The Effect of L1 and L2 on L3 in Grammar Learning from the Perspective of Language Transfer ---University Students with Chinese as L1, English as L2, learning L3 Spanish Subjunctive Mood

Third language acquisition (TLA) research, as a novel area of study both domestically and internationally, has garnered significant attention from scholars worldwide in recent years. Previous studies on third language acquisition have extensively focused on interlingual transfer, but there has been limited attention given to grammatical transfer, especially related to the subjunctive mood. Additionally, Spanish has received less discussion than other languages. This present study aimed to investigate the language transfer of Chinese and English on learning Spanish subjunctive mood in a Spanish writing test conducted by 20 Chinese university students. The data were analyzed using frequency analysis and descriptive analysis in SPSS. The study revealed the following major findings: (1) Chinese transfer affects Spanish through changing verb form and the choice of tenses. (2) English transfer affects Spanish through the wrong verb form in the adverbial clause of purpose. Thus, the negative transfer from L2 to L3 is stronger than the one from L1 to L3.