The role of mother tongue in second language learning and misinterpretations

This study investigates the quality, quantity, and the time of mother tongue transfer during learning English as a second language. Moreover, it aims to distinguish the errors that actually occur due to the effects of mother tongue from the errors that are categorized in this group by mistake and have other sources. To attain this goal, the results of this study are considered and compared with the findings from other studies on learning English both as a second and as a first language. Data was collected from 200 Persian speaking adolescents learning English in high schools and college. The focus of this study is on English WH questions produced by the participants during two tests. The results indicated some positive and negative transfer of mother tongue, but not in the all cases predicted by the related approaches. Moreover, comparing the results of this study with other studies showed that some errors which were considered as negative transfer from the first language, actually, were caused by other factors. This research concludes that the effects of mother tongue on the second language learning, either positive or negative, is not straight forward and uncovering its complicacies needs widespread cross-linguistic studies.