An Error Analysis of Undergraduate Learners’ Sindhi-English Translation

This study aims at finding out LI (Sindhi) interference in the English language use by undergraduate Sindhi students having Sindhi as their mother tongue. The study exploits a modified model of error analysis propounded by Rod Ellis (1994) that contains four stages: identification, description, explanation and evaluation of the errors. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed, containing ten sentences in Sindhi language which were taken from a Sindhi daily “Sindh Express”. These sentences were about everyday issues like sports, showbiz, politics and social issues. Twenty undergraduate students having Sindhi as their mother tongue were selected through purposive sampling strategy in order to ensure that the students in question had basic proficiency level in English language as the researcher knew them personally. Participants were accessed through email communication and were requested to fill in questionnaires. Out of the received responses, 25 items were selected having 35 errors. Out of those 35 errors, a few were found repeated several times by different participants. These responses were identified, described, explained and evaluated. It was found that whether they were caused by mother tongue interference or not. Errors were divided into three categories: semantic, morphological and syntactic. The results of the study showed that out of 35 errors, 21 were semantic, 12 were morphological and 2 were syntactic in nature. 16 (45%) errors were caused due to interference from the mother tongue. Hence, the study revealed that LI interference is not the only cause of learners’ difficulties in learning English language. Learners’ assumptions, knowledge of grammar and personal experiences also become responsible for their English language use errors.