How does the mother tongue influence English language acquisition?

Language learners constantly face problems when learning English as a second language. No matter their background, they face difficulties mostly because of mother-tongue interference. Mother tongue refers not only to the first language a person learns from one’s mother but also the speaker’s dominant language. When learners start acquiring their first language (L1) they do it naturally, by receiving information from the outside world.

They listen to their relatives, mom and dad mainly, speaking their native language; so, they start little by little developing that first language. Ideally, this is the most natural way of acquiring the first language. During this process the listening and speaking abilities are more active than the others that start being activated in school. But what happens when they need to learn a different language and this is a language that is not common to hear or interact with daily? There comes the issue of the interference.

It is believed that kids are born with a special ability to discover the underlying rules of a language system. Noam Chomsky named it Universal Grammar.

Mother tongue interference can be seen as a cross-linguistic information that may cause errors. The most common errors are mispronunciation of words and grammatical errors; also, learners find it difficult to write in English because of this interference. 

Most of the grammatical errors are related to placing adjectives before nouns, past tenses of verbs, active and passive, the use of auxiliaries, etc., which tend to have a different structure in their mother tongues. In Spanish language for example, learners tend to use words that are similar or that are written in the same way. It becomes a real challenge for teachers to help learners think in language 2. Then, what should teachers and educators do to identify this and challenge their learners to stop doing this? 

Some Challenges of Mother tongue interference

Pronunciation

Learners of L2 face difficulties because the sound of phonemes in English are different from the ones they have in their first language. As a result, they tend to use the same sounds they have in their first language. When students pronounce a word that was similarly written in their mother tongue and they give it the accent of their mother tongue or mispronouncing sounds of consonants like “th”, “ed” in verbs or “ph”. This can cause difficulty in understanding when talking to others.

Stress

Learners of a second language tend to give an inappropriate stress to a full word or syllable or they may not give any. For example, intonation for questions and exclamations.

Grammar structure

Learners can make different types of grammar mistakes in English by omitting auxiliaries, words or placing the incorrect form of the verb when identifying tenses. Also, they apply grammar rules that are correct in their L1 but incorrect in L2.

What to do to help learners get rid of the use of their mother tongue?

There is not a specific method, but in my experience, creating the need of the learners to communicate in the target language is one of the most successful ways. When educators create a real environment of communication inside and outside the classroom, learners feel the need of communicating using the target language. Teachers who greet and speak with their learners outside the classroom can have better results than teachers who only interact with them during classes. However, this is a challenge too because it is not very common for teachers to use L2 outside the classroom. Schools should implement a program where both teachers and learners use L2 not only in class but also outside the classroom. In this way, the acquisition of a foreign language will be more productive and successful.

Another recommendation is to teach their students real English, the English they will use when traveling, in a restaurant, at an airport, at a department store, etc., They can do it by using real information form media like real menus, real videos and situations where students can use not only the formal language learned in classroom but the one that is used for communication. In other words, even it is a great responsibility and challenge for educators to help learners use English without the need of translating into the first language, it is something that can be easily applied just by changing the methods and motivating both teachers and students to use L2 in the classroom.