Facilitating Transfer of Language Skills

For the purpose of this assignment I will be teaching a 6th grade Spanish class.

• A class discussion about methods students use to learn new vocabulary or spelling words in their English class could be held to draw a positive transfer of skills from these experiences to learning the new language.
• Near transfer of skills can be used when teaching verb conjugations. The students could be taught how to make a conjugation chart for one type of verb and later instructed to make a chart for a different type of verb.
• A far transfer of skills could be seen if the students were instructed to write poetry in Spanish even though all learning had been in prose.
  
• A negative transfer of skills could be seen if students were asked to learn a set of Italian vocabulary words after studying Spanish for a semester. Although many words are very similar between these two languages, different spelling rules would adversely affect the students' performance in both languages.