Assessing Students‘ Mother Tongue Interference Intheir English Writing Skills: Thecase Of Jeldu Secondary School Grade 9 Afan Oromo Native Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess students‟ mother tongue interference in their English language writing skills at Jeldu secondary school grade 9. It found EFL learners‟ writing difficulties by analyzing the nature and distribution of their writing errors. To achieve the objective, descriptive study design was employed. Data were gathered from 5 English teachers and 72 students. Students were selected through simple random sampling method from 12 sections, all 5 English language teachers were selected by comprehensive sampling. Instruments employed in this study included students‟ questionnaires, teachers‟ interview, and English writing samples of 5 grade 9 students and then categorized the errors according to the following taxonomy: grammatical interference (pronoun mistakes, singular/ plural errors, article errors, countable& uncountable nouns, preposition errors, tense errors, word order errors), lexical interference (word choice errors, spelling errors, wrong form errors and collocation errors). The data indicated that majority of the students use Afan Oromo as a medium of communication during English lesson, and they sometimes mix Afan Oromo with English when they fail to understand what they learn, then interference happen. This interference influence students‟ acquisition of target (English) language. The types of errors that students committed are: grammar errors, spelling& pronunciation errors, word order errors and lexical errors are occur due to mother tongue interference. Most students need to practice in English in order to minimize the influence of mother tongue when they write in English. Teachers use different means to correct students‟ errors such as guided correction and controlled correction and also they should tell their students exceptions and complications of the rules of mother tongue and the rules of English language. This study concluded that most of our students face so many difficulties in writing EFL/ESL and they have made such grammatical errors, spelling errors, pronunciations errors, word order errors, and lexical errors. This is due to the fact that first language (Afan Oromo) interference into L2 writing because most of our students tend to replace their mother tongue in English language. English language learning as it is known as the common language to communicate around the world. So, teachers of ESL should consider improving the students‟ writing skill to overcome from their errors of L1 influence. Also the students should be motivated to write more EFL/ESL, and then there will be a space to identify their errors and try to correct them without their L1 interference. Therefore, recommendations were: English teachers should give more writing task is useful to help students in building idea, constructing good way of thinking, to encourage students to speak and write in English at home and with their friends in order to reduce the number of mistakes due to negative L1 transfer, teachers also need to try to teach more effectively the rules and conventions of writing, there is need for more teachers to join refresh courses so as to improve and update their methods of teaching the writing skills especially as regards dealing with corrective exercises, teachers should accept the fact that errors in a second language learning situation are inevitable but the important thing is to have a positive attitude towards recognizing and correcting these errors. Parents should encourage to in promoting first and second language