"Requests” by learners of English as a Foreign Language: the role of negative pragmalinguistic transfer and grammatical competence in L2
Authors
Marco Espinoza Alvarado
Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Departamento de Lingüística, Av. Cap. Ignacio Carrera Pinto 1025, Ñuñoa, Santiago
This article presents the results of a cross-sectional quantitative study in interlanguage pragmatics. The main objective of this study was to determine the role played by negative pragmalinguistic transfer from L1 (Chilean Spanish) and overall grammatical proficiency in L2 (English) in the development of L2 learners’ pragmatic competence. To this end, the requests produced in English by two groups of EFL learners were analyzed and compared to the requests produced by two groups of native speakers (native English speakers and native Spanish speakers). Data were collected through a written discourse completion task. Although it was possible to identify instances of pragmalinguistic transfer in the level of directness, sub-strategies and perspective adopted in the requests produced by the two groups of learners, this type of transfer does not seem to play a significant role in the development of their pragmatic competence. Results also suggest that, at least for the participants in this study, it is not possible to establish a clear and significant relation between overall grammatical proficiency in L2 and pragmalinguistic transfer from L1.
Espinoza Alvarado, M. (2012). "Requests” by learners of English as a Foreign Language: the role of negative pragmalinguistic transfer and grammatical competence in L2. Lenguas Modernas, (39), Pág. 21–44. Retrieved from https://nuevosfoliosbioetica.uchile.cl/index.php/LM/article/view/30731
