Mother tongue interference in the acquisition of grammatical gender by Spanish learners of English

Abstract

This study focuses on the acquisition of grammatical gender agreement at different levels of language proficiency in English, paying attention to syntactic constraints and those arising from the influence of the mother tongue. Thus, the objectives are, first, to categorise mismatches in English grammatical gender acquisition when learnt by Spaniards at A2, B1, B2 and C1 levels of proficiency established by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001; 2018). Second, the study aims to determine whether these mismatches are produced by syntactic failure or by mother tongue transfer. Additionally, it explores whether communicative competence may be affected by grammatical gender acquisition mismatches. In this paper, the failures in grammatical gender agreement were identified and classified into syntactic and mother tongue transfer. The methodology followed was based on a corpus-driven approach. First, a corpus of essays written by Spanish learners of English with A2, B1, B2 and C1 language proficiency levels was compiled. The grammatical gender agreement mismatches were then identified to ascertain the students’ ability to assign gender in English. Finally, the frequencies of failure of grammatical gender agreement at the different levels of language proficiency were classified into syntactic and language transfer categories. The results showed not only the grammatical gender agreement mechanisms when acquiring English at the different levels of language proficiency but also which kind of components in communicative competence may be affected by gender agreement processes.