The role of cross linguistic influence in the classroom Acquisition of English subject-verb agreement by Norwegian and Polish adolescents

Abstract

This thesis aims to highlight how learners’ native language affects their acquisition of a second language. The study compares how L1 Norwegian and Polish learners acquire subject-verb agreement and discusses how cross-linguistic influence affects their results. Furthermore, the study isolates long-distance and local agreement conditions for each group to further discuss if structural distance affects the groups similarly. The findings suggest that both groups exhibit higher accuracy scores in local grammatical conditions than in long-distance ones. The Polish participants are notably more accurate in identifying local grammatical agreement compared to long-distance, while the Norwegians struggle more with the long-distance plural condition. The study provides tentative support for the Shallow Structure Hypothesis, which suggests that learners may struggle with long-distance agreement due to the complexity of structural distance. The findings also suggest that distance is not necessarily the most challenging factor for learners, as the Norwegians struggle more overgeneralizing the third person singular – s. The study's results may have implications for instructed settings in terms of how teachers and learners can be more aware of potential bottlenecks in acquiring non-local agreement. Overall, the study highlights the importance of examining cross-linguistic differences in how learners acquire grammatical structures in a second language. Furthermore, the study provides suggestions as to the importance of considering the pupil's native language when acquiring a second language. Specifically, the study suggests an increased focus on subject-verb agreement and functional morphology in the English classroom.