Swan, M., & Smith, B. (Eds.). (2001). Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Learner English: A Teacher’s Guide to Interference and Other Problems is the go-to book when working with students from a variety of language backgrounds. It gives in-depth, condensed information about which phonological and syntactical characteristics of a learner’s native language will interfere with English learning, and includes examples of possible learner interlanguage errors. The book also includes a CD with learner recordings illustrating common language issues as described in the chapters. Each chapter is written by an expert and native speaker of the chapter’s focal language. The 28 contributing authors are alphabetically listed in the “Notes on contributors” (p. vii) along with their native languages and academic backgrounds.

The introduction describes the purpose of the book as a reference guide for ESOL teachers and notes the book’s limitation in addressing only a handful of the world’s languages. Languages covered in the book include (in order) Dutch, Scandinavian languages, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Polish, Farsi, Arabic, Turkish, South Asian languages, Dravidian languages, West African languages, Swahili, Malay/Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai. A list of phonetic symbols is included for sounds represented in the book (pp. xiv–xv). In addition, the introduction glosses why British English was chosen as the point of reference for the book, research-based linguistic understanding of the influence of a learner’s native language on English learning, and gives notes for teachers of American English.

When confronting English errors of an unfamiliar L1 student background, this reference is particularly useful. My program’s international student body is composed mostly of Japanese students, and the book has provided clarity regarding L1 interference specifically for the students I teach on a daily basis. Between using the book and noticing common learner errors, I have been better able to focus on teaching specific target pronunciation and grammar points. However, when I taught in a different program, I was completely unfamiliar with an Ivory Coast student’s interlanguage and L1 interference from the Kwa language and the French he spoke; the chapters on West African languages and French were most helpful for me. I will outline the chapter on French to illustrate how this book can be utilized.

The beginning of each language chapter includes a brief introduction that provides a quick look at the social and cultural background of the language. I am focusing on the chapter on French rather than the West African languages because, as is summarized at the beginning of the chapter on “Speakers of West African languages”:

The languages of West Africa are too numerous and diverse for detailed regional listing. Within each state many different mother tongues are spoken, often related one to another and mutually quite unintelligible…From an English language teaching point of view, it is more useful to classify the states of West Africa according to their official second language (English or French). (p. 251)

This insightful statement proved true when working with my Ivorian student, whom I quickly noticed held over characteristics of French in his written and spoken English.

The overview of the phonological differences following the introduction of each chapter provides separate tables for vowels and consonants, shading the phonetic sounds that overlap between the two languages. Because of my limited exposure to French, it was helpful to quickly see that French does not have several of the English vowels, nor the /ŋ/, /ð/, /θ/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, or /h/ sounds. Written examples of how this influences the French native speaker’s pronunciation of English correspond to the recordings in the CD. Additional information regarding stress, intonation, and the influence of spelling on pronunciation really gave me insight into my Ivorian’s English and an additional benefit was that I could better understand his English by noting, for example, that he dropped the h and gave vowel sounds more equal weight, including the two elements of a diphthong, as demonstrated by “I see now becomes ‘ahee see nah-oo’” (p. 54). As a result, I could more effectively work on the pronunciation issues that my student needed the most help with. Next, the chapter transitions from Orthography and Punctuation to Grammar.

In the Grammar section of each chapter, similarities and differences between the L1 and English are noted in general. Subsequently, more in-depth explanations and examples are given for verbs; questions and negatives; auxiliaries, time, tense and aspect; modal verbs; imperatives; clause structure and complementation, and so on. As I read through the chapter, I could almost hear my Ivorian student saying some of the given examples. “French uses a (subjunctive) clause, rather than an infinitive structure, after the equivalent of want and would like: *She wants that you come right away” (p. 62). In addition to providing clear reasons of why a native French speaker might produce such utterances, I had clear guidance on how to explain the differences to my student. While not all students may be interested in pursuing how their L1 influences their English learning, this student was particularly eager to progress into university study, and thus valued comments on such distinctions. When teaching a larger population of an L1, you can see how both the information on pronunciation and grammar would be beneficial.

A future edition of Learner English might include a subsection in each chapter on the influence of L1 collocations on the learning of English collocations, something that has been discussed in recent publications. A study of Japanese EFL and ESOL learners showed that learners made more errors with English collocations that were incongruous to those in their L1, Japanese, regardless of their exposure to English (Yamashita & Jiang, 2010). However, overall, Learner English provides quite thorough explanations of L1 interference: a reason why this should be on every ESOL/EFL teacher’s resource shelf.

References

Yamashita, J. and Jiang, N. (2010). L1 influence on the acquisition of L2 collocations: Japanese ESL users and EFL learners acquiring English collocations. TESOL Quarterly, 44, 647–668. doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.235998

The reviews editor of HEIS News, Melanie Jipping, is currently an adjunct ESOL instructor in the American Studies Program at TIUA in Salem, Oregon, and is interested in all things applied linguistics. She welcomes any requests to review a book for the HEIS Newsletter.