Cross-Linguistic Influence On Bouyei Senior High School Students' English Aspiration Acquisition

In recent years, as the researches on third language acquisition(L3) amounted, third language acquisition research has experienced important development and began to be regarded as a separate research field.This study conducted an empirical study on the cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of English aspirations of Bouyei Senior high English students, and aims at getting a clear idea about the common problems in Bouyei students' aspiration acquisition and exploring the relationship between the three languages known to Bouyei students. After that, the potential factors that may influence the cross-linguistic influence in TLA are expected to be dug out.Totally 84 subjects from 2 first-year senior high classes in Wangmo Minority Middle School were involved in the present study, and they are divided into two groups according to their ethnic groups. Moreover, language background questionnaires, phoneme discrimination tests on English aspirations, English aspiration tests and follow-up interviews were adopted to collect data from the subjects. With both quantitative and qualitative methods, this research attempts to answer the following questions:(l) Which language has a greater influence on Bouyei students' learning of English aspirations, Bouyei or Chinese?(2) Are there any differences between Bouyei students and Chinese students in the proficiency level of English aspirations?(3) What potential cross-linguistic factors have affected Bouyei students' acquisition of English aspirations from LI to L3?The major findings are:(1) The Bouyei students' L1(Bouyei language) has a greater influence on their learning of English aspirations;(2) Bouyei students showed less proficiency in the acquisition of English aspirations when compared with Chinese students;(3) Language distance, language proficiency and recency of language use are the potential factors that may have constraints on the cross-linguistic influence in Bouyei students' acquisition of English aspirations.These findings are of both theoretical and practical significance: theoretically,they may enable the linguists and researchers get a better understanding of third language acquisition in Bouyei minority; practically, the emphasis on the fact that English is a third language to the Bouyei students can help to attract more attentionfrom both Bouyei students and English teachers in future English learning and teaching.