Questão de Inglês — Pronomes (Pronouns) — VUNESP 2025

It has been common in second language teaching to stress the role of interference – that is, the interfering effects of the native language on the target (the second) language. It is of course not surprising that this process has been so singled out, for native language interference is surely the most immediately noticeable source of error among second language learners. The saliency of interference has been so strong that some have viewed second language learning as exclusively involving the overcoming of the effects of the native language. It is clear from learning theory that a person will use whatever previous experience he or she has had with language to facilitate the second language learning process. The native language is an obvious set of prior experiences. For example, a French native speaker might say in English, “I am in New York since January,” a perfectly logical transfer of the comparable French sentence “Je suis a New York depuis Janvier.” Because of the negative transfer of the French verb form to English, the French system has, in this case, interfered with the person’s production of a correct English form.

(Brown, D. 1994. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Adaptado)