The Impact of Prototypicality Judgement on Syntactic Transfer: A Case Study of Second Year Students of English, Laghouat University

The analysis of transfer involves determining the way different factors interplay in shaping multilinguistic competence. The present study aims at investigating the impact of prototypicality on syntactic transfer. The study adopts a qualitative approach where data is collected from the written composition of 40 students of English at Laghouat University. The first step is the analysis and categorisation of errors. The students' judgements of prototypicality are measured through individualised questionnaires. The findings of the study indicate that there are some patterns to the learners' syntactic errors; part of these errors is attributable to transfer from the mother tongue. The findings also reveal that learners' awareness about syntactic markedness in their mother tongue has a direct impact on reduction of transfer. One major implication is teaching practices that take into account explicit consciousness raising activities that are built on contrastive analyses of markedness.