Linguistic Second Language Acquisition Research Paper Propasal

RESEARCH PLAN:

The question addressed in my research paper is whether the syntactic structure of the first language (L1) influences the syntactic structure of the second language (L2) acquired. I claim that L2’s syntactic structure is constructed depends on L1’s syntactic structure. I will support my claim by looking at three dissertations where the writers believe that L1’s syntactic structure has effects on L2’s syntactic structure. The first dissertation is about four experiments done with three groups of people with three different first languages (Japanese, Mandarin, Korean), and concludes that the syntactic structure is shared between L1 and L2 even though the word orders are different for languages (Kim, 2010). The second dissertation is focusing on the syntactic persistency between English and Korean, and concludes that there are syntactic priming effects between these two languages (Park, 2007). The third one is an investigation into the patterns and errors in English writing where English is the second language (Kosterina, 2007). I will use these three sources to argue and conclude that L2’s syntactic structure is dependent on L1’s syntactic structure.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Kim, Sunfa. (2010). Syntactic representations of English in second language learners: An investigation of the process of English sentence production by bilingual speakers using a within-language (L2) structural priming paradigm. (State University of New York at Buffalo). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com/docview/577370483?accountid=14771

Article in print journal. Kim investigates whether the syntactic structure of L1 has the impacts on L2’s syntactic structure. He does experiments with 3 groups of people, Japanese- English, Mandarin- English and Korean- English bilingual speakers. He concludes that the syntactic structure is shared between L1 and L2. I will use it as the first resource to defend my position.

Kosterina, Anna. P....