Abstract
Improving linguistic and communicative competence will minimise challenges faced in Intercultural communication especially with globalisation and technology advancement. The study aimed at identifying potential areas of L1 interference in speech production relating to five speech acts: compliments, requests, refusals, apologies, and complaints. The L1 interference is examined based on four approaches which are Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis, Interlanguage Analysis, and Contrastive Rhetoric. D ata was collected through a discourse completion task comprising five speech acts: compliments, requests, refusals, apologies, and complaints, and an interview to find out students’ reasons for committing L1 interferences. The findings revealed lexical, discourse and syntactic interferences in the students’ speech where students faced difficulties in understanding the different semantic systems between Chinese and English, were influenced by cultural knowledge and transferred linguistic rules from their L1 to the L2. The main reasons for these interferences were lack of opportunities for practice and limited vocabulary repertoire. Therefore, it is important to develop ways to improve linguistic and communicative competence to minimise misunderstanding and awkward sentences in speech communication. Keywords: L1 interference; Chinese students; L2 students; speech acts; communicative competence
Highlights
Intercultural communication (ICC) has long been an area that is widely researched due to globalisation
Lexical interference in this study refers to the direct translation of words or sentences from the Chinese language to English
Findings based on certain aspects of Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis, Interlanguage Analysis, and Contrastive Rhetoric have identified potential problems due to L1 interference and how cross-linguistic language interference influenced the students’ spoken English
Summary
Intercultural communication (ICC) has long been an area that is widely researched due to globalisation This is because world travel has become more accessible due to budget airlines and opportunities for education outside one’s country. ICC plays a very important role especially when these students encounter people from various backgrounds and culture For these Chinese students, the English language is mainly used as the medium of academic communication and instruction in Malaysia whereby their class discussions, presentations and assignments, to mention a few, are conducted in the English language. There is still a certain degree of cross-linguistic language interference from their L1 whereby the same linguistic rules and structures from the Chinese language have been applied to the English language (Timina 2013) This is because the L2 speech produced makes more sense in the L2 learner’s native language when directly translated from their L1 to their L2.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
