Negative transfer in Maltese students’ writing in English

Abstract

The influence of the mother tongue on the learning of other languages is a widely researched phenomenon. The operation of transfer is today a commonly acknowledged feature in second language acquisition. In the Maltese context, this field of inquiry addresses, among other issues, the learning of English by native Maltese speakers. In this paper, I describe briefly my recent research in the field, and propose a number of views and insights into how negative transfer operates in L2 acquisition in formal schooling at secondary level in Malta.