NGHIÊN cứu TRI NHẬN về CHUYỂN DI TIÊU cực TRONG CÁCH sử DỤNG GIỚI từ TIẾNG ANH của NGƯỜI VIỆT TT TA

THE UNIVERSITY OF DA NANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES A COGNITIVE STUDY OF NEGATIVE TRANSFER OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 62.22.02.01 DOCTORAL THESIS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (A SUMMARY) Da Nang, 2022 This thesis has been completed at University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Da Nang Supervisor: Assoc.Prof., Dr Tran Huu Phuc Assoc.Prof., Dr Nguyen Tat Thang Examiner 1: Examiner 2: Examiner 3: The thesis was orally defended at the Examining Committee Time: Venue: University of Foreign Language Studies -The University of Danang This thesis is available for the purpose of reference at: - Library of University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Da Nang - The Information Resources Center, The University of Da Nang - National Library of Viet Nam ABSTRACT Many current linguists are interested in whether cognition has any influence on foreign language acquisition A large number of research have been conducted on L1 transfer; however, the grounds for applying Cognitive Linguistics to language transfer continue to focus on surface structures of the mother tongue and target languages, rather than the underlying causes, which are the cognition of language users The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the cognitive factors that influence the usage of English prepositions by Vietnamese learners of English The author presented how Vietnamese learners of English express prepositional meanings from the perspective of Cognitive linguistics and which factors negatively impacted the way Vietnamese learners of English used prepositions An online survey investigating negative L1 transfer on the use of English prepositions among Vietnamese learners of English was distributed to English learners Two thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one respondents of differing proficiency levels, qualifications, locations, ages, and biological sexes were surveyed Analysis of the responses showed that negative L1 transfer was associated with the respondents’ cognition Their personal perception of the world and language influenced their L2 production An empirical experiment using an AI chatbot (a form of Facebook Messenger) was also included in the survey to check whether the learning environment contributed to language transfer or not The author built a speaking and writing assignment corpus from Preparatory Courses for VSTEP to confirm study results The study results indicated that learners’ L1 cognition played a significant role in affecting learners’ L2 competence, of which negative conceptual transfer made up a sizeable proportion In particular, the Vietnamese cognition of space (M < 41.47) was responsible for negative L1 transfer to the target language (English) Gender and other non-linguistic factors also contributed to language transfer on the quality of L2 communication with the sig < 0.05 This thesis recommends that language teachers take students’ L1 conceptual transfer into account when planning lessons in order to prevent some predictable mistakes in their L2 usage Linguists, translators, and interpreters must understand the relevant L1 conceptual transfer to improve their L2 production in their work i THESIS-RELATED PUBLICATIONS [1] Trần Tín Nghị (2017) Cognition and language transfer: a cognitive study of prepositions Hội thảo quốc gia Nghiên cứu liên ngành Ngôn ngữ giảng dạy Ngôn ngữ lần thứ (pp 522-535) Hue: Đại học Ngoại ngữ Huế [2] Trần Hữu Phúc, Nguyễn Tất Thắng, & Trần Tín Nghị (2018) A Cognitive study of Nonlinguistic Factors Affecting the use of Prepositions by Vietnamese Native Speakers International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 147-158 [3] Trần Tín Nghị, Trần Hữu Phúc, & Nguyễn Tất Thắng (2019) Applying Ai Chatbot For Teaching A Foreign Language: An Empirical Research International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 8(12), 897-902 (Scopus-indexed) [4] Trần Tín Nghị (2020) Applying Non-Linguistic Frameworks for Investigating the Language Transfer International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 9(4), 231-243 (Scopus-indexed, Q1) [5] Trần Tín Nghị, Nguyễn Tất Thắng, & Trần Hữu Phúc (2021) An Investigation into Factors Affecting the Use of English Prepositions by Vietnamese Learners of English International Journal of Higher Education, 10(1), 24-40 (Scopus-indexed) [6] Trần Tín Nghị & Trần Hữu Phúc (2022) A Corpus-Based Study On The Most Frequently Used English Prepositions: A Conceptual Transfer Perspective Theory and Practice in Language Studies 12(2), pp 213-220 (Scopus-indexed) ii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research background Language learning in non-English-speaking nations is difficult and time-consuming Even people who are gifted at learning foreign languages have several challenges when studying English in these countries Beyond lexical and grammatical issues, Burns and Richards (2018) point out that learning a new language might present cognitive challenges The negative conceptual transfer has been found to be one of the most difficult faults to study in foreign language education, according to numerous research According to foreign-language experts, the negative L1 transfer is a critical area of study that needs to be further investigated (Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982; Jarvis & Pavlenko; Tyler & Evans, 2001) Several Vietnamese linguistics scholars have conducted comparative analytic studies on Vietnamese and English prepositions in an effort to understand the similarities and differences between the two languages Recently, a few studies in cognitive linguistics have looked at prepositions in Vietnamese and/or English; the majority of these studies focused solely on motion or direction prepositions (Trần Thị Minh Giang, & Lưu Quý Khương, 2014; Lưu Trọng Tuấn, 2011; Lý Ngọc Toàn, 2019) When looking at these studies, it is simple to see that learners believe prepositions and adverb particles are irrelevant, and as a result, they are more likely to use or translate into English a word with a comparable meaning in their home tongue rather than the correct preposition or particle This type of L1 transfer negatively affects the acquisition of fluent native-like mastery of the English language for years CL investigations of language transfer when prepositions are used, notably negative transfer, have not yet been done 1.2 Statement of the problem Vietnamese learners confront numerous difficulties when learning or using English prepositions These difficulties can be summarized as follows:    There are not exactly the same number of prepositions in Vietnamese as there are in English An English preposition that is combined with other words can have many meanings, and some of its meanings are quite different from its core sense For instance, the phrasal verb "make up" involves eight different meanings according to their contexts; There is a significant difference in the way Vietnamese and English speakers understand prepositions Therefore, this thesis examines the issues of L1 negative transfer from the perspective of CL and proposes some educational implications for teaching English in the Vietnamese context 1.3 Aims and objectives The following issues were examined to set precise and concise objectives for the study The primary objective was to identify factors that resulted in negative L1 transfer via the use of English prepositions Eight hypotheses were established to examine the semantic features of English prepositions, which Vietnamese learners of English may use inappropriately From the survey, factors related to cross-linguistic similarities were analyzed to produce a complete understanding of linguistic transfer because most of the available studies on cognitive grammar were theoretical and ignored its role in teaching and learning Likewise, other factors such as cognitive embodiment, recency, the learning environment, L1 language acquisition, and language proficiency were also included in the study In this study, the Type I error, which aimed to test whether an effect of treatment was true or not, was taken into account By setting the alpha level at 0.05, all of the data was analyzed to determine which factors associated with language transfer were statistically significant Three research techniques, namely survey, empirical, and corpus, were employed to be able to draw a firm conclusion and bridge the gap between linguistics and language teaching to contribute to the field of applied linguistics The second objective was to identify the choice of English prepositions made by Vietnamese learners in terms of negative transfer A questionnaire was utilized to discover the schema sanctioning the use of the English preposition, based on the accuracy rates Some non-linguistic factors such as religion, favorite colors, and location were also added to provide a complete picture for investigating L1 culture and background transfer To achieve this objective, the T-test and Chi-square test of independence were used to compare the variables, e.g., simple prepositions and complex prepositions, to see the difference in participants’ choices A report on the interference of L1 background and culture on the choice of English prepositions explains why most Vietnamese learners tend to use simple rather than compound or complex prepositions Only variables with a p-value of 0.05 or less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant in proving or disproving individual hypotheses The third objective was to evaluate whether gender was a source of negative transfer Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to investigate whether different genders had different levels of negative L1 transfer or not The author used the ANOVA test to determine whether the scores of three groups, viz., males, females and gender-undisclosed, differed statistically or not By examining each section of the questionnaire, the results showed that gender negatively affected the use of specific English prepositions Lastly, this study considered the irregularities and arbitrariness of preposition meanings that most participants might struggle with when having to learn the various meanings associated with particular prepositions in their different semantic networks From a negative transfer perspective, prepositional errors showed how the communicative context oriented and influenced the individual learner's conceptual transfer 1.4 Research questions As discussed in Section 1.2, the problem statement, prior studies are limited to a subset of CL perspectives on L1 transfer This study used CL as a basis to investigate the factors that negatively influence the use of English prepositions in motivated polysemy networks Some potential open-ended questions related to the stated objective remain unanswered Hence, we explored the three critical research questions: What factors negatively impact how Vietnamese learners use English prepositions from a cognitive linguistic perspective? How aware are Vietnamese learners of English of the distinction between simple and complex English prepositions? Is there any relationship between gender and the usage of English prepositions among Vietnamese learners of English? This thesis will explore English prepositional use by Vietnamese learners from a CL perspective by utilizing English assignments based on the three research questions To achieve this, eight significant hypotheses as follows were decided upon: Within the domain of RQ 1, the following five hypotheses were set: Hypothesis 1: Vietnamese intra-lingual interference does not affect prepositional meaning expressed by Vietnamese learners of English Hypothesis 2: Cognitive Embodiment does not play any significant role in terms of negative language transfer affecting a specific preposition's usage Hypothesis 3: Learners with more than one foreign language not use English prepositions better than those who only study English as a foreign language Hypothesis 4: A suitable learning environment has no negative transfer effect on learning English prepositions Hypothesis 5: There are no significant differences among low, intermediate, and advanced level Vietnamese learners of English in terms of negative transfer affecting specific preposition usage For the investigation of RQ 2, the author chose the following two hypotheses: Hypothesis 6: The way in which English is learned does not affect the choice of English prepositions Hypothesis 7: Vietnamese English learners tend not to use simple English prepositions For RQ 3, the author formulated the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 8: There are no significant differences between genders in terms of negative transfer when acquiring English prepositions among Vietnamese learners of English CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Literature review In this chapter, the author reviews previous studies, based on thematic topics such as SLA and Cognitive Studies on SLA, Cognitive studies on English prepositions usages in the Vietnamese context, Cognitive studies of prepositional senses, English prepositions, and language transfer Two important topics are focused on interpretation: English prepositions and language transfer English prepositions are reviewed according to the chronological process from behaviorism to cognitive perspective, and language transfer is presented in terms of its four phases of development The first phase is the identification of possible explanans (viz explanation, affecting factor or independent variable) that may affect the process of SLA During this phase, most of the researchers' time and effort are expended identifying cases of language transfer, defining the scope of the transfer, and quantifying the effects of the transfer (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p 5) The second phase describes the phenomenon in question as an independent variable or explanandum*1 This phase is very important in transfer research because the entire study has as its goals the 'verification of the transfer effects, identifying causes of transfer, identifying constraints in transfer, investigating the selectivity of transfer and directionality of transfer effects (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p 5).’ The third phase is the development of a theory designed to explain the phenomenon under investigation in relation to social, situational, and mental constraints, constructs, and processes During this phase, the focus is on the theoretical development of CLI models and hypotheses, as well as on conducting empirical research Phase overlaps phases and in that it begins while they are still underway The researcher investigates the neurophysiology of how language is produced and stored in our brains The purpose of this literature review is to view the trends in cognitive studies on the uses of English prepositions, especially introducing research in the Vietnamese context within the next 10 years The research is based on the thematic structure of cognitive and language transfers Two hundred and forty-three studies have been cited to demonstrate the thematic structure in this thesis Explanandum is the technical term used by Jarvis & Pavlenko (2008) 2.2 The theoretical framework for language transfer The author applied Jarvis (2011) and Odlin (2005) frameworks to investigate the conceptual transfer hypothesis in SLA from their empirical evidence Based on these frameworks, the author developed the conceptual transfer framework in relation to the English prepositional usages of Vietnamese learners of English (See Fig 1) The taxonomy of transfer includes a distinction between linguistic and conceptual transfer The former is primarily related to the linguistic forms and structures of the mother tongue and target language, while the latter refers to the various types of transfer that occur due to the mental concepts that underpin those forms and structures Linguistic transfer aims to explain 'transfer' by examining the similarities and differences between two languages' structural properties: the source and target languages — this kind of language transfer results in the linguistic representation of lexical level However, the aim of conceptual transfer is to interpret another locus of transfer by comparing similarities and differences in conceptual categories corresponding to the source and recipient languages' grammatical and discourse levels Figure 2.1 Conceptual transfer framework in Vietnamese context of learning English This study focused on the effects of L1 that impede the ability of native speakers of Vietnamese to use English The term L1 in this thesis refers to Vietnamese language because some of the learners may have learned more than two foreign languages such as English and another language at the same time This research project only involved Vietnamese-speaking participants learning English as a foreign language to investigate the negative L1 transfer in English prepositions Numerous factors can have both learning-related and performance-related effects on transfer The author clarified the factors according to whether they belong to learning-related, or performance-related effects, or both types of effect The author adopted Jarvis' CLI framework analysis for categorizing five main factors as follows: - Linguistic and psycholinguistic factors - Cognitive, attentional, and developmental factors - Factors related to cumulative language experience and knowledge - Factors related to the learning environment - Factors related to language use Linguistic and psycholinguistic factors relate to characteristics of both L1 and L2 languages such as cross-linguistic similarity, area of language use, frequency, recency and salience, markedness and prototypicality, and linguistic context Interaction between linguistic context and transfer is affected by L2 users in forms, structures, meanings, and so forth This means that the performance-related rules, governed by L1 context-induced variation, could have been transferred to the L2 Cognitive, attentional, and developmental factors directly concern cognitive and developmental constraints on transfer For instance, people with different levels of cognitive and conceptual maturity will process and store new knowledge of a language in different ways Cognitive maturity directly affects the quality of language use This second category involves four sub-factors: level of cognitive maturity, developmental and universal processes of language acquisition, cognitive language learning abilities, and attention to and awareness of language Factors relating to cumulative language experience and knowledge are connected to learners' language knowledge and experience Among these factors, the learner's language proficiency in both L1 and L2 is significant in reducing negative language transfer This category has the following four subsections: age; length, frequency, and intensity of language exposure; length of residence; and number and order of acquired languages All four factors in this category are somehow linked to learners' language proficiency Factors related to the learning environment, which are noted to affect CLI, involve the distinction between formal learning and naturalistic exposure The differences largely lie in the issue of explicit versus implicit memory Formal learning focuses more on learners' explicit memory and conscious monitoring, and therefore, the possibility of negative transfer increases However, naturalistic exposure, which is believed to be the main source of transfer, is misleading Recent work on naturalistic exposure has appeared to pertain to performance-related rather than learning-related effects on transfer Step 2: Students were asked to write the kind of prepositions they had got incorrect during the tests and then given suggestions on which units of the coursebook they should attend the lectures Step 3: Students in the experimental group could choose the classes on English Pronouns and Prepositions to attend based on chatbot topic suggestions Step 4: Students were tested and surveyed with the students in the control group 3.2.2 Variables and measurement This empirical research examined the relationship between the learning environment and language transfer The author employed the descriptive method for describing all the linguistic and nonlinguistic factors, the correlation between the variables under investigation, and the interviews with the participants Each of the variables had five possible values or outcomes in this experiment, ranked from one to five points The respondents could only choose one of the options that they believed best reflected their performance or situation For the test results, the author used a 10-point scale to grade the students' performance The empirical research data were then analyzed and interpreted to determine how well participants in the two groups performed 3.3 Corpus design 3.3.1 Preparatory Courses for VSTEP Corpus (PCVC) The author compiled a corpus of English writing and speaking assignments from students enrolled in Preparatory Courses for VSTEP (PCVC) at Da Nang University of Foreign Language Studies The VPCC was constructed from practice assignments which were submitted online, including 190 written papers and speaking audio files A text corpus application, Sketch Engine, was used to analyse the data, and the results were uploaded and saved at the URL ske.li/jtl Table 3.1.VSTEP Preparatory Courses Corpus (PCVC) COUNTS info Tokens 122,227 Words 100,796 5,216 Sentences 190 Documents 10 3.3.2 British National Corpus (BNC) To conduct the study, the author used the British National Corpus (BNC) as the comparison data source The BNC is a 100-million-word collection of samples of British English written and spoken in the late twentieth century The BNC is divided into two parts: the written component (90 percent), which includes newspapers, academic books, letters, essays, etc., and the spoken part, which is smaller (remaining 10 percent, e.g., informal conversations, radio shows, etc.) Furthermore, the BNC topics are essentially identical or nearly same with the topics in VPCC since these topics are quite frequent in language education and English literature courses It would be appropriate to compare the uses of English prepositions between two corpora The BNC contains 112,345,722 tokens, 96,134,547 words, 6,052,190 phrases, 1,514,906 paragraphs, and 4,054 documents in total 3.3.3 Text collection and Processing The author gathered and processed students' assignment texts for storage in Sketch Engine at https://ske.li/nrn for the PCVC This is where the author’s real corpus is being stored and processed For the purpose of examining how semantic features were employed differently in the two corpora, the author compared preposition use in the BNC to specific preposition usage in the author's corpus Figure 3.1 A sample of the first 39 concordances of preposition „IN‟ in the PCVC 11 The author used a web-based tool program called Sketch Engine, since it already had a large number of corpora of various languages The author employed the most basic types of analysis, such as creating frequency lists, keyword lists, and investigating concordance lines These approaches helped the author to investigate more sophisticated and interesting language patterns of English prepositions in both corpora The results were organized topically in Chapters 4, 5, and CHAPTER FOUR: FACTORS OF NEGATIVE L1 TRANSFER IN THE USE OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH 4.1 Factors related to cross-linguistic similarity To test the first hypothesis, the author presented the data that related to language distance, typological proximity or psychotypology This way of presenting data was comparable to the results of several well-known studies which were conducted by Kellerman (1983), Ringbom (1978a), and Henning (1978) Firstly, the author summarized the statistical difference between Vietnamese and English The number of preposition entities in Vietnamese and English languages was vastly different The Vietnamese prepositions were only approximately up to 22% in comparison with those in the English closed system [CATEGOR Y NAME] [PERCEN TAGE] [CATEGOR Y NAME] Vietnamese Prepositions English Prepositions [PERCEN TAGE] Figure 4-1 Vietnamese and English preposition comparison The difference was so enormous that Vietnamese learners of English get lost in their search for appropriate English prepositions when they need to use them in their L2 production (English) The author also tested the collocations with the five most-used English prepositions (in, of, for, to, and by) in the corpora of VSTEP Preparatory Courses The results were the same as for the preposition 'IN' Only two English collocations of 'IN' and 'ON' were found to be used by VSTEP test-takers Figure 4-2 is an illustration of the collocation of 'ON' with the pre-modifier of an adverb, now 12 Figure 4.2 The frequency of English collocation of preposition 'ON' In order to compare the prepositional sense of English prepositions absorbed by Vietnamese learners and other EFL learners, the author has turned to the corpus of British National Corpus of EFL writing 2018 to see whether other English (L2) language users have the same problems or not The result shows that more than 102 collocations of 'IN' were used as in Table 4-3 (also Appendix 2) Several of them are wrong, but most of them are correctly used Table 4-3 Nouns and Verbs modified by IN - NBC Corpus Ord Grammar relation nouns and verbs modified by IN Collocate Freq Score 2241 63.38 4.2 Factors related to cognitive embodiment and the difference among regions in terms of language transfer affecting the usage of specific prepositions To test Hypothesis 2, participants were asked to describe five pictures on the questionnaire in their own words (see Appendix 1, The first research design) The goal of this task was to see if there was any interference when using locative prepositions Only about ten common simple prepositions were understood by Vietnamese English learners, accounting for only nearly a quarter of the total 45 English spatial prepositions This rate meant that locative prepositions were used so sparingly by Vietnamese English learners that they were unable to express all possible locations in English As a result, it was concluded that participants' decisions about which prepositions to use were influenced by their cognitive embodiment The majority of the participants focused on what they could see, but not on what things correlated with each other in the reference frame They never considered the space within the picture in which they were situated or their relationship with other items depicted in the same picture (see The thesis for details) Figure 4-4 Frequencies of English Prepositions in describing five pictures 13 4.3 Factors related to recency It was hypothesized that L2 diversity leads to CLI in Hypothesis Students who studied more than one foreign language performed significantly better on the prepositions test than students who studied only English as their foreign language According to the results of the data analysis, participants who had previously studied Chinese or another foreign language were better at using English prepositions than those who had studied English alone 4.4 Factors related to the learning environment The evaluation of the chatbot's impact on students' performance for each unit in the book was calculated and compared to reflect any differences between the control and experimental groups The Sig P=.000 in the ANOVA test indicates that there is a difference in two observed groups (see Table 4-6) Table 4-6 The summary of applying chatbots for learning English prepositions Sum of Squares Between Groups df Mean Square 21.780 21.780 Within Groups 176.200 198 890 Total 197.980 199 F 24.475 Sig .000 The findings also revealed that human-to-human dialogues are more easily lost than human-to-chatbot dialogues, because the chatbot logs or recordings can be saved for later consideration or independent study When the author further examined the correlations between the frequency of using mobile apps and the students' performance, the results showed that Improving language skills and Listening to music, watching YouTube favorite channels, Surfing Facebook and other social networks increased the students' mastery of English prepositions, but playing online games did not Table 4-9 presents the correlations between students' leisure activities and their results for unit test - Words that require a specific Preposition The significant figures are below 0.5 and consistent with the results needed to prove those activities affect the learning outcomes 14 Table 4- Coefficients of e-learning environments To sum up, factors in the learning environment greatly affect language transfer both negatively and positively depending on the students' interest and autonomy (see The thesis for details) 4.5 Difference among low, intermediate, and advanced EFL learners in terms of negative transfer impacting specific preposition usage Table 4-10 Participants' performance according to low, intermediate, and advanced levels of EFL learners The results illustrated in Table 4-10 indicated that the participants attained scores that increased from the low-level classes to high-level classes These results were considered sustainable and logical Therefore, participants from the senior level of education got higher total scores than low-level learners This necessitates investigation into the context of the use of English prepositions to give relevance to these results To explain this, students from the lower levels of education had spent less time learning; their recitation and exposure were only enough for the basic use of English prepositions in the Vietnamese education system They were no better off than their senior counterparts who had been pressed to use English prepositions during 15 their academic life The factor of exposure and practice played a more crucial role here The level of learning here proves that it is not simply the time or number of classes one spends in English Generally, this meant that the participants from seniorlevel classes were more able students than those from lower classes This result explains why low-level learners could not manage higher scores than those of intermediate and advanced levels One can only conclude that based on the total group score mean, but an evaluation of the data using the ANOVA determines the significance 4.6 Factors related to area of L1 language acquisition More evidence is the confusion between the preposition 'across' with the verb CROSS in questionnaire item (They live across the street from us) In this question, students understood the meaning of the preposition 'ACROSS.' They might bring the sense of main of components of -CROSS to their usage as demonstrated in figure 4-7, but the answer fell to 'CROSS' in their results (a distractor) because they remembered the meaning of the verb but were confused but similarity of the orthographical forms of the two words at a rate of 83,3 percent Figure 4-7 The demonstration for "ACROSS … FROM" with the street running between two houses The difficulty of distinguishing the meaning of the English preposition of 'ACROSS' is the LM of it In comparison with the English Preposition' OPPOSITE', the LM is the same for both objects 'their house' and 'our house' in the example: "They live opposite us." In question number 8, The LM of 'ACROSS' is the street, and LM of 'FROM' is us Table 4-2 Participants' performance on Q.8 Frequency Valid Wrong Right Total Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent 2288 80.8 80.8 80.8 543 19.2 19.2 100.0 2831 100.0 100.0 16 Table 4-5 shows the detailed statistics on the participants' performance on question number related to the selection of 'ACROSS.' Only 19.2 percent of participants choose the correct answer in the survey That reveals that participants have a big problem in identifying the LM and TR of two entities in their cognition This situation cannot be improved when Vietnamese learners are not taught with reference to Cognitive linguistics Learners not understand the meanings of the English prepositions but learn them by rote 4.7 Factors related to L1 frequency use Another piece of evidence from the corpus research also accounts for this phenomenon (that the frequency of use of one structure in the mother tongue may negatively affect L2 production) is the monitoring of -ing morpheme frequency (meaning in "progressive form" or "đang") When the author counted the incidence of the inflectional morpheme "-ing" in the 190 VSTEP test-takers corpora of writing, 5,784 words contain this inflectional morpheme (see Fig 4-9) It means that Vietnamese learners of English tend to use the progressive tense in their L2 writing and speaking although many of them can be best replaced by simple prepositions The high frequency of some Vietnamese words negatively affects L2 communicative competence that leads to a lack of usage of English prepositions, especially those indicating a place and space like at, in, and on Overall, it is concluded that L1 frequency strongly affects L2 performance in terms of negative transfer due to the learner's habitual thought patterns Therefore, the EFL learners' output seem unnatural and illogical in the L2 Hypothesis is confirmed with the L1 acquisition frequency (Section 4.2) and usage (Section 4.3) negatively affecting L2 competence in the form of CLI Chapter Five: INTERFERENCE OF L1 BACKGROUND AND CULTURE ON THE CHOICE OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS 5.1 Tendency of Vietnamese learners to use simple prepositions rather than complex prepositions Table 5-2 Score report for simple and complex prepositions The mean of correct answers for simple prepositions (M=1.711) is 0.87 higher than that for compound and complex prepositions (M=1.624) Table 5-2 shows a detailed 17 statistical description of the results Table 5-2 shows a detailed statistical description of the results It comprehensively reveals that the percentage of false answers for simple and complex prepositions is quite different in each group of participants The higher proportion of incorrect answers for complex preposition questions in the survey was also constant between the different groups of participants An analysis of what types of questions were attempted, and those who answered well in other questions of the survey was done There was a tendency for most participants to not even attempt questions that seemed hard, and the high level of variance laid out below revealed that most gave answers that were far from correct This survey showed that the Vietnamese EFL learners in this survey have difficulty with the use of complex English prepositions (more than two-word prepositions) 5.2 Geographical factors and favorite colors negatively affecting the choice of English prepositions Table 5-3 Total Score, Place of Residence Distribution Table P (0.007164) < 005 thus data statistically significant We have synthesized the results to answer research question No The preliminary findings reveal a tendency to use simple English prepositions of Vietnamese learners of English The learners neglect to analyze the structure of complex English prepositions to understand their semantic meanings Besides, geographical factor and their attitude to colors somewhat strongly influenced their choice of English prepositions CHAPTER SIX: GENDER AS A SOURCE OF NEGATIVE TRANSFER 6.1 Qualitative results Language mastery required individuals to display accuracy as well as fluency both in written and spoken aspects Concerning prepositional use, the author asked participants whether they perceived gender as playing an influential role in prepositional accuracy This theme was developed from 12 participants who held that 18 L1's negative interference often led to prepositional misuses Twelve participants were selected from the participants in the survey The respondents argued that males and females perform differently in cognitive semantics, with males outperforming females on aspects related to spatial and mechanical reasoning According to P5: “Females are normally confusing about the directions, and they are not good defining which south, north, west or east to go or even in their speech.” According to P7: “Male often perform better compared to females, especially on spatial reasoning ability.” (see The thesis for details) 6.2 Quantitative results To test if there was a significant difference between genders in the use of prepositions, data on the participants' final score was tabulated against their respective genders This finding is evident from questions 3, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 in the test, where the differences between the female and male performance in the use of English prepositions were pronounced Furthermore, the results revealed that the effect of gender on preposition choice by Vietnamese EFL learners is of statistical significance, as p (0.000) was less than 0.05 There is a difference between male and female learners in their use of English prepositions An explanation that can be given to support this argument is that female students are likely to express themselves more verbally than their counterparts That gives them more and more frequent exposure to the use of prepositions Women tend to use oral learning strategies and social orientation more effectively than males when learning English, while the other kinds of exercise that need complex analysis, males better CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 19 7.1 Recapitulation The study delineated L1 negative transfer in the use of English prepositions made by Vietnamese learners of English under the light of cognitive linguistics As previously stated, the convincing data were gathered using an eight-part test of English prepositions and an empirical research design The results were then crosschecked with PCVC corpus The author constructed eight hypotheses to trace the L1 transfer as follows: Hypothesis 1: Vietnamese intra-lingual interference does not affect prepositional senses expressed by Vietnamese learners of English Hypothesis 2: Cognitive Embodiment does not play any significant role in terms of language transfer affecting a specific preposition's usage Hypothesis 3: Learners with more than one foreign language does not use English prepositions better than those who only study English as a foreign language Hypothesis 4: A suitable learning environment has no negative transfer effect when learning English prepositions Hypothesis 5: There are no significant differences among low, intermediate, and advanced level Vietnamese learners of English in terms of negative transfer affecting specific preposition usage Hypothesis 6: The process of learning English does not affect the choice of English prepositions Hypothesis 7: Vietnamese English learners not tend to use simple English prepositions Hypothesis 8: There are no significant differences between genders in terms of negative transfer when acquiring English prepositions among Vietnamese learners of English First, the hypotheses numbered to were designed to identify factors that had a negative effect on the use of English prepositions The study found that the use of English prepositions was negatively influenced by the Vietnamese language Vietnamese students of English were unable to communicate in English because of the language transfer Students' space cognitions also contributed to negative language transfer as a result of their prior embodiment experiences With regard to the effects of learning on language transfer, the number of foreign languages that a learner had previously learned was found to be a language transfer factor that influenced learners’ language proficiency Their ability to learn and use a foreign language was positively influenced by the environment in which they were taught as well as their level of English proficiency Only when two of these factors were fully present, the negative transfer of English prepositions decreased 20 Second, testing hypotheses and revealed that the process of learning resulted in Vietnamese learners selecting English prepositions as a result of their learning experience Less complex prepositions were used more frequently by Vietnamese learners of English, indicating that the process of learning English was responsible for the negative transfer in the learners' language use The primary reason for this was the limited number of Vietnamese prepositions available when compared to the number of English prepositions A cross-linguistic influence was found in two other characteristics of L1 language acquisition: frequency and recency It was discovered that environmental factors such as the length of time spent exposed to the second language had an negative impact on language transfer as a result of the amount of time and frequency with which learners were exposed to their target language This result was corroborated by the behaviorist theory of language development, which emphasized that language competence could be developed through the exposure to environmental factors that both increased lexical development and sparked cognitive processes (Skinner, 1957) Consequently, in order to reinforce the overall learning process, language acquisition was achieved through the active and repeated exposure of its stimuli and continuous correction of errors Third, the statistics of hypothesis revealed that gender played a significant role in both language learning and language use In the survey, female participants outperformed male participants in terms of overall performance Nonetheless, some English preposition mistakes related to movement, directions, phrasal verbs, and participles were only accounted for female participants It was clear that gender had a significant impact on the language use as a transfer phenomenon, as evidenced by the findings This finding contradicted some earlier studies on syntactic development, such as Johansson and Geisler (2011) They found no significant variations in syntactic maturity between males and females, whereas this, admittedly small, study found differences between males and females in terms of language transfer from their biological gender Last but not least, it was understood as a link that was hooked on a complicated cognitive element initiated by learners’ language performance and language use That link interacted both positively and negatively with language transfer It was really important that we changed our perspective on the study of language development: we no longer saw it as a child cracking the linguistic code but as a child honing their language skills through a gradual tuning process by which the child adapted to the way language functions in social encounters, shaping their everyday interactions day by day The results also provided evidence of negative Vietnamese transfers in using English prepositions Using data analysis, the author strongly proposes a conceptual framework for investigating CLI This proposed framework embodies the multifaceted interactions, including the biological, social, and psychological constructs of conceptual transfer The framework suggests that nonlinguistic factors concerning language transfer act as 21 both barriers to and facilitators of the psychological, biological, and social effects on an individual’s ability to learn their target language Figure 7.1 The process of cross-linguistic influence In this conceptual framework, CLI is a unidirectional cause-consequence The aspects have causality systems and processes that influence one another over time and space in an interconnected way Learners’ engagement networks (emotions and personhood) serve as determinants of bilingual identity However, time as an element affects the metalinguistic awareness of a person learning a second language The bi-literacy development system (e.g., space) increases learners' capacity to acknowledge and understand new vocabulary and map word meaning and form For example, it is easier for adults to learn a new language than children because they not need to acquire many concepts but new verbal symbols representing these ideas However, the new language may be forgotten if they not practice it for a continuous time A guided context during language learning offers learners an opportunity to learn the differences between concepts and words at an explicit knowledge level To sum up, the conceptual framework on cross-linguistic influence has demonstrated how various facets which affect the functional and structural bilinguals with emphasis on the acquisition of target language Throughout the framework, we hope that linguists have a conceptual framework to analyze the data for the instances of problems in the cross-linguistic influence by foreign language learners 7.2 Pedagogical implications for teaching English prepositions The similarities between the two language systems create positive transfer and accelerate the correct usage of new L2 expressions, while the differences help them become aware of the context-dependent factors and thus avoid using terms incorrectly If the difference between two prepositional systems can be compared and interpreted, learners of English can resort to the knowledge of using them better in both languages 22 for their positive transfers from one to another Language teachers must know the cognitive structure of L1 transfer and their psycholinguistic perspectives on the L2 language When the teachers understand the cognitive orders of L1 language, they could arrange their teaching procedures to help students improve their appropriateness and effectiveness of L2 output performance Below are three main pedagogical implications for teaching English prepositions First, students may have English prepositional errors in speaking and writing, especially spatial prepositions English teachers are advised to examine some of the non-linguistic factors that may cause errors before correcting them immediately They may know the correct answer when teachers are giving feedback to them, and soon they will have such kind of mistakes in the future due to their cognition for this matter is not changed The best way to teach English prepositions is to help them know their usages rather than help them remember their literal meanings in the dictionary because English prepositions are highly arbitrary For instance, English teachers can teach an English preposition in an example by showing them its LM and TR in a specific example, instead of supplying them with an abstract meaning When learners know clearly about the preposition's proposition, they will use it correctly later Second, some non-linguistic challenges that students have to face are listed in this study English teachers should know about that when they build their lessons For instance, genders may affect the students’ performance, so English teachers must give male learners extra-activities to ask them to practice more in specific lessons This drill can avoid them being assigned to common mistakes Third, it is noted that differences between English and Vietnamese prepositions lead to negative transfer in terms of errors, so interpreting differences and similarities play a crucial role in helping them have a positive transfer as much as possible Such guidelines can be attributed to the process of mastering English prepositions with the lowest mistaken knowledge When students have enough awareness of the difference between English and Vietnamese prepositions, the negative transfer is reduced, and rates of errors are also declined 7.3 Limitation and suggestions for further research Further scientific research on negative L1 transfer should be considered to interpret multiple factors that can influence second language mastery To cope with the complicated representation of L1 transfer, the present survey designed task should be replaced by Vietnamese learners' daily conversations and/or free writing in the L2 (English) Moreover, this study did not include color and religion as sources of negative transfer even though the initial data showed that they have slight impacts on learners' performance 23 A survey research design study like this one cannot fully investigate all the grammatical and lexical patterns of a specific English preposition Therefore, a cognitive study of individual lexical units complementary to this work will be worthwhile A corpus-based perspective of language history for some compound prepositions like -ward or -ly should be put into accounts and evaluated in its ontogenetic approach The distinctions between prepositions and other parts of speech can be explained more concisely to readers and learners as a result of such research To better understand L1 transfer, L1 psycholinguistic research should be carried out to provide the evidence of matching L2 real-time conceptual schemas for concrete things, metaphorical meaning for daily utterances, or abstract domains Empirical teaching is the most appropriate model for testing language hypotheses, especially when it is related to many dependent factors in the teaching process Moreover, psycholinguistic experimentation in L2 learning can be useful for investigating the ontogenetic patterns of a specific language element by comparing and contrasting its meaning between the L1 and L2 polysemy of that word 24 ... (M=1.624) Table 5-2 shows a detailed 17 statistical description of the results Table 5-2 shows a detailed statistical description of the results It comprehensively reveals that the percentage of... negatively affecting the choice of English prepositions Table 5-3 Total Score, Place of Residence Distribution Table P (0.007164) < 005 thus data statistically significant We have synthesized the results... transferred to the L2 Cognitive, attentional, and developmental factors directly concern cognitive and developmental constraints on transfer For instance, people with different levels of cognitive