Inquiry: Role of L1 proficiency in L2 acquisition (specific reference to Spanish)

[Scott McGinnis]

Respondents to this posting should reply directly to the originator,
Paul Garcia, at pagarcia at ku.edu.

A student wrote me the following, without comment/addition:

It has been our experience that the children who come from parents who
are proficient in their first language do much better at 2nd language
acquisition.  The problem is that we get so many kids from close to the
border where there is a hybrid spoken - part Spanish part English.
These kids do not seem to have a true, sound linguistic structure to
'hang' the new language on.  Do you have any data on these kiddos?  What
do you suggest for them?  The parents often do not read well in their
native language and are on the 3rd generation or so  of not really
speaking Spanish proficiently (being unable to read, write, and describe
well) - so that as they acquire English, the skills are so weak in the
first language that they make the 2nd language that much harder for them
to understand, use, and learn in.  I would love to have something to
read on this topic. Our kids from Africa actually do better than the
kids from just down the road.  It worries me that we don't give them
enough/correct support.  Can you suggest a research article that
addresses this topic?


--
Dr. Paul A. García
Past President, 2000, ACTFL
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages University of
Kansas Foreign Language Education School of Education 426 J. R. Pearson
Hall 1122 West Campus Road Lawrence, KS 66044
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