Mother Tongue Interference Research Articles

Общие проблемы преподавания фонетики русского языка народам абхазо-адыгской группы: преодоление и устранение фонетической интерференции в условиях билингвизма

The subject of the present article is overcoming phonetic interference. The main goal of the paper is to analyze and illustrate how the phonological systems of Russian and Northwest Caucasian languages distinguish, and then develop the strategy of lessening and avoiding mother tongue interference in pronunciation of Russian sounds. The paper examines approaches that help the teacher make the process of teaching and learning Russian as a second language (RSL) more productive and efficient for L2 students. This review focuses on using general language teaching methods and techniques based on innovations, such as visual means of learning that allow the elimination of interference on phonological level.

Mother Tongue Interference in the Writing of English as a Second Language (ESL) Malay Learners

The objective of this study is to identify the errors in writing committed by Malay ESL learners which can be attributed to mother tongue interference. Twenty pre-degree quantity surveyor students from Universiti Teknologi MARA Perak campus participated in the study. They were instructed to write between 200- to 300-word essays on a given topic in English and in Malay. Their compositions were analyzed using the algorithm for conducting error analysis (EA) proposed by James (1998) which are practiced by current EA practitioners. Since the main focus of the study is mother tongue interference, only errors related to L1 interference were addressed. The paper presents and discusses the descriptive analysis of the results in relation to three major types of interference which are ‘transfer of rules’, ‘redundancy reduction’ and ‘overgeneralization’.

English

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between foreign language anxiety and the year of study among Yemeni university EFL learners. The data were collected from the English language students from years 1 to 4 of the Faculty of Arts, Ibb University, Yemen. The data were collected using Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (FLAS) which measures the level of anxiety in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The data were analysed using SPSS version 22 and one-way Anova is used to determine if there is a significant difference in the level of anxiety between the students in the four years. The results revealed that second year students experienced the highest level of anxiety followed by third year, fourth year and the first year students experienced the least level of anxiety. However, no significance difference was found between the level of foreign language anxiety and the year of study. The study concluded that two other factors, the interference of the mother tongue and novelty effect, might have affected the relationship between language anxiety and year of study. Implications of the study are also discussed. Keywords: Foreign Language Anxiety; year of study; Yemeni university EFL learners; novelty effect; mother tongue interference

Out of many, one: challenges in teaching multilingual Kenyan primary students in English

ABSTRACTUsing a large-scale, standardised English language proficiency test (TOEFL® PrimaryTM), this study examined Kenyan primary school students’ English reading and listening proficiency and explored challenges primary school teachers face in using English as the medium of instruction (EMI) to teach their multilingual students. The test was taken by 4768 students in Standards 3–7 from 51 primary schools across the country in Kenya. Seventeen primary school teachers, representing six major geographical regions, participated in semi-structured interviews to explore their teaching challenges. Results show that, regardless of standard/grade level, the majority of the participating students were beginner-level English language users, which suggests that they may not have the language skills needed to understand classroom instruction and learn the subject matter content effectively in English. Interview findings indicate that, as they implement the EMI policy, teachers encounter five major challenges: (1) mother tongue interference, (2) students’ attitudes toward English, (3) lack of usefulness of English language in the community, (4) resource constraints and (5) diverse student backgrounds. The results have pedagogical implications for EMI implementation in similar multilingual contexts.

Analysis of Factors Affecting Second Language Acquisition

The purport of this paper is to provide an overview of five factors affecting second language acquisition (SLA). The factors include vocabulary, grammar, and interference of mother tongue (L1), self-efficacy and motivation. These factors are vital to research for the process of acquiring second language. Language is composed of vocabulary words which are synchronized by grammar affected by first language .Self efficacy is a consequential component of social cognitive and this entire process of second language acquisition is possible by the factor of motivation. Motivation is additionally a consequential contributor to language achievement in terms of linguistic outcomes.Study of these factors synthesize in the process of acquiring second language resulting with possible suggestions.Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 4, Issue-3: 158-164

A Case Study on the Impact of Mother-Tongue Negative Transfer on Chinese-English Interpretation

Interpreting is not only a simple conversion of language, but also a cross-cultural activity which aims to resolve language barriers and cultural contradictions in communication. How to avoid the interference of mother tongue becomes a focus of interpreting studies. This paper is a case study on the impact of negative transfer of mother-tongue on C-E (Chinese to English) interpreting. Twenty graduates from interpreting majors of Sichuan University were chosen to take a test of C-E interpreting full of Chinese features. Test results show that there are different degrees of negative transfer of mother-tongue in C-E interpreting, which have some negative impact on cross-culture communication. By studying the different types of negative transfer in the test results, some suggestions are given on how to reduce the impact of the negative transfer of mother-tongue from a broader view. We have every reason to believe that as more and more people consciously avoid the negative transfer of mother tongue in their C-E interpreting practices, they will greatly improve their interpreting quality and achieve successful cross-cultural communication.

POLYTECHNIC LEARNERS’ PERCEPTION ON PRONUNCIATION ACQUISITION VIA QUESTIONNAIRE ADMINISTRATION TODAY

his study examines perceptions of learners on pronunciation acquisition, learning phonetic transcriptions and their sounds associations amongst Polytechnic Kuala Terengganu Learners. This study was carried-out amongst semester one diploma of Electronics and Electrical Engineering learners in Kuala Terengganu Polytechnic, Terengganu, Malaysia. This study also hopes to show that by learning to recognise and read phonetic symbols learners will be able to overcome any pronunciation disability using the dictionary. This research follows the quasi- experimental design of a control-group A and treatment group B selected randomly doing a pre-test and post-test. The treatment of explicit instruction of phonetic transcriptions for 45 hours was given only to the experimental group. This study focuses on the analysis of oral test answers by learners. Some of the challenges identified in the acquisition of pronunciation are mother tongue interference, mispronunciation because spelling does not reflect pronunciation, unintelligibility and miscommunication and the lack of confidence to speak the English Language. Whilst factors that affect pronunciation acquisition are mother tongue, exposure, motivation, students’ perception, ways of learning, which English to speak and others. However, it was discovered that phonetic instruction of transcriptions and their sounds’ association improves pronunciation competence. Some of the implications of this study are aimed at ELT academicians and practitioners to apply the method used in this study to up-grade the standard of pronunciation proficiency and a suggestion that the learning of pronunciation using phonetic symbols should be taught earlier in their education.

Attitudes towards Euro-English in a European Union Institution

This study deals with the attitudinal aspect of Euro-English, denoting a specific form of the English language that is frequently used within the institutions of the European Union. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 285 representatives who work for one of these institutions in Brussels. The respondents were asked to rate several deviations from Standard English, identified in a corpus-based analysis of EU texts, as either ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable’ English usage. The findings reveal that the high acceptability rates of the proposed features among the non-native English-speaking respondents were mainly related to their proficiency in English and/or mother tongue interference. Moreover, since native speakers of English also accepted most of the proposed deviations, it follows that the participants did not seem to be aware of non-standardness in the test sentences. Euro-English must be regarded as EU jargon due to its technical, administrative or legal nature and not as a separate non-standard form of English for EU institutional settings.

Reading and spelling difficulties in the ELT classroom

Learners with reading and/or spelling difficulties (RSD) generally also show severe problems in learning EFL. Taking into consideration several observational and interventional studies, this article illustrates some practical and pragmatic means of identifying RSD, and provides possible solutions when addressing these difficulties in ELT classrooms. Among these approaches are the explicit teaching of grapheme–phoneme rules; taking into account possible mother tongue interference; building a frequency-based basic vocabulary; and multisensory language teaching/learning.

A Case Study of English and Arabic Adjectives in Attributive Position at Aden University

This paper has presented a case study of English and Arabic adjectives in attributive position at the sentence level withpedagogical implications at Aden University. This study has focused on undergraduate pre-service teacher-trainees ofBachelor Program, College of Education, Saber, English Department, University of Aden. It particularly dealt withEnglish adjectives in attributive positions which students studied in their English Grammar Cours1(E131). Thecollege's students face difficulty in English adjectives construction. They make mistakes in constructing Englishadjectives in attributive position at the sentence level because of their mother tongue interference, besides English andArabic employ different processes and structures in forming the adjective sentences of the various types. The majorobjective of this study was to investigate the problems faced by the students and to examine the appropriateness of thecurrent teaching materials, tasks, and methods of teaching English adjective types in the Grammar Course1(E131). Toachieve this objective, the authors have used a quantitative research method for data collection. The quantitativeresearch instruments comprised the students' questionnaire, open-ended questions, and the students' test. The numberof the respondents in this study were 120 students girls and boys. The authors concluded that students indeed face agreat difficulty in constructing English adjectives in attributive position at the sentence level due to the intense mothertongue interferences. Communicative teaching methods would bring about progress in the level of the students andintegrate other language skills. Students should acquire the ability to perform various types of language functions,related to English adjectives construction in attributive position and other types of English adjectives.

Mother Tongue Interference in English Language Writing at Derge Secondary School: The Case of Grade 9 Students

The purpose of this study was to find out if there are any patterns of mother tongue interference in Derge Senior Secondary School grade 9 students’ written English. It explored EFL learners' writing difficulties by analyzing the nature and distribution of their writing errors. To this effect, the researcher examined students’ questionnaire, teachers’ interview and English writing samples of 30 grade 9 students and then categorized the errors according to spelling, grammar, word order types of errors and coordination of ideas. The data indicated that items such as spelling errors, grammar errors and word order were caused by negative interference of the L1 in students’ TL writing. The kind of transfer that dominated was spelling, structure, preposition, doubling of subjects, plural formation and synonyms. Most of the grammatical errors committed by the students were L1 interference in acquiring grammatical elements of L2 (English). Based on findings, it was recommended that teachers should be aware of the effect of negative transfer of grammar to MT and know how to reduce this problem and implement more effective teaching and learning.

Spoken English Errors of Undergraduate Students in Selected Tertiary Institutions in Southeastern Nigerian

This paper examines spoken English errors of undergraduate students of selected tertiary institutions in southeastern Nigeria. The data draws from community of informants in randomly selected Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education located in Enugu and Ebonyi states of Nigeria. The respondents aged between 18 and 25 constitute the representative population. Findings reveal that mother tongue interference is a common phenomenon in the spoken English of some educated population of Nigerian second language speakers of English. Some are unconsciously displayed by the speakers while others are not. Notwithstanding that tertiary institution students in Nigeria constitute an educated class who must have been exposed to written and spoken English for about twelve years in the primary and secondary schools, respondents still displayed predominantly the error of substitution, where some English phonemes which do not exist in Nigerian languages were replaced with the ones they have in their various languages or dialects. These substitutions could lead to distortion in communication and meaning especially in communications involving non-speakers of Igbo language.

An Experimental Study of Spanish Learners’ Language Transference in Pronouncing Chinese Vowels

Based on the vowel pattern, an experimentis designed to summarize and compare theChinese vowel pattern articulated by Spanishstudents whose first foreign language is Englishand second foreign language is Chinese, and thenative Chinese speakers. The aim of this study isto investigate the transference of mothertongue and the first foreign language in thelearning of a second foreign language. It isfound that the mother tongue and the firstforeign language both have the impact ontransferring the vowel pronunciation to thesecond foreign language. The conditions ofinterference of mother tongue are relativelystricter. Compared with the transference ofmother tongue, the transference condition ofthe first foreign language is stricter. Theconstruction of vowel pattern in interlanguageis in accordance with the internal law ofchildren’s acquisition of mother tongue.

Investigating The Effect Of Grammatical Differences Between English (L2) And Arabic (L1) On Saudi Female Students’ Writing Of English

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the grammatical errors committed by the Female Saudi Students can be attributed to their mother tongue interference. This study analyses 120 English essays written by Arabic speaking Saudi Female Students studying at Prince Fahad Bin Sultan University. Since the researcher’s mother-tongue is also Arabic, the interference of Arabic language committed by these students was easily found upon examining their writings. The findings of this study revealed that the transfer of Arabic linguistic structures influenced the English writings of Saudi Female Students on the grammatical level. Furthermore, the English writing skill of the Saudi Female Students needs development. The study concluded that the percentage of the total grammatical errors committed by the Saudi students was 1179 errors. Out of the 1179 errors, 59 errors were in Active and Passive Voice, 118 errors in plurality, 118 errors also in articles, 165 errors in the use of word order, 188 errors in prepositions, 244 errors in Verb Tenses and Form, and 306 errors in Subject-verb agreement which is the highest percentage of errors as a result of the effect of the L1. On the basis of these findings, a group of recommendations and some pedagogical implications for educators and policy makers were provided to improve the EFL teaching-learning process.

Three Communication Difficulties of EFL Students

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>A pesar de la diversidad de recursos (medios de comunicación, Internet, </span><span>software</span><span>, videos, redes sociales, etc.), muchos estudiantes presentan di</span><span>ficultades durante su proceso de aprendizaje de inglés como lengua ex</span><span>tranjera. Ciertamente, existen tres aspectos que afectan negativamen</span><span>te la producción oral de los estudiantes. Primero, la falta de motivación </span><span>que podría ser manifestada en ansiedad y baja autoestima. Segundo, el ambiente de aprendizaje que incluye la metodología del profesor y el am</span><span>biente de la clase en donde la ausencia de un contexto social de un se</span><span>gundo idioma no estimula la comunicación en situaciones de la vida real. Tercero, la interferencia de la lengua materna que se refleja en el </span>hecho de que muchos estudiantes (incluso profesores) tienden a traducir y a utilizar la lengua materna en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera; como resultado de esta práctica, se reduce la posibilidad de pensar y utilizar esa segunda lengua en diferentes contextos y situaciones significativas desarrolladas en clase. Sin embargo, el propósito de este artículo va mas allá de describir cómo estos tres aspectos afectan la producción oral de los alumnos de inglés como lengua extranjera en el aula. De hecho, el propósito es proveer información valiosa acerca de las causas de estos fenómenos para mejorar la fluidez en el uso del inglés como lengua extranjera entre los educandos. </p></div></div></div>

Interference of Mother tongue in teaching and learning foreign languages

Interference of Mother tongue in teaching and learning foreign languages

Translating Collocations from English to Arabic among Iraqi EFL Learners

This paper will thoroughly examine the notion of collocation and will analyse translations of English collocations into Arabic while detailing other related points. It will also incorporate a detailed explanation of the various types of collocations in English. A collocation is defined as a combination of two or more words that usually occur together in different language contexts. Although there have been many published literatures on collocation, there is limited examination of collocation in Iraq, and the specific problems faced by Iraqi EFL students translating English collocations into Arabic. This study examines the effect of mother tongue interference on the translation of English collocations into Arabic among Iraqi EFL students. The results reveal that 67% of the participants failed to achieve the pass mark, and only 33% achieved an acceptable level of understanding and translation. A detailed explanation of the results will be presented, as well as a conclusion and recommendation of this study.

Assessing English Syntactic Structures Experienced by Sudanese Female Students at Secondary Schools, (2013-2014)

This study is restricted to assess writing performance in the Sudanese female students at secondary schools at Omdurman locality, Aluola secondary school for girls, in the academic year 2013 – 2014. It aims at investigating the English syntactic structures experienced by Sudanese Students at secondary schools. The researcher used the analytical descriptive method in this study and a test as a tool for collecting data. The sample of the study was about ninety nine students at secondary schools in the academic year (2013-2014). After the analysis of the types of errors made by the subjects, the study has come out with many findings. The major problem behind the students’ errors is the mother tongue interference. The Sudanese learners of English in general seem not to have an adequate proficiency in understanding the meaning and semantics when they express themselves in English syntactic structures. Students need a supplementary method in order to express themselves accurately. Finally the researcher has recommended certain areas such as: Teachers and students should be aware of the importance of writing in relation to other skills. Activating English literature lessons and providing a library for extra activities. Students need enough time to practice writing in the class room because the time allotted for teaching English is not matched to the content of the syllabus designed. Students should be prepared to use the language for a variety of purposes beyond the classroom.

Assessing English Syntactic Structures Experienced by Sudanese Female Students at Secondary Schools, (2013-2014)

This study is restricted to assess writing performance in the Sudanese female students at secondary schools at Omdurman locality, Aluola secondary school for girls, in the academic year 2013 – 2014. It aims at investigating the English syntactic structures experienced by Sudanese Students at secondary schools. The researcher used the analytical descriptive method in this study and a test as a tool for collecting data. The sample of the study was about ninety nine students at secondary schools in the academic year (2013-2014). After the analysis of the types of errors made by the subjects, the study has come out with many findings. The major problem behind the students’ errors is the mother tongue interference. The Sudanese learners of English in general seem not to have an adequate proficiency in understanding the meaning and semantics when they express themselves in English syntactic structures. Students need a supplementary method in order to express themselves accurately. Finally the researcher has recommended certain areas such as: Teachers and students should be aware of the importance of writing in relation to other skills. Activating English literature lessons and providing a library for extra activities. Students need enough time to practice writing in the class room because the time allotted for teaching English is not matched to the content of the syllabus designed. Students should be prepared to use the language for a variety of purposes beyond the classroom.

Types of Chinese Negative Transfer to English Learning and the Countermeasures

Based on the knowledge of language transfer and previous research achievements, the paper attempts to analyze the types of Chinese negative transfer and the countermeasures. By introducing the knowledge of Chinese negative transfer reflected at the levels of English pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, grammar, pragmatics and culture, the paper presents a relatively comprehensive study of the types of Chinese negative transfer. Meanwhile, the paper is organized in a logical way: identifying the problem, analyzing the problem and putting forward methods to solve the problem. This paper may serve to enrich language learners’ knowledge of Chinese negative transfer to English learning. Meanwhile it provides learners with some practical measures to mitigate the effects of negative transfer. Knowing the differences between English and Chinese would help learners get rid of the interference of mother tongue. Consequently, learners’ English proficiency and intercultural competence will be improved.