A transzfer két oldala a pszichotipológia tükrében (The Two Sides of Transfer in the Light of Psychotypolgy)

Abstract

The acquisition of foreign languages represents a considerable challenge for native speakers of non-Indo-European languages; consequently, the employment of multilingual learning strategies is imperative. The prerequisites for the use of these strategies are language awareness, crosslinguistic influence (CLI), and psychotypology.

The results of a questionnaire administered to students at the University of Pécs provide evidence that the majority of respondents perceive similarities between their foreign languages and almost two-thirds of them answered positively to the question whether these similarities helped them in learning new languages. However, one must not forget the so-called similarity paradox leading to negative transfer (interference). In this article, the author will focus on the responses including examples of typical mistakes attributed to the influence of previously learned languages.