ACQUISITION OF WH-QUESTIONS BY SECOND LANGUAGE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH IN PAKISTAN
Open Access
- 1 May 2021
- journal article
- Published by Maya Global Education Society in Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews
- Vol. 9 (3), 1078-1088
- https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2021.93107
Abstract
Purpose of the study: The purpose of the current study is to investigate the acquisition of Wh-questions of English by Urdu L1 speakers in Pakistan. Acquisition of different syntactic structures has been an attractive area of interest for the scholars working in the area of second language acquisition. The study draws on approaches of Universal Grammar (UG) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). The researchers aim at finding out whether the second language is acquired in the same way as the first language or not. Both Urdu and English allow Wh-questions formation but the placement of the Wh-word is completely at a different position. Urdu is an in-situ language that does not allow Movement of the Wh-word, and English allows the Movement of the Wh-word. So, this study highlights whether speakers of Urdu can acquire the structures of Wh-questions or not. Methodology: The study uses a mixed-method research design, and the data was collected from the speakers of Urdu who speak it as their native language in order to draw the findings. The current research employs a questionnaire that is divided into two parts: elicitation task and grammatical judgement task. For the elicitation task, the students were provided with the statements with the underlined words of which they had to form Wh-questions and for the second, a task was designed on the basis of the lickert scale and it was designed to judge the grammar of the students. The population of this study is limited to speakers of Urdu who speak English as their second language and the sample was selected from the vicinity of Sargodha city of Pakistan. Main Findings: The results of this mixed-method study reveal that students face problems while forming and identifying Wh-questions, despite compulsory education in English. The findings of the current study supported the partial access hypothesis. Applications of this study: The study is very important in the area of second language acquisition and informs how the speakers of the English language as a second language acquire the Wh-question structure. The study can be applied in designing teaching materials for the learners of English as a second language besides informing the language software modulation in order to ease the language learning process.Keywords
This publication has 14 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cartesian LinguisticsPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2009
- New Horizons in the Study of Language and MindPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2000
- The acquisition of multiple wh-questions by high-proficiency non-native speakers of EnglishSecond Language Research, 2000
- Syntactic Theory and the Structure of EnglishPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1997
- Negation in early German-English Interlanguage: more Valueless Features in the L2 initial stateSecond Language Research, 1996
- Evidence for a 'Wild' L2 Grammar: When PPs Rear their Empty HeadsApplied Linguistics, 1995
- The syntax of questions in child EnglishJournal of Child Language, 1994
- Critical period effects on universal properties of language: The status of subjacency in the acquisition of a second languageCognition, 1991
- Maturational Constraints on Language LearningCognitive Science, 1990
- Syntactic StructuresPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1957