Which term describes the negative influence of one language while learning another?

Which term describes the negative influence of one language while learning another?

• A. Interference
• B. Acquisition
• C. Cotext
• D. Conversion

Answer: (A)

Interference is the influence of your first language on the language you’re learning, and it often shows up as mistakes or unnatural usage because you transfer patterns from L1 into L2. This is the reason it’s the best term here: it captures the cross-language transfer that can disrupt accuracy and fluency as you learn a new language. For example, a learner might place adjectives after nouns in English if their L1 uses that order, or they might translate literally from L1 and say “I have 25 years” instead of “I am 25 years old,” due to how ages are expressed in their native language. Acquisition refers to the overall process of gaining language knowledge, not the specific cross-language influence. Cotext isn’t a standard term for this phenomenon, and conversion isn’t used to describe how one language affects another during learning.

Interference is the influence of your first language on the language you’re learning, and it often shows up as mistakes or unnatural usage because you transfer patterns from L1 into L2. This is the reason it’s the best term here: it captures the cross-language transfer that can disrupt accuracy and fluency as you learn a new language. For example, a learner might place adjectives after nouns in English if their L1 uses that order, or they might translate literally from L1 and say “I have 25 years” instead of “I am 25 years old,” due to how ages are expressed in their native language. Acquisition refers to the overall process of gaining language knowledge, not the specific cross-language influence. Cotext isn’t a standard term for this phenomenon, and conversion isn’t used to describe how one language affects another during learning.