Transfer across Second Language Acquisition Theories

Vol. 1 No. 3

Year: 2011

Issue: July-September

Title: Transfer across Second Language Acquisition Theories 

Author Name: Parisa Daftarifard, Servat Shirkhani 

Synopsis: 

Transfer has been discussed from different points of view since the advent of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis [13], [8]. Mishina- Mori [19] has defied transfer as merging grammatical properties from one language to another. The effect of transfer from a first language (L1) to a second language (L2) or a third language (L3) has been viewed differently in different theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). A number of these theories view transfer as having no role, some others as having debilitative effects and still others as having enhancive effects on L2 or L3 learning. This article has reviewed these different views of SLA theories toward transfer and claims that though these theories sound incommensurable in this regard, they can be considered as one tune in a complex dynamic but chaotic system of SLA known as Chaos/ Complex System.