Table 3 - uploaded by Lies Sercu
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In this article, we report on an investigation that aimed to describe adolescent multilinguals' use of the different languages they were learning at school when performing a translation task. We wanted to find out whether written translations of a mother tongue text into the learner's different foreign languages would reflect a multilingual rather...
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The present study investigated the influence of Dutch-German cognates resp. orthographic neighbors on controlled language processing (i.e., response inhibition). Two monolingual Stroop tasks (Dutch and German) were performed by Dutch-speaking participants who could and could not speak German, and by French-speaking participants who could speak Germ...
Citations
... In contrast to De Angelis (2005), the aim of the present study was different in the examined languages, as well as in the use of words (see section 4.2) Furthermore, in the context of multiple language acquisition, the main focus has been on the interactions between two or more non-native languages, rather than the learner's native language. Sercu (2007) investigated the activation of multiple foreign languages acquired by secondary school learners while translating a text from their mother tongue into different foreign languages (Dutch, French, English, German). The research questions were whether learners managed to keep their languages apart during translation, to which language they resorted in case of cross-linguistic influence, whether loanwords occurred more frequently than loanblends or literal translations, and to what extent variables such as psychotypology and psychoproficiency affected target language production. ...
... Moreover, high proficiency in all the languages was the result of positive transfer, while low proficiency was the result of negative transfer. However, this study confirmed the results of Sercu (2007), indicating that positive transfer is more evident from better-mastered foreign languages, whereas negative transfer from less well-mastered languages. ...
The aim of the paper is to explore the appearance of positive and negative lexical transfer of plurilingual learners in English vocabulary acquisition. Cross-linguistic influences in the study are examined by word translation tasks from Croatian into English, including true, partial, and deceptive cognates or false friends in English, German, and Italian. The results have revealed different language dominances and positive or negative transfer manifestation. Lexical transfer from L4 German is manifested positively, but the Italian language seems to play a dominant role in the acquisition of English vocabulary. The effect of Croatian is manifested both positively and negatively. The study has confirmed previous psycholinguistic studies on the complexity of lexical connections in plurilingual learners and the dynamic interaction of various learning-based factors, such as language recency, proficiency, exposure to languages, the order in which languages are learned, and the formal context in language learning.
... With regard to translation studies, in which the participants translate from their L1 into a foreign language, Sercu (2007) for instance, examined how multilingual learners in Dutch-speaking schools in Brussels used the languages they knew when performing a translation task. The 55 participants were mainly native speakers of French or Dutch. ...
The aim of the present study is to examine and describe Swedish upper secondary students’ use of their background languages while translating a text from Italian, a language unknown to them, into either their L2 English or their L3 French or Spanish. The assumption here is that searching for similarities between these languages is a natural feature of language learning and that intercomprehension can lead to at least limited understanding of an unknown language. The written translations were analysed quantitatively by calculating translation accuracy in the different languages and qualitatively by means of a retrospective questionnaire on the translation process. A psychotypology questionnaire was also included to examine the participants’ perceptions of the similarities between the languages involved. The majority of the participants stated that they perceived Spanish to be more similar to Italian than any of the other languages involved in the study. Moreover, the results show that the students in the group that translated into Spanish translated the text more accurately than those who translated into French and English. The comments in the retrospective questionnaire show that the students reflected on similarities between the languages on a lexical level, but also on structural and phonological similarities. Contextual cues were also important for the participants’ inferences and translations.
... No es verdad que solo el idioma más fuerte -el mejor asimilado-pueda influir en el idioma más débil. Según la transferencia retroactiva, las influencias del idioma básico se hacen visibles en un idioma bastante asimilado, incluso en el propio idioma materno (Hammemberg, 1998(Hammemberg, -2009Cenoz, 2003, Sercu, 2007. ...
The processes that take place in the mind of a multilingual person during the second language acquisition are mostly shrouded in mystery. We can only observe traces of these processes manifesting themselves in the interpenetration of two or more linguistic systems. The current study aims to recognize how the knowledge of L1, in this case Spanish, influences on the acquisition and usage of the target language – Portuguese (L2), and how to take advantage of the interferences to make the L2 learners succeed. The possibility of linguistic influences grows with each acquired language. There are also important contributing factors such as a degree of similarity between the languages, a level of proficiency in each of them, and the manner and time of a language acquisition. During the Portuguese course at the Spanish Philology, we can observe such phenomena as: code switching or total displacement, hybrids, false friends, multi-word units calquing, and morphogrammatical transfer. Although one of the factors that affects the L2 acquisition is the level of proficiency, the students hardly take advantage of their mother tongue, selecting the language typologically closer to Portuguese, Spanish. The students use the previously acquired knowledge to create analogies that should be considered as an intermediate step in the acquisition of L2, not as something negative, but rather a means for providing a starting point for the analysis of error which, consequently, leads to improvement.
The processes that take place in the mind of a multilingual person during the second language acquisition are mostly shrouded in mystery. We can only observe traces of these processes manifesting themselves in the interpenetration of two or more linguistic systems. The current study aims to recognize how the knowledge of L1, in this case Spanish, influences on the acquisition and usage of the target language - Portuguese (L2), and how to take advantage of the interferences to make the L2 learners succeed. The possibility of linguistic influences grows with each acquired language. There are also important contributing factors such as a degree of similarity between the languages, a level of proficiency in each of them, and the manner and time of a language acquisition. During the Portuguese course at the Spanish Philology, we can observe such phenomena as: Code switching or total displacement, hybrids, false friends, multi-word units calquing, and morphogrammatical transfer. Although one of the factors that affects the L2 acquisition is the level of proficiency, the students hardly take advantage of their mother tongue, selecting the language typologically closer to Portuguese, Spanish. The students use the previously acquired knowledge to create analogies that should be considered as an intermediate step in the acquisition of L2, not as something negative, but rather a means for providing a starting point for the analysis of error which, consequently, leads to improvement.
In the field of second and foreign language learning, how various task characteristics affect language learning has been the focus of many recent studies. Much of this research examined the relationship between task characteristics and task performance without fully taking into account learner related variables. The present study aimed to assess task complexity and sequence in relation to the learner related variables drawn from the social cognitive perspective of self-regulated learning, i.e. self-efficacy beliefs and frequency of learning strategy use, as they were applied to two versions of vocabulary learning from reading tasks. The tasks designed for the present study were based on the componential framework for second language task design. With tasks and task sequence counterbalanced, 146 first-year university students (mean age = 18.59 years) were randomly assigned to one of four groups. Results reveal a significant effect of task sequence on vocabulary learning self-efficacy beliefs, frequency of learning strategy use and task performance, and a significant interaction effect of sequence with task complexity. Findings are discussed in terms of complex interactions between task and learner factors.
