Get Ready! Sail - PROGRAM SAMPLER

English Learners (ELs) possess linguistic knowledge in their home languages. When teachers recognize what ELs already know about sounds, word structure, syntax, and spelling in their home languages, children may have an advantage. However, there will also be times when the home language poses a linguistic conflict with English, causing negative language transfer. There are three types of transfer demonstrated by ELs as they move within and across their home language and English: • Positive transfer is an asset. In this case, English and the home language share certain phonemes (sounds), graphemes (written symbols for sounds), root words, prefixes, suffixes, or grammatical features (such as a similar word order) that make the acquisition of English easier because of the similarities. For example, if the home language and English both have the /s/ sound, that would be considered positive transfer. Cognates also fall into this category. For example, the words matemáticas in Spanish and mathematics in English sound very similar and share many phonemes and graphemes. • Zero transfer means that an EL’s home language offers no equivalent sound, symbol, or grammatical feature. Because the item does not exist in the home language, it has to be learned from scratch. Because many English sounds do not exist in other languages, English language learners may lack the auditory acuity to “hear” these English sounds and have difficulty producing them. These children are not accustomed to positioning their mouth in a way the sound requires. For example, Haitian Creole speakers do not have r -controlled vowels in their language, so it will be difficult for them to hear and pronounce. Another example of zero transfer would be when Chinese speakers (of any dialect) have to learn the English alphabet. • Negative transfer is called interference . In this case, the phonemes, graphemes, root words, prefixes, suffixes, or grammatical features are different from English and will conflict. For example, the Spanish grapheme j has the sound of /h/ in Spanish, so a Spanish-speaking EL will pull in the sound they know when they try to read an English word with that grapheme. For example, they may pronounce the word gentle as “hentle.” Further, English learners make grammatical errors due to interference from their home languages. In Vietnamese, Arabic, and Spanish, adjectives follow nouns, so some ELs may say the girl tall instead of the tall girl. While English changes the verb form with a change of subject ( I walk. She walks .), some Asian languages keep the verb form constant across subjects, so adding /s/ to the third person singular may be difficult for some ELs. In Somali, verbs come at the end of sentences, so the syntax is altogether different from English. ELs may know the grammatical rule, but applying it consistently can be difficult, especially in spoken English. Cross-linguistic transfer The Cross-Linguistic Transfer Charts include information about some of the most common home languages of ELs, as well as some often found in current Newcomer populations. These include: Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Haitian Creole, and Somali. The phonics charts provide a quick reference for comparing English sounds with those of the other languages. Within the charts, the sounds are exemplified with a sample word from Get Ready! The chart has columns for each language with rows corresponding to each English phoneme. Each cell in the chart gives an example word using that sound in the language, followed by transference tips. If there is no sound equivalent in English, a common substitution used by speakers of that language may be provided. Likewise, if a sound interferes with English, the conflicting sound may be provided. Grammar transfer The Grammar Transfer Charts provide a quick reference for comparing grammatical features. Specifically, the charts identify areas in which the various EL home languages will pose some difficulty in acquiring English grammar (syntax). The type of transfer error that causes interference is outlined for each grammatical category. Each cell in the chart gives an example of the grammar point, the type of transfer error, the home language(s) for which it occurs, and the cause of transfer difficulty. LANGUAGE TRANSFER AND INTERFERENCE Txxxvii