Interlanguage of L 2 french the learning of L3 english

النوع : Mémoire

The present study aimed at investigating the influence of French (L2) in the written production of English (L3) for native speakers of Arabic (LI). The subjects, forty francophone university students, wrote one production framed by a specific topic and one free production on any topic they wanted. The forty subjects of the sample were filtered through a questionnaire that determined the language profile of the participants. Only trilingual subjects were retained and were considered representative for the present research. The errors due to French (L2) transfer were located and errors in content words were put into three major categories. The results were analyzed. The coefficient of correlation between the guided and the free writing was calculated as well as the probability of errors. Results showed that the L2 transfer errors in content words were highly significant and more so in the free one. Limitations of the study were discussed and recommendations for future research were made.