Voices

In this case study carried out at the University of California, Los Angeles, we explore Second Language Acquisition theory as it relates to negative transfer, apply these principles to three groups of second language learners at the university level, and analyze error types and their frequencies in order to improve our understanding of the transfer process that is occurring in our lower-level classrooms. While results show that transfer errors do not become less relevant as student proficiency increases, the most frequent error types change from level to level. The acquisition patterns identified in this study serve to improve our understanding of the second language-learning process and help us to implement effective changes in our lower-level classrooms.