Negative Transfer in the Oral Use of English Modal Verbs in Indigenous Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66327/rci.v4i1.63Keywords:
Negative transfer, english modal verbs, indigenous multilingualism, oral production, applied linguisticsAbstract
The acquisition of English modal verbs constitutes a persistent challenge for Indigenous adolescents in multilingual contexts, particularly when their first languages do not grammaticalize modality in ways comparable to English. This qualitative systematic review aimed to synthesize empirical evidence on negative transfer affecting the
oral use of English modal verbs among multilingual Indigenous adolescents. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines,
a structured search was conducted across major academic databases, identifying twelve empirical studies published
between 2008 and 2024. The corpus included classroom-based research and ethnographic studies documenting
observed oral production, systematic errors, avoidance of modal verbs, and participation patterns in authentic
educational settings. Through a qualitative thematic synthesis, recurrent patterns of omission, substitution, and
avoidance of English modal verbs were identified, primarily associated with typological distance between languages,
interlinguistic influence, and limited metalinguistic awareness. Furthermore, findings indicate that reduced oral
participation and communicative hesitation are mediated by sociocultural factors, including language shift, identity
positioning, and the marginalization of Indigenous languages in formal schooling. Overall, this review provides an
interpretive understanding of negative transfer as a linguistically and socially situated phenomenon and contributes to applied linguistics by elucidating the interaction between grammatical difficulty, oral participation, and sociolinguistic conditions in Indigenous multilingual contexts.
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