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In my own experience as an English language learner I have found it very beneficial to use the vocabulary and grammar rules I learned in my home language to learn a new language. Of course there are some discrepancies between the languages, however, it takes practice, experience and knowledge to learn these discrepancies and so I why not start with what you know? As you begin to practice speaking a language you and you start to communicate with others these rules become apparent.
I can further attest to these ideas by saying the same has been truth in my experience teaching in a dual language classroom. Every single year I have at least one new arrival enter my classroom not knowing or having experienced English. Translanguaging and Transfer seem to be very similar approaches to language. Translanguaging is considered best practice to reinforce and teach a students in bilingual classrooms. In my own practice I first teach students to read and reinforce their vocabulary in their home language before I begin to help them make connections between the languages. Research says that if a students literacy skills are strong in their home language it will be easier to transfer that knowledge to the new language. In essence transfer is a very useful tool to use with multilingual learners. I found this video to helpfully summarize my rambles!

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In my experience, despite the syntactical differences in Spanish and English, I have always leaned towards cognates to guide me with developing the contextual meaning of a subject. Throughout the various methods in which I’ve been exposed to and acquired with the learning of a second language, some of my most impactful experiences were through social interactions. I learned to build fluency and expressiveness through conversations.  Subsequently, English solely became the language that I’ve used to communicate within a career path and academically. I’ve learned both languages interchangeably through similar practices with learning a language. The five domains that were shared in the article were all important facets of the developmental learning process. These domains are, “intimate (family), formal (religious-ceremonial), informal (neighborhood), and intergroup (economic and recreational activities as well as interactions with governmental-legal authority)”. Despite the many influences that language carries, it can serve as an aid to learn a new language through the similarities they share. For example, I find the use of cognates even as an adult to be helpful to build an understanding. From one of the PowerPoint slide titles in the resource folder, the word fallacy was used. I translated it to the Spanish word “falacia”. Using the dominant language as a tool to scaffold and build fluency of a second language can be used to help students further their contextual understanding and shape their conversation abilities.

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I came to the US around the age of 15, so I have acquired and developed Chinese language back in my home country. As an English learner myself, I found that transfer works well in terms of learning the meaning of new words. I remembered carrying this little electronic translator during my first couple high school years. I would translate words in English to get a general idea of the word, and then comprehend it within the context. On the other hand, due to the distinct difference between Chinese and English, there is really no effective way to transfer syntax or grammar. For example, we don't have such thing as verb tenses.

As a first grade bilingual teacher, I have to say that the method of “transfer” works not as effective on children as on teenagers or adults. Although these children might have been speaking their home language at home, they have not yet developed the academic language that could support the process of “transfer”. Secondly, my students are from working class families. As a result, many of them have little to no exposure to extracurricular activities, or outings that could enrich their experiences. As a consequence, I found that providing students with hands-on activities, educational trips and simple visual aids would be more beneficial to young second language learners.

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In my own experience, I have found it beneficial to use grammatical rules that I have learned in Spanish while learning to read and write in English. I clearly remember how my fourth-grade teacher forced her students to repeat several times, “Un verbo es una plalabra que implica accion,” (A verb is a word that refers to action). When I came to the United States I did not attend school for six months and I began to read magazines and newspapers in English to pass time by myself. I was also writing my personal reactions in sentences using the knowledge that I had acquired in my fourth-grade classroom. There were many times that I had to use a dictionary to look for the correct past tense of verbs when I was unsure. When I finally went to school, I was able to improve my reading and writing skills by learning the significant grammatical differences. For example, in English the adjective goes before the noun and in Spanish the noun goes before the adjective. An example is the phrase “I like huge dogs” would be translated into “me gustan los perros enormes” in Spanish. Throughout my experience, I have found that the use of my first language being Spanish has assisted me in the process of mastering English.

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In my experience as an English as a New Language teacher, I would agree that the ability to "transfer" is a skill that most of my successful students in fact possessed at the onset. The students that were able to "transfer" the foundation they acquired  while mastering their first language or their "native language. Once the student has knowledge of syntax, phonology and morphology in the "native" language, then the acquisition of a second language will be attainable. Although there are certain rules within the Spanish language that are not identical in English language, their are basic syntactical processes that   inhabit both languages. This allows ENL students to easily grasp subject/verb agreements  and semantics associated with English. This is a stark contrast to my students that had not received formal education in their "native" language. Those students severely struggled with the basic foundational concepts of the English language. They were unable to understand syntax and phonology in the English language because they did not learn the rules of their "native" language. If a student does not have a foundation in their "native" language they are unable to "transfer" to the second language.

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In my experience of learning Spanish while already speaking English and Greek, transfer is generally useful, specifically with Greek to Spanish. Between English and Spanish there are too many syntactical and grammatical differences to try to translate phrases and sentences literally, but with Greek the transfer is much smoother. For example, Greek and Spanish both use reflexive verbs, we conjugate verbs in similar ways in ALL the tenses, direct and indirect object pronouns are used in the same way, and even the vowel sounds are all pronounced the same way. When I'm unsure about how to correctly structure a sentence in Spanish, it is incredibly useful to think about how I would say it in Greek; it is generally not at all helpful to think about translating it directly from English. However, the one classic example of where I constantly make mistakes in Spanish if I'm not paying attention are using the possessive pronouns tu (your) and su (his/her/their)...because they are the exact opposite in Greek! Tou means "his" and sou means "yours." I have confused many conversation partners in Spanish and not realized why until later!

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This article introduces many different ways that multilingualism or bilingualism exists in different societies. The five domains of societal language are the family, the playground and street, the school, the church, literature, the press, the military, the courts, and governmental administration. Based on my experience as a second language learner and teacher. I think language transfer is useful. Although syntax or phonology of both languages may be different, I think the first language can still serve as an aid when learning the second language. For example, when I learned my second language, I use my first language to label the pronunciation, which I saw, many of my students did the same thing. I also saw students writing a sentence in their first language and translate it into their second language. I think the first language can serve as a scaffold when people learn their second language. However, there are some negative effects of language transfer as well. Many language learners have a problem with syntax. Because two languages may have very different syntax and in the learning process, people may be confused by the syntax they learned in their first language.