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Second Language Acquisition Case Study

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According to Seville-Troike (2012), “Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers both to the study of individual and groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first one as young children, and to the process of leaning that language” (p.2). She maintains that every subsequent language after the first language (L1) is referred to as the second language (L2) even though it might not necessarily be the second language learned.
In the past, most SLA linguistic research that includes Spanish as an L1 or native language (NL) and English as an L2 or foreign language (FL) has been conducted predominately in the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe. Very little research if any has been done in Puerto Rico in applied linguistics …show more content…
This entails grouping lexical items together and then producing them with a new and different phonology. They go on to state, “Potential difficulties in learning the various target language phonemes, lexical items and rules and from the[sic] area of the native language that are different from the target language, may therefore interfere with this acquisition” (p. 170).
Purpose of the Study
The aim of this study is to observe the Null Subject Parameter (NSP) syntactic aspects that L2 learners use in English, that continue to resemble features that are found in Spanish, and attempt to identify at what level of English proficiency if any the L2 learner changes the parameter(Chomsky,1981) from the syntactic rules of the L1 to those of the L2. The study will also attempt to identify the L2 learner’s awareness of syntactic differences between his/her NL and TL pertaining to the NSP.
Lenzing (2013) mentioned that over the years and throughout history, the idea of transfer of language features from the L1 to the L2 has been widely discussed. The relativity of these transfers has been given value in SLA research according to the language theories and thought process of any given time. He noted that revolutionary findings from SLA research in this area demonstrated that L2 language learning is not accidental, but organized and methodical. …show more content…
Because L2 learners appear to be able to interact with basic communication skills in the target language without changing the L1 NSP parameters, the researcher will also attempt to substantiate the participant’s consciousness of the differences between English and Spanish syntactically in the NSP by asking: Is the English language L2 learner aware that there are syntactic differences between Spanish and

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