Cross-linguistic Influence of English on French: The Case of Third Grade at Bahloul Rachid Primary School Tebessa (Algeria)

Abstract

Abstract: English has gained momentum as the world’s International Lingua Franca. Indeed, in the 2022-2023 academic year, Algeria shifted its LPP towards English, which is in rivalry with French over the first foreign language status in the country, by introducing it in the third-year primary education along with French. In this study, the effect of English on learning French is explored in third graders studying English and French in parallel. The impetus behind such an investigation stems from observations of third-grade relatives pronouncing phonemes of French in English, using words from English in French, and spelling French words as English ones. Therefore, a pilot study has been conducted to ascertain the existence of the problem, using a survey questionnaire administered to teachers of French at Bahloul Rachid Primary School in Tebessa (Algeria). Results reveal that the sample teachers are aware of children’s capacities to learn two languages, but they posit that they had better be taught complementarily or separately. The sample also advocates that teaching/learning two foreign languages should have been well planned at the macro and micro levels to avoid psychological problems and Cross-Linguistic Influences (CLI). These findings confirm that English impacts learning French, and they pave the way to conduct a case study from an emic perspective. Therefore, three sessions with one of the third-grade classes of French at the same school have been observed during the third trimester. The findings evince that the main influence lies at the phonetic level. Implications inform policy decision-making and further research on CLI. Keywords. CLI, English, French, second language learning