The transfer of instruction

Interlanguage study on writing discourse markers in productions of Francophone learners from E/LE

Abstract

A branch of research on writing in second languages has shown that learning experiences can influence the behavior and writer on products written for second language users, determining the ability of both the writers and the quality of the texts. This paper presents a study that aims to show the existence of a transfer instruction (Selinker, 1972) present in the IL product written by a group of French-speaking students of Spanish foreign language (ELE). Its aim was to establish whether different models of instruction may be one factor explaining the use and level of mastery of a specific mechanism linguistic discourse markers by these people when you write an argumentative text. Although the sample size limits the possibility of generalizations, the findings open doors to future studies that seek to account for certain methods of teaching writing to second language can be more and less effective in promoting the acquisition of discursive mechanisms (e.g. discourse markers) associated with certain textual demands (e.g. the sequences associated with specific text in each language