LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 12 : 11 November 2012
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Errors in Second Language English - A Study of Errors Committed by Students with Tamil as Their Mother Tongue

R. Ashok Kumar, M.A, M.Phil. (Linguistics), M.A. (English), B.Ed.

Influence of Mother Tongue in Using English

The influence of mother tongue on the second language (here, the mother tongue is Tamil and the second language is English) is felt in almost every second language learner, especially on those who are less fluent in English. This phenomenon is called ‘Negative Transfer’ (Yule, George 1997; p 194) or ‘The gravitational pull of the mother tongue’ (Krishnaswamy, et.al., 2008; p 93). The rules of Tamil language which they have imbibed first and which they keep on using for their day-to-day communications interfere with the system of English. This influence is felt in every level of the language: phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic, pragmatic and cultural levels.

This paper studies the influence of Tamil grammar on the English grammatical system of some eighth standard Tamil medium students.

Motivation for the Study

Having studied the book Contrastive Linguistics and Language Teaching (1973) by Deivanantham Pillai, I wanted to study the phenomenon of the influence of mother tongue over English. Contrastive analysis, as Verma. S.K and et.al 2011; p. 349 put, is not only predictive in nature but also is easily noticed in real language production of the learners. The teachers of Second Language can elicit data from the students and can analyse them to find out the influence of the mother tongue or first language. Based on the real data thus obtained, the remedial measures can be designed.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

R. Ashok Kumar, M.A, M.Phil. (Linguistics), M.A. (English), B.Ed.
Ph.D. Research Scholar
Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages
S. V. University
Tirupati – 517 502
Andhra Pradesh
India
ashokr.yogi@gmail.com
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