Mother Tongue Interference in EFL Students’ Writing

Abstract

Understanding the similarities and differences between English, as the target language, and Indonesian, as the native language, is an essential thing for students to know if they want to master English. One problem as the most challenging thing for students is to express themselves in English appropriately, orally or written. The student’s original language, Indonesian, interferes with their ability to compose English sentences correctly, especially in writing. It is essential to find and identify errors made by students of English, in this case, the interference of Indonesian in writing. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze the interference of Indonesian in students English writing. This study provides an analysis of the interference of Indonesian on English writing made by EFL students. The data for the study is collected from essay writing on a descriptive text by 32 university students in the fourth semester majoring in English and whose native language is Indonesian. Those 32 students were purposively chosen as samples since they sit in one class and had the Essay writing Course. The students then asked to write about two pages of descriptive essays on specific exciting topics for them. It is found that there are a total of 359 Indonesian interferences on the students’ English writing. The findings suggest valuable strategies to aid students in developing their writing skills, such as viewing English-language movies, reading English books or articles, and listening to English news and music.