Page 47 - Diversity in Action

Transfer in Early Multilingual Acquisition

From a pedagogical perspective, the teacher’s primary focus lies on the
first point. Rather than correcting the child or discouraging transfer, the
teacher should ensure that the interaction continues. Maintaining engage-
ment is crucial, as it fosters motivation and provides opportunities for further
language exposure. This can be achieved through various strategies, such as:

• Prompting with a follow-up question: ‘Oh, you don’t have a blue straw?
Do you like blue straws? Or do you prefer yellow ones?’
• Providing an observation: ‘I have a red straw, but I don’t have a blue
glass.’
• Confirming with a response: ‘No, you don’t, indeed. You have a red
straw.’

By responding in this way, the teacher sustains the dialogue initiated by
the child, provides correct and meaningful L2 input, and supports the child’s
language processing. This interactive approach ensures that the child re-
mainsengaged,encouraged,andexposedtorichlinguisticinput,allofwhich
are essential for successful L2 acquisition.

Reflection Point
1. Discuss transfer episodes that you have personally experienced or ob-
served. How did they manifest, and what impact did they have on com-
munication?
2. Do you occasionally experience interference from your first language
when speaking a second language, or from the second language when
using a third?
3. Observe and analyse common features of a foreign or second language
that differ from children’s L1 but are typically processed and incorporated
by them in their language development.

All That Glitters Is Not Transfer
Assessing students’ L2 output through the lens of L1 transfer is often tempt-
ing. Yet this can be a fairly controversial matter. Over around fifty years of re-
search in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) it has become clear
that,with regardto grammaticaldevelopment,alllearnersundergo thesame
obligatory, cognitively-founded developmental stages, regardless of factors
such as L1 background, L2 complexity, age of exposure to the L2, or learn-
ing environment. Following Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998), such
stages can be summarised as in (3) with reference to English L2 grammar.

(3) a. I play football
b. I like cats/Mum working/Peter play tennis?
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