As interferências da Língua Materna e o aprendizado do Alemão como Língua Estrangeira por crianças bilíngües

Abstract

A learner’s mother tongue influences the acquisition or learning of another language, regardless of whether we are dealing with a second or a foreign language. But there are other factors influencing these processes. One can therefore only analyze these interferences by taking into account certain factors which include elements transferred from the mother tongue, elements from other languages that the learner has already learned, and elements coming from the language being learned or acquired. Moreover, these so-called interferences do not only occur at the linguistic level, but also at the extralinguistic level. This paper describes and discusses these factors in order to describe the process of learning German as a foreign language in Brazil and its peculiarities with regard to bilingual education. Through the description and analysis of empirical data and on the basis of the theory of the “great hypotheses”, this text aims at better understanding the relationship between first and foreign/second language and their mutual interferences.