MOTHER TONGUE INTERFERENCE OVER FOREIGN LANGUAGE: A CASE STUDY ABOUT A2 ORAL PRODUCTION IN A COLOMBIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This small scale case study was conducted in order to understand the mother tongue interference over the foreign language oral production of four beginner students in the A2 level of learning. These students are enrolled at a Foreign Language department in a Colombian public university. Three main themes of analysis were proposed: a) characteristics of the students’ oral production, b) activities that encouraged oral production among students and c) the role of the mother tongue while learning a foreign language. Five class sessions were observed as a non- participant researcher, and the data gathered was supported on two semi-structured interviews to obtain the participants’ own perspectives. Findings revealed some advantages and disadvantages of using the mother tongue as a reference to speak in the foreign language, identifying the syntactic and morphological failures in participants’ speech.

Key words: Mother Tongue (MT) - Foreign language (FL) - Language Interference - Syntax - Morphology.