Bilingual newsgroups in Catalonia: a challenge for machine translation

This paper presents a linguistic analysis of a corpus of messages written in Catalan and Spanish, which come from several informal newsgroups on the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia; henceforth, UOC) Virtual Campus. The surrounding environment is one of extensive bilingualism and contact between Spanish and Catalan. The study was carried out as part of the INTERLINGUA project conducted by the UOC's Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3). Its main goal is to ascertain the linguistic characteristics of the e-mail register in the newsgroups in order to assess their implications for the creation of an online machine translation environment. The results shed empirical light on the relevance of characteristics of the e-mail register, the impact of language contact and interference, and their implications for the use of machine translation for CMC data in order to facilitate cross-linguistic communication on the Internet

The impact of a multi-strategy academic writing handbook on Emergent bilinguals’ cross-curricular writing competences

La escritura académica en una segunda lengua puede ser uno de los requerimientos más complejos en la educación superior debido a los elementos lingüísticos, estratégicos y procedimentales que esta abarca al igual que los procesos cognitivos superiores que involucra. A pesar de su presencia permanente en la academia, los profesores no han encontrado aún una forma apropiada para enseñar y evaluar la escritura que garantice el progreso de los estudiantes y el apoyo continuo a lo largo de su proceso de aprendizaje. De esta manera, este estudio de caso de métodos mixtos apunta a diseñar y evaluar la efectividad de un Manual de Referencia para la Escritura Académica (MREA) que pretende proveer la asistencia constante que los estudiantes necesitan para solidificar su conocimiento de escritura y el material pedagógico apropiado que los docentes requieren para unificar los prácticas de enseñanza y evaluación de la escritura; este manual está fundamentado en los enfoques de la escrita como proceso y basada en el género, análisis de errores y evaluación..

Investigating the Interlingual Errors in Students’ Essay: The Case of Error Classification

The purpose of the present study was to identify the most frequently observed interlingual errors in the corpus under the study and the possible relationship between the gender and the type of interlingual errors. The results of this study revealed that the most frequently observed interlingual errors in the corpus under the study are spelling, word order, and punctuation errors and there is significant relationship between the gender and the type of interlingual errors (L1 interference and spelling, word order, and punctuation errors) on the basis of the obtained results for EFL learners. Accordingly based on the results it can be concluded that there is a relationship between interlingual errors and gender since the findings revealed that first, female participants make more spelling, word order, and punctuation errors (65%) by overlooking the writing system rules in the target language compared to the male participants (35%). Second, the results of the study confirm that female participants make more literal translation errors (55%) by translating his first language sentence or idiomatic expression in to the target language word by word compared to the male participants (45%)

“L1 interference in l2 writing skills in a1 students at the UTC language center”

In recent years, English has become more common in Ecuadorian society. The ability to communicate through writing is a unique characteristic of the human species and writing has helped people communicate with other human beings. The main aim of this research was to determine the strategies to enhance writing skills to avoid Spanish (L1) interference in English (L2) writing skills in A1 ‘C’ English students at the UTC Language Center of Latacunga. A written work elaborated by the students was applied and a written partial exam was used as an instrument. A written test was applied to thirty-three university students whose average age is between 20 and 25 years old, from the Language Center of the Technical University of Cotopaxi of English level A1 'C'. There were 18 women and 15 men. In addition, a rubric was applied to evaluate each piece of writing in aiming to recognize the interference errors of the students. In this research, descriptive and diagnostic methods are used because they help us to analyze and describe the veracity of the problem; the interference of the mother tongue in writing skills. For this purpose, the main mother tongue interferences in writing structures between Spanish and English were identified through a bibliographic review. The results obtained through the application of written work, it was determined that most students have errors in punctuation, capitalization, spelling, sentence structure, and word order. Therefore, strategies are useful in the writing process such as: modeled writing, shared writing, guided writing, and independent writing. Some authors talk about these strategies, but it is considered that the most important strategy for teaching writing is guided writing. In addition, this research provides information to teachers and learners about L1 interference in L2 writing skills and the strategies and methods that are useful in the writing learning process. Thus, students created imprecise texts, lacking coherence and cohesion.En los últimos años, el inglés se ha vuelto más común en la sociedad ecuatoriana. La capacidad de comunicarse a través de la escritura es una característica única de la especie humana y la escritura ha ayudado a las personas a comunicarse con otros seres humanos. El objetivo principal de esta investigación fue determinar las estrategias para potenciar las habilidades de escritura para evitar la interferencia del español (L1) en las habilidades de escritura del inglés (L2) en estudiantes de inglés A1, paralelo ¨C¨ en el centro de idiomas UTC de Latacunga. Se aplicó un trabajo escrito elaborado por los estudiantes y se utilizó como instrumento un examen parcial escrito. Se aplicó una prueba escrita a treinta y tres estudiantes universitarios cuyo promedio de edad se encuentra entre los 20 y 25 años, del Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi de nivel de inglés A1 paralelo 'C'. Fueron 18 mujeres y 15 hombres. Además, se aplicó una rúbrica para evaluar cada escrito con el fin de reconocer los errores de interferencia de los estudiantes. En esta investigación se utilizaron métodos descriptivos y de diagnóstico porque nos ayudan a analizar y describir la veracidad del problema; la interferencia de la lengua materna en la escritura. Para ello, se identificaron las principales interferencias de la lengua materna en las estructuras de escritura entre el español y el inglés a través de una revisión bibliográfica. Los resultados obtenidos a través de la aplicación del trabajo escrito, se determinó que la mayoría de los estudiantes tienen errores de puntuación, mayúsculas, ortografía, estructura de la oración y orden de las palabras. Por lo tanto, en el proceso de escritura son útiles estrategias como: la escritura modelada, la escritura compartida, la escritura guiada y la escritura independiente. Algunos autores hablan de estas estrategias, pero se considera que la estrategia más importante para la enseñanza de la escritura es la escritura guiada. Además, esta investigación proporciona información a los profesores y a los alumnos sobre la interferencia de la L1 en las habilidades de escritura de la L2 y sobre las estrategias y métodos que son útiles en el proceso de aprendizaje de la escritura. De esta manera, los alumnos crearon textos imprecisos, carentes de coherencia y cohesión

An error analysis on EFL students' writing

This study attempts to analyze the grammatical errors in the writings of Indonesian EFL students through the Error Analysis (EA) approach. The subject of this research included the theses which are written by the university students of English Letters Department at one of the State University, Jakarta. The data sources were taken from chapter four, the conclusion, and the suggestion section from six students’ theses. In this study, the data collection was carried out through several steps: the authors collected data from students, identified grammatical errors, classified errors in students' thesis to determine the frequency of errors, and calculated the data into percentages. The results indicate that there are eleven types of errors commonly found in students’ writing. They are 5% errors of subject-verb and agreement, 2% errors in word order, 13% errors in preposition, 20% errors in article, 2% errors in plurality form, 19% errors in punctuation, 5% errors in auxiliary, 21% errors in unnecessary words, 5% errors in word choice, 5% errors in parallel structure, and 2% errors in redundancy. The writer observed 125 total errors. The errors are dominated in the form of punctuation, article, and unnecessary words types. The research unveils that students make common grammatical errors encouraged by the incapability to accomplish, recognize and understand the rules of the foreign language and its limitations, a little mastery of grammar and vocabulary

Cross Linguistic Influence on English Usage of Rivers State University of Science and Technology Freshmen

This paper examines specific instances of L1 interference on L2 in the syntactic structures of the second language learners’ writing. This paper also identifies the effect of the differences and/or similarities between the structures of L1 and L2 on the use of English among UST students. The study focuses on the effect of each of the areas of difficulty identified on a native speaker’s interpretation of the written text. It also identifies the importance of the learner’s knowledge of the syntactic structures of L1, which cause difficulty in L2. The study is designed to make the learner aware of the errors made and how they may be rectified. It provides new information in the L2 learning context. Finally, it identifies the language use and knowledge of the learner; it attempts to provide up-to-date evidence in the current L2 learning. An important aspect of this study is that it provides an interesting comparison of four groups of languages, namely Igboid, Ogonoid, Ijoid and English, this is a move from other researches which focus on one Nigerian language and English and this is useful for the current local teaching context