German-English Interference in the Field of Vocalism (Based on the Speech of Germans who Study English as a Foreign Language)

Author(s):  
Anna Abryutina ◽  
Anna Ponomareva

The growing popularity of contrastive phonology as a branch of linguis-tics is seen now, in particular, due to the spread of bilingualism and multilin-gualism. Globalization involves the ability to speak several languages, in the study of which the phonetic level is primarily considered. The purpose of this work is to examine and describe the most likely consequences arising from in-terference in the articulation of vowel sounds in the English-language speech of Germans who study English as a foreign language. The article deals with monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs, dis-cusses possible variations in the articulation of sounds, as well as the processes of reduction, elision, and substitution. Descriptive and comparative methods are the leading ones in the work, however, the instrumental method is also used to determine deviations from the norm and the nature of changes in articulation. The paper identifies a number of trends in the articulation of English sounds by Germans and reveals the reasons of the main difficulties which stu-dents face while studying phonetic norms of RP and speaking German as their native language, i.e. the qualitative and quantitative mismatch of allophones. The achievement of this goal testifies to the theoretical significance of this work, namely, the possibility of further detailed research in the field of sociophonetics and phonostylistics.

For a long time, ELT (‘English language teaching’) scholars and practitioners have used terms like ‘ESL’ (‘English as a second language’) and ‘EFL’ (‘English as a foreign language’) unquestioningly to describe the English used by people outside the so-called ENL (‘English as a native language’) circle. For example, ELT practitioners may conveniently refer to students from places like China, Vietnam and Thailand as EFL students. Interestingly, we find counterparts of such terms in ‘World Englishes’ studies; Braj Kachru’s ‘Inner Circle English’, ‘Outer Circle English’ and ‘Expanding Circle English’ essentially refer to ENL ESL and EFL respectively. Despite the popularity of such terms in scholarly circles, the problems associated with their use have not often been explored in depth. Nevertheless, some authors have described such problems. For example, commenting on the distinction between ESL and EFL, Nayar (1997, p. 10) states, “a great deal of referential fuzziness within the two and denotative overlap between the two are making the terminological distinctions unclear, impractical, and ineffective or, worse still, in some cases inauspicious and irrelevant.” This special issue aims to further examine the use and relevance of these terms.


Fluminensia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Mirjana Matea Kovač

This paper aims at investigating the differences regarding speech rate between the Croatian (L1) and the English language (L2). The selected tasks include descriptions of dynamic entities which require careful planning and a chronological sequence of speech acts in real time, as well as the description of static spatial arrangements and their relations. The speech tasks were first performed in the native language, followed by the performance of the same tasks in the foreign language. A significantly faster speech rate was hypothesized in the foreign language condition for each investigated speech task due to the unautomated nature of L2 speech production mechanisms. The obtained results point to the conclusion that the speech rate is significantly slower in L2 in narrative tasks due to the conceptual complexity of the task. However, no significant differences in the speech rate were found between the two languages in the case of highly structured tasks with shorter duration, or in the case of repeated tasks. Due to the fact that the tasks have already been performed in the native language, the processing demands on the level of conceptualization decrease, freeing up the attentional resources, which, in turn, assist the formulation and articulation stage by reducing the processing pressure. Also, the fact that no significant differences were found might be explained by the existence of strong associative links between L1 and L2, as well as by the occurrence of highly frequent words which can be easily retrieved from the mental lexicon, especially if they have previously been activated in the native language. Introduction of new topics, on the other hand, implies higher cognitive demands in the conceptualization stage, resulting in a slower speech rate in both languages.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Saleem Khan

<p>This paper strives to explore the impact of Native Language use on Foreign Language vocabulary learning on the basis of empirical and available data. The study is carried out with special reference to the English Language Programme students in Buraydah Community College, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. The Native Language of these students is Arabic and their Second Language is English. The participants in this research study are the post-secondary students of Buraydah Community College in Intensive Course Programme. The instrument used in this study was in the form of two tests. It is well known that in language assessment tests play a pivotal role in evaluating the EFL learners’ language proficiency. The use of native language as a semantic tool for assessing second language learners’ understanding shouldn’t be rejected altogether especially for the undergrad Saudi EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students. The outcomes of the study show that in learning the vocabulary of target language is significantly helped by the use of translation method of native language (Arabic) in understanding the meaning of novel words and expressions of foreign language (English). This method is widely welcomed by majority of the students of Buraydah Community College. It’s recommended to use this method in order to take the students directly to the core meaning of the word or expression. It also, sometimes, gives a sense of accuracy of the meaning of native language equivalents.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
John Paull

The New Age philosopher, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), was the most prolific and arguably the most influential philosopher of his era. He assembled a substantial library, of approximately 9,000 items, which has been preserved intact since his death. Most of Rudolf Steiner’s books are in German, his native language however there are books in other languages, including English, French, Italian, Swedish, Sanskrit and Latin. His library hosts more books in English than in any other foreign language. Steiner esteemed English as “a universal world language”. The present paper identifies 327 books in English in Rudolf Steiner’s personal library. Fifty percent of the English-language books identified are categorized as Theosophy (n=164). Rudolf Steiner was the General Secretary of the German branch of the Theosophy Society from 1902, and he hived off his own Anthroposophy Society in 1912. The present study reveals that Steiner maintained his interest in theosophy throughout his life as he stayed up to date with the proliferating portfolio of Theosophy publications. The publication dates of Steiner’s Theosophy collection range from 1877 to 1923. The leading exponents of Theosophy in his day are well represented in Steiner’s collection, including Annie Besant (n=61), Charles Lead beater (n=13), William Westcott (n=13) and Helena Blavatsky (n=10). Of the other 50% of the Anglo-books identified, 20% are in the category of Religion (n=67), 10% are Social Science (n=33), 6% are Philosophy (n=21), 4% are Science (n=13), and 3% each are Anthroposophy (n=11), History (n=9) and Arts (n=9). The publication dates of Steiner’s Anglo-books span the period 1659 to 1925. This demonstrates that Steiner was acquiring Anglo-books right to the end of his life. Steiner’s library throws light on the development of the thoughts of this remarkable individual and the present paper reveals Steiner’s engagement throughout his life with the world of Anglo-publishing and thought.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Aurelija Daukšaitė

Summary This research intends to find out whether Lithuanians studying English as a foreign language make certain mistakes because of the influence of their native language. It focuses on negative transfer in writing in English and is qualitative rather than quantitative. The article discusses the errors and illustrates them with examples that come from a corpus for which the data was obtained from 34 Moodle forum posts written by English B2 students, native speakers of Lithuanian who were in year one or year two of their studies in various study programmes but also studied English at Vytautas Magnus University as an obligatory subject. The students participated in this forum in October 2018 and reflected on the week of presentations they had recently had: they were asked to write what they liked or did not like in the presentations their colleagues had given in class, what went well and what did not, what they should improve in the future, etc. This study identified the types of errors (based on Camilleri, 2004) that occurred most frequently and their source (based on Camilleri, 2004; Brogan & Son, 2015). Most frequently the students made errors in the cases where there was a specific grammatical category in English, but it was non-existent in Lithuanian, while sometimes the source of errors was literal translation from the native language. The error analysis shows that in the English classroom specific attention should be given to the verb forms “is” and “are”, “was” and “were”, “has” and “have”, articles, collocations, tense agreement, quantifiers, the sentence structure of the English language and the importance of word meanings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 252-260
Author(s):  
Maha Sarfraz

The present study investigates the English language variations due to code-switching between L1 (Urdu) and L2 (English). It shows how language varies from culture to culture, religion to religion, and how these variations make language an independent variety. This research also investigates the role of Urdu language in the formation of Pakistani English.  It is a corpus-based study. Methodology in the study is both qualitative and quantitative. A mixed approach has been employed. As a sample, a famous postcolonial novel “Twilight in Delhi” by Ahmed Ali has been selected. Analysis shows that the Pakistani native language has an effect on its culture on the English language. This research also investigates various sociolinguistics factors. It shows that the phenomenon of “Borrowing” is frequently used in the novel than compounding and hybridization because of the Islamic religion, historical and societal culture. Edibles are transferred from Urdu into English because they do not have their direct equivalents in English. The results also indicate that the usual use of Urdu words into English at the lexical level is property of Pakistani English and makes it an independent variety.


Author(s):  
Tira Nur Fitria

<p>This study aims to find out the type of code-mixing and the most dominant type of code-mixing used by Rosalina Musa in Instagram’s caption. This research is descriptive qualitative as the method of the research. From the result of the analysis shows an outer code mixing found in Rosalina Musa’s Instagram captions. It blends or mixes a native language with a foreign language. From the definitions stated, there are some types of code-mixing found in Rosalina Musa’s Instagram captions, they are the example is the English language is mixed with the Indonesian language. The forms of code-mixing usually appear in word, phrase, clause, hybrid, and repetition/reduplication. In a word, there are 152 data or 53.33 %. In a phrase, there are 113 data or 39.65 %. In the clause, there are 12 data or 4.21 %. In a hybrid, there are 6 data or 2.11 %. While in repetition/reduplication there are 2 data or 0.70 %. It also shows that the most dominant type of code-mixing found in Rosalina Musa’s Instagram captions appears in the word. The insertion of words here means the language unit that stands on its own, it consists of free morpheme sand bound morphemes. The words include some part of speech or word class, for example, noun, adjective, verb, conjunction, and adverb.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Shqipe Husaj

Perhaps the most complex question risen among linguists, psychologists and philosophers is how a child learns foreign language? Considering that language learning is natural and that babies are born with the ability to learn it since learning begins at birth, still Language learning (be it native or foreign) is a process that is not simple and short. It takes time, patience and self-discipline. Independent from some internal and external factors that are found inside and outside of every learner and which differ from each and every person this process has its pros and cons. A foreign (English) language learning at an early age has evolved considering modern technologies and methodologies used by individual learners and teachers. The earlier the language is learnt the more fluent the speaker is, but what happens to the mother tongue? Is the child well understood by the community, school teachers and friends? What is the progress of that child at school, what are psychological effects of technology used in the process of learning a language, what is the best age to learn a foreign language? , etc. These and many other questions will be discussed in this paper. The findings of this paper are assumed to also identify teachers’ perceptions about the main challenges they face during the classroom management with foreign language speakers in the classroom, the strategies they use, parents’ attitude toward this and also to find out some steps that parents and native language teachers should take to improve the situation.


Author(s):  
Marcus Steierwald

Die Kernfrage dieser Ausführungen lautet: Werden durch den Vorrang des Englischen die Fundamente der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis in den TA-Wissenschaften, nämlich Diskurs und interdisziplinäres Arbeiten, gefestigt oder zerstört? Faktum ist: Die Wissenschaft bedient sich zunehmend der englischen Sprache. Da wir überwiegend keine muttersprachlich Englisch Sprechenden (MES) sind, ist es interessant, einmal die Effizienz eines Wechsels in diese Fremdsprache anzuschauen. Wir tun das hier in 12 Bildern, die manchmal luzide angelegt sind, aber hoffentlich stets unterhaltsam. Anders gesagt: The science helps itself increasingly of the English language. Because we are predominantly none native-language English speaking (MES), it is interesting to look (watch) once at the efficiency of a change into this foreign language. We act here in 12 pictures which are sometimes put on (invested) luzide, but hopefully always entertaining (amusing).


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (_sup1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuket Gunduz ◽  
Deniz Ozcan

This study aims to examine students’ perception on using the Moodle system in secondary school in English as a foreign language lessons. A mixed method approach was used in this study with qualitative and quantitative research models. The study group consisted of 333 students and 12 English language teachers. The quantitative data were collected by a survey and qualitative data were collected by five open-ended questions. The results showed that students in general perceive themselves as sufficient in terms of the Moodle system and teachers thought that the system was contemporary and beneficial in the long run but at the time of the study it was not functioning well.


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