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Acquisition of Grammatical Morphemes in English as a Foreign Language Learners

Introduction

This study was designed to investigate the acquisition order of several English

inflectional grammatical morphemes by French-speaking secondary school students

learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in France. Several studies of students

learning English as a Second Language (ESL) in the United States have indicated that

certain grammatical morphemes are acquired before others, regardless of age, first

language (L1), length of ESL instruction or amount of exposure to English. Researchers

believe this evidence suggests that ESL Learners acquire these grammatical morphemes

in relatively the same order (Dulay & Burt, 1974; Bailey et al., 1974; Larsen-Freeman,

1976).

However, the majority of these studies have been done on learners of English in

the United States, where English is the dominant language. Few studies have addressed

the issue of learning location or environment, i.e. learners of English in a country where

English is not the dominant language. Due to the fundamental difference between the two

learning methods, this study aims to establish any similarities or differences in

acquisition order among ESL and EFL students.

Furthermore, this study will address the issue of Interlanguage (IL – see below)

interference and the extent to which it affects the acquisition order of EFL learners. Four

morphemes from Dulay and Burt’s original acquisition order list (1974) were

investigated: plural –s, progressive –ing, third person singular present tense –s, and

possessive –‘s. Two of these morphemes (plural -s and present tense -s) are functionally

similar to their French counterparts, and the other two have no direct equivalent in French

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(progressive -ing and possessive -'s). Researchers of previous ESL studies have

concluded that L1 has little effect on the acquisition order of English morphemes. This

study examines whether...