RAISING LEARNERS’ AWARENESS OF CROSSLINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES THROUGH THE PHENOMENON OF FALSE COGNATES

  • Thị Liên Hương Võ
  • Thị Thu Hạnh Hoàng
Keywords: False cognates, crosslinguistic awareness, lexical semantics, translation

Abstract

This study was conducted to explore the influence of English-majored students’
knowledge of first foreign language on their learning of French vocabulary through the
phenomenon of false cognates. The study surveyed 27 English-majored students studying French
as an additional foreign language at the University of Foreign Languages and International
Studies, Hue University. Data were obtained from French-to-English Translation-Based Discourse
Completion, with 28 sentences containing false cognates, and Retrospective Interviews asking
students about what they thought and how they responded while they were translating French
sentences. The findings show that students thought about an English lexical equivalent to a French
lexical items based on the similarities in forms between the two languages. Students’ use of false
cognates has hindered their understanding about lexical semantics, leading to misunderstanding
and mistranslation of the source language. On the premise of the findings, different waysof raising
learners’ awareness of crosslinguistic differences through the phenomenon of false cognates have
been recommended.

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Published
2023-05-11