Examining the effects of crosslinguistic awareness on the acquisition of English possessive determiners: the case of Brazilian Portuguese speakers

Abstract

Possessive determiners (PDs) his and her are challenging for L2 learners to acquire, and this difficulty has been attributed to several factors, including negative L1 transfer effects (White et al., 2007). What researchers have not yet considered is how PDs are acquired by learners whose L1 predicts positive transfer effects. To address this question, the present study investigated the PD interlanguage of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers, whose L1 has a PD system that is similar to English. It also considered the effects of crosslinguistic awareness on performance of this linguistic feature, as awareness between and across languages has been shown to support positive transfer (e.g., Gibson & Hufeisen, 2008). Two written and two oral tasks were used to measure performance, and a stimulated recall task was used to measure awareness. The results showed that BP-speakers exhibited advantages in their acquisition of his and her in comparison to previously studied L1 groups, and that learners who verbalised awareness of a crosslinguistic PD rule outperformed those who did not on two of three PD tasks. These findings contribute to the research suggesting that building crosslinguistic awareness of L1/L2 similarities could be an effective approach for supporting language learning.

Keywords:

• Possessive determiners
• crosslinguistic influence
• Brazilian Portuguese
• English

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marie Apaloo

Marie Apaloo holds an MA in applied linguistics from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). She has taught English in Brazil and Spain and in virtual learning environments. Her research interests include cross-linguistic influence, facilitative learning effects, and the acquisition of L2 morphosyntax.

Walcir Cardoso

Dr. Walcir Cardoso is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Concordia University and President of the Canadian Modern Language Review. He conducts research on L2 acquisition of phonology, morphosyntax and vocabulary, and the effects of computer technology (e.g., clickers, text-to-speech synthesisers, automatic speech recognition and intelligent personal assistants) on L2 learning.