Academic Writing

Fall 2012
Dr. Donald W. Peckham

Rakonczai Zsuzsanna

Both Caplan-Carbin (2006), Winters-Ohle and Seipp (2001) have justified in their
research that making students aware of the similarities and differences between the already
acquired (first or second) language and a further language would benefit students in the
learning of the target language. Caplan-Carbin focuses in her study on English-German
cognate pairs, while Winters-Ohle and Seipp use questionnaires as a research method.
According to Caplan-Carbin (2006) the fact that German and English are typologically
close to each other, can be beneficial in the memorization and recognition of cognates and
near cognates. Her study titled Sound Shifts and Cognate Recognition is based on this
hypothesis. Caplan-Carbin examined students with English L1, who are pre-introductory level
students of German. Her aim was to justify whether it makes second language acquisition
easier that students first language are typologically close to their second language. Totally 21
students were given a pre-test and an identical post-test. The test included a list of German
words that have similar English counterparts. The task in the pre-test was to guess the
meaning of these German words. Afterwards, the subjects were given a so called Phoneme
Relationship Key, which described the current orthographic relationship between some
German and English phonemes. The post-test consisted of the same German words as the
pre-test, but now the students could use the Phoneme Relationship Key as a help to guess the
meaning of the words. The results show that there was a 37 % increase in the correct answers
after the use of the Phoneme Relationship Key. Based on her research, Caplan-Carbin
concluded that sharing this sound relationship between English and German with students will
probably help them in vocabulary learning.
Winters-Ohle and Seipp in their research (2001) aim at investigating the influence of
the already existing English knowledge on the acquisition of German in the case of students
who study English as a L2, and German as a L3. By doing so, they also compare previous
studies with their own research. In their research they investigate language learning from the
students' point of view by the use of questionnaires. Their subjects were 238 students with
different mother tongues, but with the same target language: German. The questions intend to
find an answer to the question whether students remember their earlier learning strategies that

they tended to use in the acquisition of English, and whether words and grammatical rules of
English are useful in the acquisition of German. The results of their study show that students
found their already existing English knowledge helpful in the learning of German. That is
why Winters-Ohle and Seipp sum up that it can be an effective teaching strategy to make
students aware of the differences and similarities of the target language and the previously
acquired language. Moreover, the grammatical differences between the two languages should
not be emphasized, because it can lead to confusion. In contrast to this, the grammatical
(structural) similarities should be emphasized, in order to milden the occurrence of negative
transfer between German and English.

Sources:
Caplan-Carbin, L. 2006. Diachronic Linguistics in the Classroom: Sound Shifts and Cognate
Recognition. http://webgerman.com/caplan/Portfolio/Caplan/cognates/index.html
Seipp B., Winters-Ohle E., 2001. Deutsch nach Englisch. Eine Fragebogen-Untersuchung
zum subjektiv wahrgenommenene Einfluss von Englisch-Kenntnissen auf das Lernen
von Deutsch als (zweiter) Fremdsprache bei Schlern und Studenten [German after
English. A questionnaire-research about the influence of English as an L2 on the
learning of German as an L3 in the case of students]
Brussels,European Comission: Sokrates-Programme, LINGUA Aktion D, project
number: 72 105-CP-1-HU-LINGUA-LD