The effect of mother tongue on learning English as a second language

Abstract

From the past, till today and continues to the future the difficulties that face Second Language learners while learn English still appears clearly with the students. For that it becomes a necessary to shed the light for those problems and challenges that learners face, especially the effect of mother tongue, 'Arabic language'. In this paper, the author seeks to review the literature discussing the impact of mother tongue on the learning of English. The author opens the discussion with the conceptual explanation of the behaviorism theory with the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) that is a structural approach of SLA, carried the same opinion equal to behaviorists as attempt to understand the second language acquisition. Next, one of powerful theory in explaining most of L2 errors are discussed to understand second language errors Selinker’s interlanguage hypothesis and all the five reasons of interlanguage are analysed. Then, monitor model theory for Krashen discussed with its all five hypotheses. Furthermore, a clearly explanation for Krashen about the conception of Second Language Learning and Second Language Acquisition. Then, the paper presents the methodology which used to understand these difficulties qualitative methods were used for data collection to identify the main problems and difficulties that faced by Libyan students while learning English as an L2.

Finally, the author presented the finding and analyzed it. This paper is important and could be of interest and worth for researchers who are interested in this filed and also for all of learners, students and teachers of English. The study suggests the necessity of understand all the SLL second language learning and SLA Second language Acquisition theories to understand all difficulties and challenges that face second language learners due to the effect of mother tongue.