features of the target
language itself. Justification for focusing on these two linguistic factors is
based on the rationale that other factors affecting language use (such as affective
variables, input and interaction in the process of teaching, and acquisition orders)
may be further investigated after these two sources of errors, which are largely
cognitive and linguistic in nature, have been sufficiently studied.
As
this investigation focuses on the learning of the present continuous, which may
often be confused with other verb forms in second or foreign language learning,
the analysis will have to focus on the possible ways in which errors have occurred
as a result of interference from the learners' first language and the target language
itself. Given the focus, two research hypotheses are formulated as follows:
1.
Intralingual interference is as significant as interlingual interference in the
second language acquisition of the present continuous.
2.
Verb forms that cause intralingual confusion in the learning of the present continuous
are those that resemble it in terms of grammatical structures and semantic functions.
Given
the two research hypotheses, attempts will be made to find out what strategies
can possibly be taught to learners to minimise the effects of interference on
the learning of English tenses in general and the present continuous in particular.
The inclusion of an inquiry into intralingual interference can be attributed to
a need to look beyond interference from merely the mother tongue, for scant attention
has been paid to the ways in which language learners view intralingual similarities
and differences (Lim, 2003a, 2003b). In fact, recent studies (e.g. Jarvis, 2000;
Sun, 2000) have focused on similarities and differences between the learners'
first language and the target language, rather than those within the target language
itself. The importance of studying the present continuous in relation to other
verb forms indicating aspect and tense can also be justified by the need to consider
a language component in relation to other parts of the language being learnt.
A study of the effects of interference on tense usage may provide implications
for the design of strategy training. This is congruent with Rutherford's (1998,
p. 1) view that "one cannot have a theory of how something is acquired without
a theory of what that something is." In this case, we can find out how tenses
can be acquired effectively using some strategies only if we understand how the
learning of tense usage is affected by both interlingual and intralingual interference.
As interference will be discussed in relation to strategy training, it appears
necessary to review some literature pertaining to learning strategies. Oxford
(1990, 2001) has classified learning strategies into six types consisting of those
in the cognitive, metacognitive, memory-related, compensatory, affective, and
social domains. Of these six categories, memory-related and cognitive strategies
are closely associated with both interference and strategy training and will therefore
form the focus of the present study. On the one hand, memory-related strategies,
among others, may involve the creation of mental images, application of images
and sounds, review of information and the use of gestures or actions. On the other
hand, cognitive strategies may involve practices, reception and conveyance of
messages, analysis and reasoning as well as creation of a structure for input
and output. Some of the strategies in these two categories will be discussed in
relation to the two types of interference explained above.
Research
design and procedures
Given
the research hypotheses and the scope of the study, the design and procedures
employed in the present study will be discussed. The research employed in this
study was basically deductive in that it began with an observed regularity that
needed to be described and explained (Blaikie, 2002). This means that the hypotheses
mentioned above were deduced and then tested by collecting appropriate data which
could be used to either support or reject the hypotheses. As a wider range of
proficiency levels were required to reflect the general tendencies in tense usage,
a purposive sampling technique was employed. To be specific, all the 51 fourth
form learners in a national secondary school in Penang were selected. The sample
consisted of all Malay learners, aged between 15 and 17, and most of them had
studied English as a second language in primary and secondary schools for an average
of 10.8 years and had sat for the English paper in the Lower Secondary Assessment
Examination in Form Three. Most of them (92.2%) passed the English paper and 66.7%
of them scored a grade B or C in the English paper. While a tenth (9.8%) of them
scored a distinction in the paper, 15.7% scored a grade D in the examination and
only 7.8% of the subjects failed in the examination. The profile indicated that
the respondents had generally reached a reasonable proficiency level to answer
the multiple-choice items presented in the questionnaire, which consisted of (1)
a section with questions eliciting learners' biographical information, and (2)
another section that elicited different responses to multiple-choice items.
A
total of 15 multiple-choice items requiring the use of the present continuous
were set. Each item comprised five choices that competed with the expected answer
in the semantic, syntactic and/or orthographic aspects, and had certain linguistic
features in common with the expected grammatical choice (Corder, 1973). The researcher
determined the choices on the basis of the deductive design explained above by
considering (1) the errors that the students normally committed in spoken and
written discourse in the form of conversations and essays, and (2) some common
errors discussed in previous studies (e.g. Richards, 1971; Duskova, 1979; Wijaya,
1979; Wong and Lim, 1983; Lee, 1995).
As the items were intended to assess
the subjects' knowledge of the rules governing the use of the present continuous
in various situations, the subjects were asked to respond to items that assessed
their knowledge of the meanings of various verb forms, particularly the present
continuous. The researcher decided to use multiple-choice items in an attempt
to avoid off-the-wall responses and to ensure that answers were convenient to
code and analyse (Heaton, 1988). In order to include a wide range of situations
in which the present continuous is generally used, a table of specification was
drawn up to state the rules and situations covered in the items. The rules governing
the use of the present continuous have been described by Leech, Deuchar and Hoogenraad
(1982), Quirk, Greenbaum and Svartvik (1985), Thomson and Martinet (1986), Wren
and Martin (1988), and Greenbaum and Quirk (1992). They are illustrated in the
following table:
Table
1. (click to view Table 1 in MS Doc)
The
subjects were not required to state the rule but were instead expected to use
their knowledge to select the grammatically correct answer from the five competing
choices. This means that the subjects' knowledge was diagnosed primarily at the
implicit and discriminatory levels since they were only required to distinguish
the grammaticality of the verb forms given, differentiate their functions, and
decide on the grammatical verb form which was most appropriate in the context
implied by the words used in each item. The percentages of the subjects' choices
selected by the respondents were then analysed with reference to both features
and rules in the subjects' first language and target language. The researcher
then assessed the subjects' knowledge of the rules mentioned above by referring
to their responses to the items.
Results
and discussion
Table
2 shows that the present continuous (PRC) was correctly used by most of the subjects
in items 1 and 4 to refer to an action occurring at the time of speaking.
Table
2. (click to view Table 1 in MS Doc)
For the
sentence which consisted of a temporal adverbial indicating the time of speaking
or writing, such as 'at the moment' or 'now', the majority of the subjects managed
to recognise that the action was occurring at the moment of speaking and that
the present continuous (in its active form) should be used. The table above also
shows that more than one-fifth of the subjects used the present simple (i.e. 'is
repaired'), and more than a quarter of them used the past simple (i.e. 'was repaired').
These subjects might have realized that the PRC should be used when an action
at the time of speaking was indicated through the use of the temporal adverbial
'now', but might not be aware of the grammatical form of the present continuous
in the passive form that involves the passive auxiliary 'is being' and the past
participle 'repaired'.
The error rate in the use of the PRC was also higher
when a temporal adverbial indicating an action occurring at the time of speaking,
such as 'now' or 'at the moment', was not given in the sentence in item 3. Table
2 shows that more than two-thirds (70.6%) of the subjects used the present simple
(i.e. 'drink' or 'drinks') instead of the PRC in item 4. These subjects did not
seem to know that the adverb of frequency 'usually' was used in the first sentence
to indicate a habitual action, but the temporal adverb 'today' was used in the
second sentence to indicate an action occurring at or around the time of speaking.
These results suggest that intralingual interference could have occurred as a
result of the subjects' ignorance of the rules governing the use of the PRC and
the present simple (PRS).
The use of the PRC for an action occurring around
the time of speaking was also identified as an area of difficulty. Table
3 shows that most (72.5%) of the subjects did not use the PRC for an action occurring
around the time of speaking.
Table
3. (click to view Table 1 in MS Doc)
In item
5, more than a quarter (27.5%) seemed unable to distinguish between the PRC (i.e.
'is getting on') and the past continuous (i.e. 'was getting on'). The high error
rate supports the view that most of the subjects tended to use the PRC correctly
for an action occurring at the time of speaking only when (1) the PRC was used
in the active voice, and (2) temporal adverbials such as 'now' and 'at the moment'
were given. In cases where these adverbials were not used, most of the subjects
had difficulty choosing the correct verb to use. Such errors can be ascribed to
the fact that no temporal adverbials were used to indicate whether the speaker
was referring to an event occurring around the time of speaking or an event which
was taking place at a definite time in the past. The subjects' tendency to use
the past continuous (PAC) instead of the PRC for an action going on around the
time of speaking could be partly due to their lack of awareness of the temporal
references of these two verb forms.
In item 6, a third (33.3%) of the
subjects used the PRS (i.e. 'works') instead of the PRC (i.e. 'is working') for
an action occurring around the time of speaking. These subjects used the PRS (i.e.
'works') incorrectly to indicate an action occurring during a period of time (i.e.
'this week'). They seemed unable to differentiate between PRC and PRS, both of
which are normally used to refer to actions in the present, and they appeared
unable to distinguish between (1) the use of the PRC for an action occurring around
the time of speaking and (2) the use of the PRS for a habitual action which occurs
in the present.
A
significant portion of the subjects also combined verb forms erroneously to form
the predicator of a main clause. Table 4 shows that more than half (54.9%) of
the subjects combined the modal auxiliary in item 7 with the present participle
'going' in an attempt to indicate a future action.
Table
4. (click to view Table 1 in MS Doc)
In this case,
most (70.6%) of the subjects readily used 'will' in erroneous verbal combinations
(i.e. 'will goes' and 'will going') to indicate a future event. The omission of
the auxiliary 'be' as in 'will going' was a more obvious error committed by more
than half (54.9%) of the subjects. As the time adverb 'tomorrow' was given in
the item to indicate the temporal reference of a future event, most of the subjects
encountered difficulty in the use of the PRC which is often used to indicate a
future arrangement (i.e. an action which has been planned to take
place in the immediate future or near future). To a large extent such errors can
be ascribed to interlingual interference from the subjects' L1. A future action
is normally indicated by the aspectual auxiliary 'akan' whose closest equivalent
in the target language is 'will' or 'shall'. It should, however, be pointed out
that the future auxiliary 'akan' in Malay can also be translated as 'would'
in contexts where the speaker refers to actions in the past. (See Kamus Dwibahasa,
2001: 1469 & 1486.) Hence, the subjects' tendency to use 'will' in erroneous
combinations may be attributed to influence from the subjects' L1 which frequently
requires the use of 'akan' for future or subsequent actions.
Apart
from this, the main verb 'pergi' in Malay can be translated into five verb forms
(i.e. 'go', 'goes', 'went', 'gone' and 'going') of which three forms (i.e. 'go',
'goes' and 'went') can exist independently without being combined with any auxiliary.
On the other hand, intralingual interference could have also occurred as these
subjects did not seem to know that the PRC, which is normally used for an action
occurring at the time of speaking, could also be used for a planned future action.
Table 4 illustrates that about a quarter (25.5%) of the subjects used
'will' to indicate a planned future action or future arrangement in item 8. Even
though more than a third (37.3%) of the subjects used the PRC correctly to indicate
a planned future action, more than two-fifths (45.1%) used erroneous verbal combinations
(i.e. 'have save up' and 'will saving up') for this item. Similarly, more than
half (56.9%) of the respondents chose the erroneous verbal combinations involving
the use of 'will' as in 'will comes' and 'will be come' for a planned future action.
These subjects' apparent inability to recognise such wrong verbal combinations
supports the claim that the existence of many forms of a main verb (e.g. 'come')
could be a source of intralingual interference as well. In this case the main
verb may exist in many forms (i.e. 'come', 'comes', 'came' and 'coming') even
though only the base form 'come' can immediately follow the future auxiliary 'will'.
In item 10, these subjects had the tendency to use the auxiliary 'will' for a
future arrangement. The high error rate of 94.1% also suggests that the majority
of the subjects had not acquired the rule requiring the use of the PRC for a planned
future action. As has been mentioned, the subjects who used the future auxiliary
'will' might be aware that a future action was referred to, but had not internalised
the rule governing the combination of a future auxiliary and a main verb.
In item 11, the temporal reference involves the time of inception of an action.
Table 5 shows that more than half (51.0%) did not use the PRC to refer to a routine
action which begins before another regular action expressed in the PRS.
Table
5. (click to view Table 1 in MS Doc)
About a quarter
of the respondents used the PRS (i.e. 'play' or 'plays') for the regular action
erroneously in this context, and more than a fifth of the subjects used the present
perfect (i.e. 'have played') erroneously for an action that has not come to an
end at 6.30 p.m. It should be pointed out that the PRC is normally not used for
a regular action or event, and only the PRS is used to refer to a regular action
in the present. The regular action in this case, however, should be indicated
in the PRC instead of the PRS because the action does not start at 6.30 p.m. but
is still going on at that time. The subjects' inadequate understanding of the
temporal reference of a verb also explains why difficulty arose in the use of
the PRC. These subjects did not seem to pay much attention to the time of inception
of the action. In this case the speaker regularly starts playing badminton at
5.30 p.m. and stops at 7.00 p.m., so at 6.30 p.m. she is still playing the game.
The results suggest that these subjects had not acquired the rule requiring the
use of the PRC for a regular action which begins before a certain time.
In
item 12, more than half (58.8%) of the respondents did not use the PRC to refer
to a present annoying habit even though the adverb of frequency
was given. The affirmative forms of the PRC and the PRS alone include 'lose',
'loses', 'is lost', 'am lost', 'are lost', 'is losing', 'are losing', 'am losing'
and other verbs which are less often used in English such as 'is being lost',
'are being lost' and 'am being lost'. While the PRS is normally used for a present
habitual action, the PRC has to be used for a present annoying habit. Hence, the
incorrect use of PRS can partly be attributed to the subjects' ignorance of the
distinction between the two types of present regular actions.
In item
13, more than a fifth of the subjects used the present participle 'working' without
the primary auxiliary 'is' for a present action which appears
to be continuous. These respondents had difficulty distinguishing a finite
verb form (i.e. 'is working') from a non-finite one. Such difficulty can be ascribed
to interference from the subjects' L1. The affirmative form 'sentiasa bekerja'
in Malay can be translated as (1) 'always work' or 'always works' to refer to
a normal habitual action, and (2) 'is always working', 'are always working' or
'am always working' to refer to an action which appears to be continuous. These
cross-linguistic differences partly explain why interlingual interference may
have occurred in the learning of verb forms in the present tense.
In item 14, more
than two-thirds of the subjects used the PRC correctly for a gradual development
in the present. Even though most of the subjects might be familiar with
the active form of the verb (i.e. 'is getting'), nearly one-fifth of the subjects
used the PRS which might refer to a sudden occurrence of an action instead of
a gradual development. Such errors could be due to the subjects' ignorance of
the rule requiring the use of the PRC for an action occurring gradually around
the time of speaking.
The data obtained for item 15 illustrate that more
than a fifth (31.4%) of the subjects used the PAC (i.e. 'were flying') instead
of the PRC (i.e. 'is flying') for an action which starts occurring before
another action in dramatic narrative. Consider the following sentences:
(1)
When they were flying over the desert, one of the engines of the
aircraft failed.
(2) When they are flying over
the desert, one of the engines of the aircraft fails.
The respondents
who used the PAC (i.e. 'were flying') inconsistently with the PRS (i.e. 'fails')
might be unaware of the correct sequence of tenses. Even though sentences 1 and
2 are both grammatical if they are used in storytelling, a speaker or writer has
to be consistent in choosing between PRC or PAC. With regard to this, an investigation
of the textbooks used by the subjects also revealed that the past tense was normally
used to tell stories. The frequent use of the past tense in textbooks partly explains
why a portion of the subjects seemed to use the past tense, such as the PAC (i.e.
'were flying'), readily in this case.
Conclusion
and implications for strategy instruction
On
the basis of the errors analysed in the preceding section, it is not far-fetched
to conclude that the data appear to support both the hypotheses deduced above.
Firstly, intralingual interference seems to be as significant as interlingual
interference in the second language acquisition of the present continuous. In
some cases, some subjects' inability to relate certain verb forms with temporal
and frequency adverbials may be ascribed to both interlingual and intralingual
interference. In other words, interference that caused a large portion of the
errors may be both intralingual and interlingual in nature. Secondly, the verb
forms which may have recurrently caused confusion in the use of PRC were (1) the
present simple and (2) the past continuous. The influence of the subjects' L1
on the acquisition of verb forms in the progressive aspect (in the target language)
can be attributed to the fact that the PRC and the PAC are both expressed in the
same grammatical form involving the use of the progressive auxiliary 'sedang'
or 'masih' which shows no tense distinction (in the learners' first language).
The results summarised above have some important implications for strategy
instruction in the area of tense usage. First, learners need to distinguish the
active forms from the passive ones even though both indicate the same tense and
aspect. Cognitive strategies involving the practice of verb forms in the present
continuous need to be incorporated. Such practices should involve not merely the
active forms of the present continuous but also its passive forms. These forms
should be contrasted simultaneously with the active and passive forms of the present
simple in different situations. This means that cognitive strategies of repeated
practices covering different situations, including those involving the use of
adverbials indicating the time of speaking and regular events, should be taught
to learners in an attempt to raise their consciousness of intralingual differences
in time frames, associations with singular/plural subjects, and active/ passive
structures. The point to be underscored here is that while different forms that
resemble one another may be taught in stages, they need to be contrasted constantly
and repeatedly in different stages in the process of acquisition.
Second,
learners need to discern the differences between the present continuous and other
verb forms, particularly the present simple and the past continuous, in terms
of time frames. It is recommended that some memory-related strategies involving
comparisons and contrasts of time lines be used to help learners recall the differences
among the present continuous, the past continuous and the present simple. The
following figure illustrates three time lines demonstrating the time frames using
the notations 'vvvvvv' and 'x x x x x x' that indicate (1) progressive and (2)
separate regular actions respectively:
Figure
1: Suggested time lines that distinguish the three verb forms in terms of time
frames
Figure
1 . (click to view Figure 1 in MS Doc)
Third, learners'
confusion with combination of auxiliary and main verbs need to be sufficiently
dealt with. The subjects' tendency to use erroneous combinations of auxiliary
and main verbs suggests that they might not be familiar with the rules governing
the combinations of auxiliary and main verbs indicating tense and aspect. The
learners' failure to grasp the significance of modal auxiliary verb 'will', which
should be used with a base form, seems to be the main cause resulting in the learners'
repeated use of the erroneous combinations. This means that intralingual confusion
involved in the use of the verb forms can be minimised only if learners are able
to comprehend the contextual information provided in the items given, or more
specifically, the situations in which the grammatical form is expected to be used.
This is a situation in which learners can be taught to use memory-related strategies
concurrently using a five-column table that differentiates the present continuous
from other verb forms as shown in Table 6.
Table
6. (click to view Table 6in MS Doc)
The table which
separates verb forms into five columns can be used as a frame of reference that
helps learners distinguish verb forms in the present continuous from those indicating
another aspect and/or tense, particularly the present simple that is frequently
involved in intralingual confusion. Auxiliary verbs which can be combined with
each of the transitive verbs are given in the top row of the table, whereas temporal/frequency
adverbials are presented in the bottom row to illustrate their frequent association
with certain verb forms. After learners have familiarised themselves with combinations
of a certain set of transitive main verbs with the given auxiliary verbs in the
top row, they may subsequently be exposed to other main verbs that combine with
the same set of auxiliary verbs and adverbials indicated in the table. This means
that learners' acquisition of verb forms indicating a certain tense and/or aspect
may be effectively enhanced if teachers employ memory-related strategies involving
(1) the time lines explained above, (2) the list of functions of related verb
forms as shown in Table 1, and (3) a five-column table that distinguishes different
verb forms with reference to various combinations of verbs and possible temporal/frequency
adverbials.
In brief, learners may be taught not only to constantly check
the table showing the combinations of verb forms in cases of erroneous usage,
but also to draw up tables showing combinations of auxiliary verbs and different
regular/irregular main verbs used in various situations. This means that strategy
training aimed at offsetting both types of interference should include activities
that encourage learners to (1) take note of a situation in which verbs forms indicating
the same tense and aspect are used, (2) compare the differences between verb forms
in their first language and target language, and (3) contrast the required verb
forms that resemble the PRC at the orthographic, syntactic and semantic levels.
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