Understanding and Helping Adult L3

French Learners with

Negative Syntactic Transfer in Writing
I. Background of the Study

Research in the area of L1 and L2 transfer in L3 acquisition has not yet found any single
universally acceptable concept. How the already-existing linguistic knowledge mars or
contributes to the acquisition of L3 still remains a debatable (Jason Rothman and Jennifer
Cabrelli, 2008). There are researchers like …… who claim that CLI can have many dimensions
to it other than linguistic and that those factors play a crucial role in controlling the amount and
quality of influence. Also, there are others like …who strongly believe that ….. Moreover, cross-
linguistic influence in the form of syntactic transfer is much less explored than lexical transfer.

II. Statement of the Problem

Metacognitive regulation

In India, most students who join universities to learn foreign languages have already studied two
languages i. e., their mother tongue and English. It is often seen that they unintentionally use the
syntax from their L1 and L2 while writing in L3 for academic purposes. This, in turn, results in
unacceptable syntactic structures in the L3. Thus, it becomes mandatory on the part of the
teacher to help students unlearn those structures by devising specific strategies.

III. Hypotheses

In the light of the above background, I propose to look into the syntactic transfer from L1 and L2
in the production of writing for academic purposes. The following are the hypotheses for my
research:

• While writing academic assignments in L3, adult L3 learners often unintentionally

borrow syntactic structures from their first and second language and apply them in their
targeted foreign language;

• Such intrusions persist even after second and third year of learning since students find it
difficult to get rid them;

• The teacher may help students overcome this problem by adopting a self-awareness
approach, i. e. a meta-cognitive one to teaching writing.
IV. Research Questions

The proposed research aims at addressing the following questions:

• Which are the most frequently used syntactic structures from L1 and L2 (unacceptable in
L3) in the academic written productions by adult L3 learners?

• How aware are learners about such intrusions?

• To what extent is it possible for teachers to help learners in overcoming the negative
syntactic transfers in writing by developing self-regulatory strategies in them?

V. Methodology

Sample

Tools

Procedure