Mother tongue interference on EFL: The case of English department students in Udayana university

Abstract

During the EFL process, learners often come across difficulties. One of the difficulties is caused by differences between their mother tongue (L1) and the second language (L2) or foreign language (FL).  This is observable through errors found in production of L2 by the English learners. The errors are observable in areas of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. These errors are commonly referred to mother tongue interference. This study aimed at analyzing the influence of mother tongue into English produced by the students of English Department in Udayana University. The data in this paper are taken from 40 descriptive essays written by second semester students who are enrolled in Writing subject. The data were analyzed by using error analysis (EA) method to see the influence of L1, specifically on the grammatical errors. Grammatical errors refer to sentence or construction formation. Most of errors found were on the area of tenses followed by word order (constituent order). The errors demonstrate that differences between Balinese and Indonesian cause interference on the learners’ English ess