Influence of Mother Tongue on English Writing: An Error-analysis Study about Grade 9 Students in Pakistan

Abstract

The influence of the mother tongue on second language acquisition is well-known. Pakistan is a multi-lingual country with scores of mother tongues, yet their influence on English language writing has not been investigated properly. This error-analysis study contributes in this regard by finding out syntactical and semantical errors committed by Pakistani students with different mother tongues. It also investigated if there were any patterned differences or similarities in error-making. Data was collected from one hundred grade 9 students from a public school in Islamabad. They belonged to five different mother tongue groups i.e. Punjabi, Pashto, Urdu, Hindko and Potohari. The findings showed that generally all five groups committed more syntactical errors than semantical ones. Overall, they were most vulnerable in tense, spelling and subject-verb-agreement. Four of those groups (

Influence of Mother Tongue on Development of L2 Writing Skills Among Middle-School Students

“…Malay ESL students experienced a variety of difficulties in their writing work. Malik et al (2022) conducted a study at the high school level. They reported three of the most troublesome areas (tense, spelling, and subject-verb agreement) are where Pakistani students make errors while writing in English owing to effect of their native tongue.…”