Cross-Linguistic Influence In The Acquisition Of Word Order Of Adjective Placement In Spanish:Evidence From Chinese Undergraduate Learners

Cross-linguistic influence(CLI),a not unfamiliar term used in the language acquisition,has attracted many scholars' attention over past decades.Although it has been widely discussed and investigated in the fields of second language acquisition and third language acquisition,studies of Chinese undergraduate learners in the Spanish language acquisition of word order of adjective placement still remain relatively unexplored.Therefore,this study aimed to investigate the cross-linguistic influence in Chinese Spanish major students' acquisition of word order of adjective placement.126 participants from two universities in Kunming,Yunnan province,took part in the study.Both quantitative and qualitative analysis were involved to analyze the data.Questionnaire and interview were applied to collect the data.The questionnaire consisted of participants' background information,one translation inducement task and one writing inducement task.30 students were invited to be interviewed for the qualitative data collection.The main findings of this study showed: 1).One-way repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that in both translation and writing inducement tasks,in contrast with L1 Chinese,it was participants' L2 English that exerted significantly greater influence in the acquisition of word order of adjective placement in Spanish.2).Two-way repeated measures ANOVA illustrated that in both translation and writing inducement tasks,students' linguistic proficiency of Spanish(seen as an equivalent of participant's grade in present paper)bore no relationship to cross-linguistic influence.In other words,the cross-linguistic influence would not change as participants' linguistic proficiency(grade)differed.The results obtained from translation inducement task were consistent with that from One-way repeated measure ANOVA,that is,compared with Chinese,English exerted significant influence on participants' output production.As the profile plot showed in writing inducement task,sophomore and junior students were mainly impacted by English whereas senior students were significantly influenced by Spanish.3).Data from interview showed that participants would use English as the language intermediary to support the learning of the Spanish.So participants were more influenced by English in the acquisition of word order of adjective placement in Spanish.However,as shown in the profile plot,it was the Spanish,the language being learned,that were even more influential(but not cross-linguistic influence)than English.The findings of this study may shed much light on third language acquisition,in particular the less commonly-taught language teaching and learning in China.Pedagogical implications of the findings,limitations of the study and possible avenues for future research are discussed at the end of this dissertation.