Translinguistic influence in French language learning in Malaysia

• Main Author: Esteve, Justine
• Other Authors: Sorbonne Paris Cité, Saillard, Claire
• Format: Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Influence translinguistique; Anglais malaisien; Translinguistic influence; Malaysian English; lang; litt; Prince of Wales Island
• Online Access: http://www.theses.fr/2017USPCC044/document

This study analyses oral productions in French of Malaysian beginner learners. The objective is to offer an improved approach to the teaching of past tenses in French language classes. In order to do so, we analyse the importance of translinguistic influence in past tense learning in French as a second language. The data are made of two corpora : on the first hand, 17 Malaysian learners in Year 10 preparing their IGCSE oral exam which represent 6 hours of recording and on the second hand, 4 English learners preparing their IGCSE oral exam which represent 45 minutes of recording. The Malaysian learners study French in Penang, Malaysia at the Prince of Wales Island International School. The comparison of both corpora leads to underlining the translinguistic influence on each type of population. We pay special attention to oral production and especially the expression of the past (passé compose / imparfait) and traces of translinguistic influence that could derive from the learners’ known languages (English, Mandarin and Malay for the Malaysian corpus and English for the English corpus). The study will also present the expression of time and aspect in each relevant language. The comparison of data, viewed from the known languages perspective, shows that statistically Malaysian learners are more prone to omitting the verb and to using neutral verbal forms than the English learners. The analysis of both corpora also confirms that Malaysian learners produce more non-conform occurrences due to a confusion between different French tenses than the English learners whose non-conform occurrences are mostly due to grammatical or morphological non-conformity. If indeed, major differences were found, certain similarities stick out and allow us to highlight French second language learning hypotheses. Firstly, French second language learners seem to omit state verbs mostly when omitting verbs and secondly, the close link between lexical and grammatical aspect for the learners. Cette recherche analyse des productions orales en ...