Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Laptop Poster Session for Graduate Students

Spanish

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion

Middle School/Junior High

This study discusses three salient transfer errors identified in the L2 of a sixth grade Spanish immersion student. The targeted errors may represent a plateau in the learner’s interlanguage and are noticeable candidates for intensive error treatment. Possible pedagogical strategies will be shared.

Considerable prior research shows that although students acquiring an L2 through immersion programs develop high levels of proficiency, particularly in their receptive skills, their output is marked with non-target like structures (Lindholm-Leary & Genesee, 2014). This study continues this work by examining instances of native language transfer in the Spanish L2 of an English Home Language sixth-grade student who has studied in a one-way Spanish immersion program. Data were collected through natural speech production elicited by referential tasks. Most notable among the transfer errors identified are cases of lexical transfer, preposition stranding, and the misuse and misplacement of the 3^rd person, singular direct object pronoun lo ‘it’. Given the participant’s seven years in an immersion program, it is possible that these errors have reached a plateau or potentially fossilized in the interlanguage. These phenomena might occur readily in an immersion dialect due to the compounding factors of salience in the input from other students sharing an L1 (Harley & Swain, 1984) and the linguistic identity of immersion students (Tarone & Swain, 1995). Due to their potential fossilization, the errors identified in this study are particularly noticeable candidates for intensive error treatment in the classroom. The results will be discussed in respect to their salience in the participant’s output as well as potential pedagogical strategies for error treatment.