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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH Hungarian English Loan translation íróasztal desk "writing table mentőautó ambulance *ambulance-car köszen coal *stone coal (Heltai 2012) It is easy to see that in the area of compounds Hungarian learners are influenced by their mother tongue: Hungarian has a large number of compounds, which often correspond to monomorphemic English words. So Hungarian learners may be assumed to transfer word building patterns into English. Yet, as indicated at the end of the previous chapter, this is not the whole story. During the years of behaviourism teaching materials were considered to be the most important factor in second and foreign language teaching. Subsequent learning theories placed the learner at the centre of the learning process and advocated a multi-factor approach to language learning. In a parallel development there was a shift of focus from the teaching of languages to the acquisition of languages. These developments led to the realisation that the difficulties of second language acquisition (SLA) are determined by several linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and L1 influence is only one of these factors (Gass 1988, Harley 1995, Swan 1997). The terms Li transfer or L1 interference, implying a direct connection between L1 form and L2 production and/or acquisition and emphasizing negative transfer, were replaced by the term cross-linguistic influences (Sharwood-Smith 1983, Kellerman and Sharwood-Smith 1986). Proponents of the idea of CLI maintain that errors are due to several factors, interacting in complex ways with other factors, and cross-linguistic influences constitute only one group of the factors that influence second language learning and learners’ communication in L2. Cross-linguistic influences also mean that interference (negative transfer) is not the only form in which L1 influences L2 learning and production. At present, the established thinking is that linguistic contrasts do not account for all errors and for all difficulties of learning, but they do influence L2 acquisition. 2.3 FACTORS INFLUENCING SLA There are several linguistic and non-linguistic factors influencing SLA: Linguistic factors — universal principles of acquisition; — inherent difficulty of the structures or lexical items to be acquired; — cognitive complexity; — L1/L2 contrasts at different levels. +26 +
