Have you ever read a newspaper article about bilingual children? Well, I guess everybody has come across at least one of them. Is it not an interesting matter of fact that bilingual children apparently learn a second language easier than monolingual? But after reading those texts have you ever asked yourself where exactly the differences between monolingual and bilingual children in second language acquisition (SLA) are? I did and therefore I investigated in comparing data of a monolingual and a bilingual child. Consequently in my analysis I will not focus on one particular error but I will take in account all errors made by my subjects. I will start my paper with giving you some background information about the subjects´ native languages. The monolingual child´s native language (NL) is German, the bilingual child´s mother tongues are German and Arabic. I will show you the most important differences between English, German and Arabic. Because I did not find a useful Arabic grammar (in fact the problem was that I can not read Arabic letters) I asked a friend of mine to translate some sentences. Therefore you will find a comparative table of English, German and Arabic in Appendix I. In the next part I will tell you something more about my subjects and about the requirements they had to fulfil. Then I will discribe how I collected the data. The complete data will be found in Appendix II. The next step will be a presentation of my results. First I will tell you how the data was scored. Afterwards there will be a detailed description of each error made by my subjects and I will try to analize why they occured. Finally I will draw a conclusion out of my results.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. Background
III. Methodology
IV. Results
IV.1. Interview
IV.2. Yes/ No Questions
IV.3. Appropiate Question to a Given Statement
IV.4. Conditional Sentences
IV.5. Relative Clauses
IV.6. Total Results
V. Conclusion
Objectives and Research Themes
This paper examines and compares the second language acquisition processes of a monolingual German-speaking child and a bilingual child (German and Arabic) to identify differences in English language proficiency. The core research focuses on how these differences manifest in various grammatical structures and error patterns during oral data collection.
- Comparison of monolingual and bilingual English language acquisition.
- Analysis of specific grammatical challenges including progressive tenses and conditional sentences.
- Evaluation of syntactic structures in questioning and relative clauses.
- Investigation into the influence of native languages on English errors (language transfer).
- Comparative performance assessment based on standardized oral testing sections.
Excerpt from the Book
IV.1. Interview
In the first part subject 1 (S1) produced 78 words. All in all he made 5 errors. It follows that 93.6% was correct and 6.4% was incorrect.
The first error was that he said “*That´s was.” instead of “That´s it”. That means that he used the verb to be twice “*That is was”.The equivalent German sentence is: “Das war´s” (“Das war es”). In both languages clitics are used. In English the verb is cliticized, in German the pronoun. Therefore I suppose that he was not aware that clitics are used differently and that the error happened because of language transfer.
The next errors happened in just one sentence.
- “I go swimming and playing handball, playing PC. Sometimes Ø reading books, meet friends.”
Obviously the subject has problems with using the progressive because it does not exist in German. He does not know when he has to use the progressive tense or not and he could not fall back on his general knowledge because there is none.
Summary of Chapters
I. Introduction: The author outlines the motivation behind comparing a monolingual and a bilingual child's second language acquisition and details the linguistic focus of the study.
II. Background: This chapter provides profiles of the two subjects, including their social backgrounds and their native language environments, while comparing key linguistic features of English, German, and Arabic.
III. Methodology: The section describes the criteria for subject selection and the specific oral tasks designed to elicit data for error analysis.
IV. Results: This main part presents a detailed evaluation of the collected data across five distinct linguistic categories and calculates the success rates for both subjects.
V. Conclusion: The author synthesizes the findings, discusses the observed proficiency differences between the subjects, and reflects on the limitations of the small sample size.
Keywords
Second Language Acquisition, SLA, Error Analysis, Monolingual, Bilingual, Language Transfer, Progressive Tense, Conditional Sentences, Relative Clauses, Syntax, English Proficiency, Grammar, Comparative Study, Linguistic Development
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this academic paper?
The paper investigates and compares the English language acquisition errors made by one monolingual German child and one bilingual German-Arabic child through a series of oral tests.
Which specific areas of English grammar are analyzed?
The study evaluates usage of the progressive tense, question formation, conditional sentences, and relative clauses, alongside general interview performance.
What is the main objective of the research?
The objective is to identify and explain differences in English performance between the two subjects, specifically analyzing how native language knowledge might influence errors.
What scientific method did the author employ?
The author utilized a comparative, qualitative analysis of oral data gathered from two students of similar social and academic backgrounds who performed identical linguistic tasks.
What topics are covered in the main body of the work?
The main body details the subjects' backgrounds, explains the grammatical differences between German, Arabic, and English, and provides a breakdown of errors found in interviews, questions, and sentences.
Which terms best characterize this research?
Key terms include Second Language Acquisition, Language Transfer, Overgeneralization, Syntax, and comparative error analysis.
How did the bilingual subject perform compared to the monolingual subject?
According to the final results in section IV.6, the bilingual subject (S2) achieved a higher total proficiency score (90.20%) compared to the monolingual subject (S1) (66.89%).
What reason does the author give for errors involving clitics?
The author attributes these errors to "language transfer," suggesting the subject did not realize that English and German utilize clitics differently.
- Quote paper
- Melanie Janet Göbel (Author), 2003, Comparing Data Analysis of a Monolingual and a Bilingual Child, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/34393
