INFLUENCE OF L2 ENGLISH ON L3 RUSSIAN ACQUISITION FOR CHINESE STUDENTS

ABSTRACT

Many case studies have been done focusing on the factors in transfer during the third language acquisition, this article reviews some of important reaesechs and compares the influence of English (L2) and Chinese(L1) on Russian (L3) study for Chinese students(L1),tries to help them easier learn Russian in the early stage.

Keywords: third language acquisition, transfer, applied linguistics.

In China, English is taught as a first foreign language from the third grade of primary school, now many cities even start from kindergarten, no matter if Chinese students choose Russian as a major in Chinese university or directly study in Russia after graduating from high school, they all have at least 9-12 years of English learning experience. At present Chinese universities still set a two-year English class for students of Russian language and literature, even in the first two years, In Russian universities foreigner students are expected to attend a one-year basic Russian course and pass the entrance exam before starting their specialty study with Russian students.

The process of learning a foreign language is usually not easy, especially in the early stage. Unlike the acquisition of the first language, which is a natural process, accompanied by the development of individual’s mental ability and communication skills, second (third...) language skills are trained, however, some learning skills and abilities are usually transferrable, learning skills and abilities developed during mother tongue can be transferred into the use of other languages,  links between acquired language and target language skills sometimes makes their learning process easier, some interfered with acquisition of new languages.

Overview of third language acquisition theories

There is no doubt that mother tongue is the first language learned by everyone, but with the development of our society, the world is becoming more diversified and multilinguistic. As Peter Stockwell said: “the ability to speak more than one language is more common in the world than one language monolingualism [1, p. 11].” Transfer from L1 to L2 has been the center of second language acquisition (SLA), With the deepening of SLA research, the study of the third language acquisition (TLA) is receiving more attention, including the study of transfer in the process. Obviously L3 learners can not only use the mother tongue as the resource for transfer, but also second languages, as for the definitions of those languages, in paper “Roles of L1 and L2, L3 in production and Acquisition”, Hammarberg gave a concrete definition to L1 and L2 and L3, the mother tongue is obviously the first language, languages obtained after the first language as a second language, term L3 language which is currently being used or learning, meanwhile Hammarberg noted "L3 in This technical sense is not necessarily equal to language number three in order of acquisition."

In recent years, many studies have been done focusing on the number and validity of factors involved in TLA, Including Lindqvist ,who made a study on native Swedish speakers with several L2, learning advanced L3 French, to confirm the effect of proficiency, the result showed that they got most impact from the most proficient language. Many researchers hold the view that L2 takes on a stronger role than L1 in TLA especially in the early stage of L3 morphosyntax [2, p. 61]. To confirm it, Bardel and Falk came up with four hypotheses and examined two groups with L1 English, L2 Spanish and L3 Swedish or Dutch. Sanches studied kids variesying from 8 to 11 years old learning L3 English with L1 Spanish and Catalan, L2 German, in which it was found the wrong usage of English verbs caused by German rules accounts for 95% ,he concluded that L2 is more influential than mother tongue, irrespective of typology, however, it brought some controversy. Since German in this study is the latest language learned by a child there is a factor of recency. Recently acquired language is always easier to transfer, even if the proficiency is low.

But his study of another group of L3 Italian with native Swedish, L2 Spanish, French and English supported his conclusion, it was found Spanish is the most prevalent L2 in transfer, when it is not the latest language acquired by learners, even if they hadn’t used it for a long time.

Many studies also have been done by Hammarberg, Naves, Mirapeixhe and Celaya to confirm the validity of other factors like typology, age, context and recency etc.

As Chinese belongs to the Sinitic language branch of Sino-Tibetan language family, English and Russian belong to the indo-european language family, though under the Germanic and Slavic language branch respectively, English is closer to Russian than Chinese in language distance/typology, In terms of vocabulary, both Russian and Chinese borrow many words from English. Most of them are transliterated into Russian, including some slangs and terms, such as word with -инг suffix comes from -ing in English, митинг, боулинг, смокинг,шоппинг:-мен from -man: спортсмен, шоумен, бизнесмен, -дж prefix from-J: джаз, джокер.it helps students to guess the corresponding meaning in English by pronunciation,but in Chinese is not easy,since they were free translated into Chinese ideographs with conpletely different prphonation.

As we know, English and Russian use a different grammar system. There are five combinations of three tenses (present, past and future) and two verbal aspects in Russian, and 8 forms of verbs in English, we are still trying to find some correspondences in several tenses that might help beginners.

1. Simple present/Imperfective present: an action that’s occurring right now or happens regularly, or expresses a fixed truth: He wakes up at 8/Он просыпается в 8 часов.
2. Simple past/Imperfective(perfective) past

-Action happened or status existed in the past, if the verb means the act has been finished, use perfective past, if not, imperfective:

I watched the movie last night/Я посмотрел этот фильм вчера вечером.

It rained all day long/ Дождь шёл целый день

-used to do sth: They often played music at the club together / Они часто вместе играли музыку в этом клубе.

3. Present continuous/Imperfective present means the action is still in progress: I’m doing my homework/Я делаю домащное задание.
4. Perfect present and perfect continuous/Imperfective present and perfective past tense: if perfect present and continuous mean actions uncompleted, usually translated into Imperfective present in Russian, if perfect present emphasizes finished action, into perfective past tense.

Conclusion

As mentioned above learners with higher L2 proficiency are more sensitive to similarity and difference of L2 and L3 in the early stage, Chinese students with lower English proficiency might find less interference in the beginning due to limited English, but they will also feel the transfer in later study, especially to those who study in Russia, with increasing exposure to Russian, their proficiency in L3 will exceed L2, Russian interferes with English study in return. In order to concentrate on target language acquisition, a number of non-English specialty Chinese students subjectively disregard the acquisition of English.

As a matter of fact, learning can be facilitated if taking good advantage of the potential of positive transfer, such as employing Russian-English translation to enlarge the vocabulary, enhance the capability of switching between three languages.

References:

1. Stockwell.P. Sociolinguistics: A Resource Book for Students:Routledge,30 Oct.2007-p.11.
2. Bardel C,Falk Y.The L2 status factor and the declarative/procedural distinction.Jhon Benjamins Publishing Company.2012.-p.61.