Language interference

Question

how can our prior knowledge of french affect our learning of english????

MichalS · Accepted Answer

Badly.

Philip · Answer

We try to make our native language fit the patterns of the target language. This can involve structure: I'm not seeing it - because the native language does use the present continuous even with sensory verbs. It can also affect vocabulary: I assisted the University of Texas - because the verbs of the two languages are not as parallel as they seem; especially affected are prepositions, as they don't necessarily perform in parallel functions; idiomatic expressions which do not translate word-by-word are also problematic. The only way to "cure" the situation is by direct involvement in the target language.

I hope this helps a little.

[Edit: I wrote the above without noticing you had specifically mentioned French. Assister/attend is, indeed, a French/English difference. The other examples are generic.]

Alex-93 · Answer

In my opinion french can help a lot if you are learning french as "your" first language. I am a german native speaker , and started learning english 5 years ago, 3 years ago I started learning french.
And I can often refer english words to french words and conversely. So in essays it helps a lot. In my opinion it only helps in vocab and not in sentence structures.

When you are writing an essay , and you can't remind a certain word, just think whether you might heard this word in french. I do that everytime and often I have success.

Greetings

CalifJim · Answer

Anonymous~~how~~ How can our prior knowledge of ~~french~~ French affect our learning of ~~english~~ English??

If you can keep in mind the situations where English differs from French, the knowledge of French should be a great help in learning English. In some situations sentences are so similar that you might think that English is just mispronounced French! The word 'science' looks the same in both languages, for example (as do many other words), but the pronunciation is quite different. The word order is almost the same in the two languages except for the placement of adjectives and pronouns. The grammar is very similar, but the phrasal verbs of English may be a problem. The tense system of English is different, but in some ways it's easier than French. The progressive tenses can be a challenge, but on the other hand, English uses the subjunctive much less often and its forms are fewer. Most people who speak French find English fairly easy to learn and can make themselves understood well in English, but unfortunately, many of them never master the pronunciation, the two languages being considerably different in that respect.

CJ

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