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<p>People in Sweden are exposed to the English language on a daily basis. This essay aims to study to what extent the mother tongue of Swedish pupils affects their writing in English in a negative way, called negative transfer. The material is based on a collection of English essays written by Swedish students, which has been searched for errors.</p>

People in Sweden are exposed to the English language on a daily basis. This essay aims to study to what extent the mother tongue of Swedish pupils affects their writing in English in a negative way, called negative transfer. The material is based on a collection of English essays written by Swedish students, which has been searched for errors.

Researches on interlanguage speech act of apology have been conducted in a variety of cultures and languages, while little attention has been paid to interlanguage apology made by Chinese EFL learners. Therefore, aiming to obtain a better understanding about how Chinese EFL learners differ from English native speakers in their speech act performance of apology, this study compared the apologies made by native speakers of Chinese and English and Chinese EFL learners at two English proficiency levels. Data for analysis in this study consist of 3600 expressions of apology performed by informants including 60 English native speakers, 60 Chinese native speakers, and 60 Chinese EFL learners¡X30 English-major EFL learners and 30 non-English-major EFL learners. As far as the apology strategies used by the four groups are concerned, results showed, as found by Fraser (1981) and Olshtain (1983, 1989), that the four groups of informants exhibited cross-linguistically valid apology strategies and similar patterns of apology strategy selection and preference order, even when contextual factors were involved. However, the frequency with which apology strategies are used reveals some deviations between EFL learners and NS-E for a number of strategies. Furthermore, proficiency effect is found operative in EFL learners¡¦ interlanguage apology production. Results of this study revealed a positive correlation between EFL learners¡¦ English proficiency and their interlanguage pragmatic competence and their linguistic accuracy in apologizing. For future studies, in order to determine how native speakers and EFL learners function in natural face-to-face interactions, the replication of study in an oral mode, a role-play for example, should be conducted, and either the data gathered from DCTs or from role-plays should be compared with the data gathered through the observation of natural language events to arrive at a more accurate analysis of the apologizing behavior of native speakers and EFL learners. Besides, this study focused specifically on the production of the apology speech act by native speakers of Chinese and English and Chinese EFL learners; however, based on Olshtain¡¦s (1989) claim that the understanding of intercultural differences cannot be limited to production features only without considering the perlocutionary aspect of the speech act from the hearer¡¦s point of view, further work should include the analysis of the responses to apologies to gain a better understanding and present a fuller picture of interlanguage speech act of apology.

The interlanguage studies of the speech act of refusals have been conducted in a variety of cultures and languages while little attention has been paid to interlanguage refusals made by Chinese EFL learners in Taiwan. The present study investigated the perception and performance of the speech act of refusals made by Chinese EFL learners at high (EFL-Hs) and low (EFL-Ls) proficiency levels compared with two baseline groups, Chinese L1 (CL1s) and American English L1 (EL1s). Data used for analysis in the study consisted of 3,543 expressions of refusal elicited from Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) performed by 180 college students (60 Chinese EFL learners, 60 Chinese native speakers and 60 English native speakers in North America). Based on Beebe et al.¡¦s coding system (1990), the refusal strategies were examined as direct refusals, indirect refusals, and adjuncts to refusals. Results revealed that when refusing, face is the major concern for speakers of the two cultures. However, cross-cultural differences were observed. Chinese L1 participants, under the influence of collectivistic culture value, distinguished ingroups and outgroups clearly. On the other hand, in English L1 group, equality is emphasized under the effect of individualistic cultural value. As to the performance of refusals, though both Chinese and English native speakers showed a preference for indirect refusals than direct refusals and the same range of refusal strategies were available for the four groups, the differences were observed in preference and frequency of use the refusal strategies, and also the content of the actual realization. Moreover, different ways of refusal modification were also favored by Chinese and English native speakers. Furthermore, results revealed a positive correlation between EFL learners¡¦ English proficiency and their interlanguage pragmatic competence. However, there was still a high degree of interlanguage variation in the use of refusal strategies among the EFL groups. It is suggested that in order to perform speech acts appropriately in different cultures, both speakers¡¦ perception and production should be emphasized in the future interlanguage researches, which would supply evidence of cross-cultural differences in social values and other motivating factors that could help interpret the EFL learners¡¦ realization of speech acts and gain a better understanding of interlanguage speech act of refusals.

The speech act of disagreement has been one of the speech acts that receive the least attention in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, in terms of both linguistic and non-linguistic realization of disagreement strategies. The present study was aimed to investigate how Chinese EFL learners perform the speech act of disagreement in English by comparing SRQ and DCT data from four groups of speakers, including 60 native speakers of Chinese, 60 native speakers of English, 30 EFL-low proficiency speakers, and 30 EFL-high proficiency speakers. The speakers¡¦ language performance in variation with several contextual factors, such as formality of context, social distance, social status, speaker gender, interlocutor gender and topic, was also examined. The data on linguistic strategies showed that the Chinese speakers avoided disagreement more often while the English speakers frequently used direct disagreement characterized by various and original positive remarks as softening devices. It was also found that the perception data, from the SRQ and the opt-out reasons, suggests rich ¡¥sociopragmatic judgments and motivating factors that have explanatory power in describing products of pragmalinguistic decisions¡¦ (Bonikowska, 1988: 173). Therefore, as evidenced by the perception data and supported by sociological theories, the individualistic culture¡¦s emphasis on ¡¥I¡¦ consciousness might have promoted the English speakers¡¦ bald verbal expressions while the collectivistic culture¡¦s priority of ¡¥we¡¦ concept and face concern have explained the Chinese speakers¡¦ harmony orientation in disagreement. Moreover, cultural difference in distinction between in-group and out-group signified differences in language performance when the speakers were disagreeing with the interlocutor at the longest distance, that is, the stranger or the clerk. As for the interlanguage, the EFL-low speakers behaved closer to the Chinese native speakers in using such strategies as ¡¥avoidance¡¦ and ¡¥contradiction¡¦. The EFL-high speakers overperformed ¡¥challenge to the interlocutor¡¦ when disagreeing with the close friend in order to demonstrate their English proficiency. In addition, both the EFL groups performed non target-like linguistic features partly due to pragmatic transfer from Chinese. In the future, more interlanguage research could elicit the speakers¡¦ perception of the speech act under study, which would supply abundant evidence of cross-cultural differences in social values and other motivating factors that could help interpret the EFL learners¡¦ realization of speech acts.

Expressing gratitude has a significant function in societal interaction. As Eisenstein and Bodman (1993) suggested, only when the function of gratitude is expressed appropriately can it ¡§engender feelings of warmth and solidarity among interlocutors¡¨ (p.167). However, compared with other widely discussed speech acts such as apology and request, the speech act of expressions of gratitude seldom drew researchers¡¦ attention. The present study hence focuses on investigating EFL (English as foreign language) learners¡¦ behavior in realizing expressions of gratitude on the basis of cross-cultural comparison of NS-Cs (Native speakers of Chinese) and NS-Es (Native speakers of English) in terms of perception and production performances. Data used for analysis cover 60 NS-E, 60 NS-C, and 60 EFL speakers¡¦ data elicited from Discourse-Completion-Task (DCT) questionnaire which consisted of 24 scenarios in which four contextual factors, comprising social distance, social status, gender of interlocutor and severity of the situation were embedded. Scale-Response questionnaire (SRQ) was designed to obtain two cultural groups¡¦ perception in terms of degree of imposition, degree of gratefulness, and likelihood of the expectation of benefactors. The EFL group was further categorized into two groups on the basis of proficiency level. Among each group, the number of male and female participants was even. The result of SRQ shows that both cultural groups generated the same tendency, that is, the greater imposition the informant felt s/he caused to the benefactor, the more grateful s/he felt and the more likely s/he thought the benefactor would expect receiving expressions of gratitude. NS-Es¡¦ perceptions on the likelihood of gratitude expectation and degree of imposition were significantly higher than NS-C group¡¦s. In terms of the contextual factors, NS-C participants were found to be more sensitive to relative social status while NS-E participants were more sensitive to relative social distance. The analysis of DCT data shows that NS-Cs and NS-Es generated similar strategies in gratitude-provoking situations and NS-E group generated greater amount of strategy use. Both groups generated more strategies and lengthier utterances in situations bearing greater imposition. EFL groups were found to generate similar strategy uses as the two cultural groups did. Accordingly, the occurrence of negative sociopragmatic transfer was rare while negative pragmalinguistic transfer was more observable. Some linguistic properties of transfer reflected the cultural orientation. Instead of pragmatic performance, proficiency level seemed to be influential in linguistic accuracy, amount of strategy use and length of utterances. The limitation of the study suggests future study conduct on natural utterances, oral DCT, introspective interview with the informants and further discussion on role-play data to get a more comprehensive understanding of the behavior of expressions of gratitude realized by NS-Cs, NS-Es and EFL learners.