Syntax Usage Interference: Manifestations and Ways to Handle (in English and Russian)

The article considers the problem of language usage interference as seen in the English speech of Russian ESL learners. Unlike language interference proper that may lead to grammar mistakes or communicative failures, this particular type of negative transfer makes foreign language learners, influenced by the usus of their mother tongue, deviate from/ignore the speech patterns commonly used by native speakers of the given foreign language. The author demonstrates how the usage interference of the Russian language can manifest itself in the English speech of Russian ESL learners at the level of a simple sentence structure and proposes a functional-cognitive approach to preventing it. The authenticity/non-authenticity of simple sentence structures in the samples taken from the English speech produced by English majors of Nizhny Novgorod Linguistics University (School of Translation and Interpreting; recorded in 2008-2018) is determined by finding structural and/or semantic matches for them in sentences of authentic texts produced by British and American native speakers of English and obtained from various Internet sources or through personal communication. Besides structural and linguistic comparative analysis, the methods employed by the researcher include interviewing native speakers (through the medium of online forums or privately) and introspection. The study reveals two main types of usage interference at the level of a simple sentence structure-choosing a non-authentic sentence pattern and avoiding certain authentic patterns under the influence of the native language usage-and further establishes their specific manifestations. The research suggests that the interference of native syntax can be eliminated by taking a functional-cognitive approach to teaching foreign syntax. This approach should be aimed at students' learning prepositional models of their second language fixed in simple sentence patterns of the language and employed as schemes for structuring fragments of reality. To implement the approach successfully, the teacher is supposed to use a meta-language based on simple words of the students' native language, rely on the mechanism of metaphoric transfer and take into account syntactic differences between the native and the foreign languages. To compare and contrast the syntax of the two languages, it is necessary to juxtapose the models used in either of them (in accordance with the particular way of metaphorical and non-metaphorical conceptualisation of the world reflected in this given language) to build statements about the same type of situation in similar sociocultural, pragmatic and other conditions. The author concludes that forming strong associative connections between the type of situation and the corresponding cognitive scheme, propositional model and sentence pattern of a foreign language in a learner's mind may eliminate the influence of their native language and prevent both proper language and language usage interference.

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