Language teachers will be well familiar with the phenomenon of learners committing mistakes which pattern in a certain way whether phonological, morphological, semantical etc. To the language teacher who is only familiar with their own language and perhaps English as a contact language, the patterns of student's mistakes will seem ordered and consistent at best. On the contrary, to the teacher who is familiar with the first language of students, these patterns might make sense if teachers reflect on the relationship between the first language and the target language - what are the differences in phonology, for instance, and how do these differences relate to the mistakes that students make when producing words and sentences in the target language?
An example:
A teacher of Danish as a foreign language has a classroom full of students with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Among them are English and Spanish speakers. English speakers have no problem learning words beginning with /s/ followed by /p, t, k/ (spand [span] 'bucket', stol [stol] 'chair' skam [skam] 'shame') because such words are present and common in English, cf. speak, skate, stake etc. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, pronounce the above mentioned Danish words as [espan, estol, eskam] because Spanish has a phonological rule that inserts a /e/ in front of such consonant clusters as those mentioned above. Thus, Spanish does not have words beginning in /sp, st, sk/ but many that begin in /esp, est, esk/ - examples are España 'Spain' estudio 'study' escuela 'school'.
In the above example, the teacher who is aware of Spanish phonology will pay attention to the mistakes of the Spanish speaker and will be able to coach the Spanish speakers individually in order for them to learn how to eliminate the insertion of /e/ in their pronunciation of Danish consonant clusters.
I believe that the case where the teacher is unfamiliar with the first language of his or her students, is by far the more common one as compared to the case where the teachers has some knowledge or, even rarer, proficiency in the first language of the learners.
It seems evident to me that such knowledge is an advantage for the teacher in his work because it allows him to understand the source of students' mistakes and to properly explain to the student the correct language use in relation to the mistakes.
I also think that second language teachers would benefit greatly from studying and comparing a number of different languages from across the globe in order to familiarize themselves with the possibilities and limits of human language - in other words, to study language typology. The second language teacher who knows the most common patterns of the languages of the world, will be better equipped, I believe, to understand the most common learner's mistakes of speakers of any first language.
An example:
A teacher of Danish as a foreign language has a classroom full of students with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Among them are English and Spanish speakers. English speakers have no problem learning words beginning with /s/ followed by /p, t, k/ (spand [span] 'bucket', stol [stol] 'chair' skam [skam] 'shame') because such words are present and common in English, cf. speak, skate, stake etc. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, pronounce the above mentioned Danish words as [espan, estol, eskam] because Spanish has a phonological rule that inserts a /e/ in front of such consonant clusters as those mentioned above. Thus, Spanish does not have words beginning in /sp, st, sk/ but many that begin in /esp, est, esk/ - examples are España 'Spain' estudio 'study' escuela 'school'.
In the above example, the teacher who is aware of Spanish phonology will pay attention to the mistakes of the Spanish speaker and will be able to coach the Spanish speakers individually in order for them to learn how to eliminate the insertion of /e/ in their pronunciation of Danish consonant clusters.
I believe that the case where the teacher is unfamiliar with the first language of his or her students, is by far the more common one as compared to the case where the teachers has some knowledge or, even rarer, proficiency in the first language of the learners.
It seems evident to me that such knowledge is an advantage for the teacher in his work because it allows him to understand the source of students' mistakes and to properly explain to the student the correct language use in relation to the mistakes.
I also think that second language teachers would benefit greatly from studying and comparing a number of different languages from across the globe in order to familiarize themselves with the possibilities and limits of human language - in other words, to study language typology. The second language teacher who knows the most common patterns of the languages of the world, will be better equipped, I believe, to understand the most common learner's mistakes of speakers of any first language.
