Essay On Negative Transfer

Grammar is a complex, yet rather simple, set of rules that govern how the words are strung together in a language in order for them to make sense. This includes word order, the form of words used, and the use of grammatical systems such as articles in English. We use grammar all the time without even realizing it because it is so integrated into our language and everyday lives. I don’t know for sure when I started to understand grammar; I am sure that when I started forming sentences, I began to understand parts of grammar (and even inventing my own grammar). In school, we learned about grammar, especially written grammar, all the way through high school, which tells me it takes a long time to fully understand the grammar of a language, even

Transfer is when a person uses knowledge from their L1 in their L2. Transfer use to be seen as a negative thing because it was seen as a language deficit in the L2, however that is not always the case. There is both negative and positive transfer according the the behaviorism theory. Negative transfer is when there are differences in L1 and L2, so they make a mistake when speaking in the L2. Positive transfer is when there are similarities between the L1 and L2, so what they know from their first language also applies to the second language. How is transfer different than interlanguage grammar? They sound like they are very similar concepts.

A morpheme, in linguistics, is the smallest unit that meaning can be pulled from. A grammatical morpheme, from Topic 4, is the smallest unit of still defined as being the smallest unit of meaning that can be pulled from a word, but it specifically has to do with the function part of words such as prefixes, suffixes, articles, plural endings, ect. There is an order that grammatical morphemes are usually learned, and the acquisition of those things happen in stages. In English, grammatical morphemes include articles such as the and a, -ing, -ed, past tense (regular and irregular), and