Friday 16 February 2018

The Interference of English

Some time ago I wrote about the importance of spelling.  I asked if it was more important to spell accurately or to get your message across with some errors.  I included a list of the words in French, Spanish and German that are commonly misspelled by students.

Over the last few weeks I have been looking more closely at the issue of spelling in the new language.  While it's true that a considerable number of spelling errors are a result of carelessness, many others can be ascribed to the interference of English.

By the time students start to learn a new language in Year 3, they have undergone four years of rigorous training in English spelling and phonics.  The new language has different letter clusters and sequences, but the students can, often unconsciously, replace these patterns with more familiar English spelling patterns.  The four formative years of learning English spelling is enough to build a muscle memory, so that it feels more natural, for example, for a student to write rough than rouge, as the -ough letter cluster occurs in some frequently-used English words and the -ouge cluster is unfamiliar to English native speakers.

Spelling errors of any kind are exasperating for the languages teacher, especially when they are of the je m'apple variety which turn up again and again.  A systematic learning of phonics is one of the keys to ensuring more accurate spelling in the new language, but do we also owe it to our students to anticipate the sorts of errors that they are likely to make due to the interference of English and practise these words in a more focussed way?  

It is worth noting that this interference may also come from other languages that the student has learned, for example if they are in Year 7 and starting a language that is not the one they studied in Key Stage 2.  Any new language will have combinations of letters that are entirely unfamiliar to the beginner student and which they will need to practise in order to build their confidence and to start to build the new muscle memory.

We already draw direct comparisons with English in order to teach grammatical structures such as adjectival word order and the genitive, so should we now extend this to spelling?

Many thanks to the members of the Secondary MFL Matters Facebook group who joined in the discussion about this recently and who also provided many of the examples below:

FRENCH:
French word
often misspelled as
reason?
amusant
amusement
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English ‘amusement’
anniversaire
anniversarie
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English ‘anniversary’
blanc
blank
students remember the meaning of blanc by associating it with the English ‘blank’ but this in turn means that the word is often written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
bleu
blue
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English.
copain
complain
-m- probably added because of the influence of the English ‘companion’
danse
dance
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
déteste
detest
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
équitation
equation
the word is obviously unusual looking (and hard to spell/say for an English-speaking learner) so it is corrected to the nearest known English word
heures
hueres
-ue- is much more common in English than -eu-
histoire
historie
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
il
ill
the nearest known English word
intéressant
interestant
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
je m’appelle
je m’apple
the nearest known English word
magique
magic
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
maison
mansion
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
manger
manager
the nearest known English word
montagne
montange
-gne words often cause problems for English-speaking learners, as -nge is a much more common letter sequence in English than -gne.
natation
nation
the nearest known English word
neuf
nerf
apart from the obvious phonic influence, some of the influence will come from the well known Nerf guns….
oui
qui
these three vowels are never seen together in English.  It’s much more common to have q+u and then another vowel. 
rouge
rough
English words ending -ough are quite common, hence the change to the nearest known English word.
vacances
vacancies
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
vingt
vinght
-gt is not an English word ending, but there are quite a few words (eight, knight etc) that end with -ght, hence the correction

SPANISH:
Spanish word
often misspelled as
reason?
centro comercial
centro commercial
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
difícil
diffícil
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
favorito
favourito
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
fútbol
fútball
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
geografía
geographía
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
me encanta
me enchanta
the nearest known English word
seis
sies
rigorous application of the “i before e except after c” rule!
tecnología
technología
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
vamos
vamous
few English words end with -os, so this is often written with an -ous ending, which is more familiar, from words such as famous
veinte
viente
rigorous application of the “i before e except after c” rule!

GERMAN:
German word
often misspelled as
reason?
es ist windig
es ist winding
-ig as a word ending is not seen in English, so it is corrected to resemble the much more common -ing ending
Katze
Catze
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
langweilig
langweiling
-ig as a word ending is not seen in English, so it is corrected to resemble the much more common -ing ending
lernen
learnen
written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
nicht
night
the nearest known English word
Schwimmbad
Schwimmenbad
the extra -en- is added to make it resemble more closely the English ‘swimming pool’.
zwei
zwie
rigorous application of the “i before e except after c” rule!





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