Swedish-English Language Transfer in Upper Secondary School Students’ Written English : An Error Analysis
Kerke, Sara (2022)
Kerke, Sara
2022
Englannin kielen ja kirjallisuuden maisteriohjelma - Master's Programme in English Language and Literature
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-11-17
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202211148371
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202211148371
Tiivistelmä
In this minor thesis I examine Swedish-speaking upper secondary school students’ written English. The thesis is an overview of the most common occurring errors, which may be a result of language transfer or interference. The material for this thesis consists of only 25 papers written by the participants and therefore the result of my study is not a general or accurate view of English language-use by Swedish-speaking upper secondary school students.
The theoretical background for this thesis consists mainly of themes concerning bilingualism and multilingualism. Another central theme in the theory-section is language transfer and interference. The main reason for explaining bilingualism and multilingualism in the theory-section is to give the reader an understanding of the participants’ everyday language setting and how their two or multiple languages work together. Discussing bilingualism is also crucial in order to give a background to a further explanation of language transfer and interference. In the later part of the theory- section I present the types of error, grammatical errors and loan translations, which form a base for the later analysis.
Through an error analysis I determine what types of error occur in the participant’s texts and through detection of errors I am able to determine if the errors are a result of language transfer or not. The analyzed material consisted of short papers written by the students on four different topics.
The results of this thesis show that the reason for most of the occurring errors was transferring a Swedish word or phrase into English. This means that language interference, in fact, occurs in the student’s use of English. Errors in preposition-use were the most common and this could be due to a lack of formal grammatical rules for preposition-use in both Swedish and English. Some of the errors are not as clear as others, since some could be considered an error in only the given context and not in general. Some errors could also be considered errors only in formal writing and not in spoken language, for example.
The theoretical background for this thesis consists mainly of themes concerning bilingualism and multilingualism. Another central theme in the theory-section is language transfer and interference. The main reason for explaining bilingualism and multilingualism in the theory-section is to give the reader an understanding of the participants’ everyday language setting and how their two or multiple languages work together. Discussing bilingualism is also crucial in order to give a background to a further explanation of language transfer and interference. In the later part of the theory- section I present the types of error, grammatical errors and loan translations, which form a base for the later analysis.
Through an error analysis I determine what types of error occur in the participant’s texts and through detection of errors I am able to determine if the errors are a result of language transfer or not. The analyzed material consisted of short papers written by the students on four different topics.
The results of this thesis show that the reason for most of the occurring errors was transferring a Swedish word or phrase into English. This means that language interference, in fact, occurs in the student’s use of English. Errors in preposition-use were the most common and this could be due to a lack of formal grammatical rules for preposition-use in both Swedish and English. Some of the errors are not as clear as others, since some could be considered an error in only the given context and not in general. Some errors could also be considered errors only in formal writing and not in spoken language, for example.