Interference in the EFL classroom

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Interference in the EFL Classroom
Introduction
Huang (1143) argue that when people learn English as a foreign language they experience transfer problems originating from the influence of their first languages. For instance, they may experience issues with pronunciation and/ or spelling. The mother tongue language is known to have a significant effect on the second language, especially English. However, the transfer errors are revealed when people pronounce English words with their mother tongue accent.
According to Murad and Mahmood (476), language transfer can take place in both formal and informal setting. The transfer errors do not depend on the location or platform of transfer. The errors may be shallow where the individual pronouncing or spelling some learnt English words is understood by keen listeners. In this regard, most of the features in the English words are maintained and the errors may be on silent letters or the word order. However, the EFL learner may exhibit severe transfer interference that distorts the intended meaning of words or sentences. For instance, the individual may have problems with differentiating the word here versus hear, effect versus affect and write versus right in addition to applying the punctuation marks appropriately. When severe language interference occurs, the learners need to incorporate other means of communication such as signs and facial expressions to pass the intended message (Ahmed 13).

In this regard, it is important to provide a basic analysis of the EFL transfer errors to provide a forum for further research on the topic.
Phonological Interference
This is a type of EFL transfer error that is manifested through reading and speaking, which is basically indicated by intonation, word stress and speech sounds with the French-like accent. In this perspective, the learners are unable to learn the English language effectively. For instance, in French language the letter “h” is silent in most words. Pronouncing the word alcohol for a French speaker will sound like /alkool/ (Phuket and Normah 101). The word hemisphere is also pronounced with omission of the letter “h”. The intended omission results in distortion of intended meaning. In another example, the phrase ‘hit the ball’ can be pronounced as ‘it the ball’ by the French-English learners. However, the actual meaning of the sentence is different from what has been presented and the listener may be confused.
This interference affects the “g” sound in consonant cluster such as “gn” in the sense it is omitted during pronunciation and spelling. In this regard, learners affected with this kind of transfer error may have problems with words such as “significant” in the sense that the listeners cannot comprehend the intended meaning at omission of sound “g” (Ashari and Ahmad 43). Also, the French learners tend to ignore or omit the sound /Z/ or /S/, especially when it comes at the end of a word such as “exercises”. Thus, they are unable to express the plural form of things whose names end with /S/. However, this has been attributed to lack of proper practice through communication. It can also be due to lack of knowledge on the specific function of the /S/ in an English word.
EFL learners with French background may experience interference of sound “th” in words such as there, thus, thought and then. The interference is due to lack of using the tongue tip during pronunciation. In this regard, they write and pronounce the word then as “den” and think as “tink” which is grammatically incorrect and the listeners may not comprehend the intended meaning of these words.
Orthographic Interference
The EFL transfer error where the learners add an extra silent “–e” to some words, especially at the end is referred as orthographic interference. For instance, words like closeness become “closenesse”, group becomes “groupe” and Greek becomes “Greeke”. The silent letter can also be added in between a word such as postgraduate to become “postegraduate”. This addition of an extra –e is a significant error that may cause confusion during pronunciation to some specific individuals especially the native English speakers (Murad and Mahmood 478). In this regard, only particular groups of learners that add the extra letter –e at the end or in the middle of a word recognize it as silent and pronounce correctly. However, when the words with the extra –e, are grammatically analyzed, they are regarded as wrongly spelled.
Lexical Interference
The type of EFL transfer error where the learner borrows words from his or her mother tongue and uses them in making English statements is referred as lexical interference. For instance, the Francophone students tend to borrow French words and apply them in filling English vocabularies (Kaweera 9). Examples of this type of interference include “refrigeratoeur engineering”, “physique” and “chimie”.
Lexicon interference is also manifested through the transfer of words such as prepositions, determiners, pronouns and conjunctions. However, these functional words are transferred unintentionally. Additionally, some EFL learners tend to use /et/ instead of pronouncing the word “and” and sound /par/ instead of “for or per”.
The learners also replace mother tongue words in English statements, especially when referring to names of food. For instance, they tend to replace mutton with “mouton” and beef is replaced with “boeuf”. The replacement of these words is based on the idea that they sound the same and may sometimes have the one meaning to the user. However, the use of these kinds of words both in written and spoken language may cause confusion to the reader or audience respectively.
Native Transfer Interference
This is a type interference where the learners of English language borrow mother tongue phrases and apply them when making statements or during writing. Learners from the Spanish background tend to exhibit this kind of interference. For instance, they use unnecessary articles in sentences such as “I will write and read the your magazine later” instead of “I will write and read your magazine later”. This interference occurs due to the fact that the Spanish use the definite article /el, la/ with possessive pronouns (Sarı 807). In another example, the learners may write or speak statements such as “my uncle is teacher”, instead of “my uncle is a teacher” this simply imply that learners from the Spanish background do not use articles such as “a, and the” before nouns that describe profession.
Grammatical gender and Number Interference
According to Watcharapunyawong and Siriluck (67), EFL learners exhibit transfer errors that are based on assigning gender to non-living things. For instance, the learners may make statements such as, “look at the moon! She looks bright”, in this statement, the learner has assigned a feminine gender to the moon. If this statement is made when addressing an audience, people will be confused and interpret it wrongly. Based on grammatical consideration, there is no specific gender assigned for non-living things. Sometimes the learners assign gender to countries and cars by making statements such as, “today is her independence day” and “your car is 10 year now! She is old” respectively.
Yuan (2514) presents that EFL learners exhibit problems of using the right words to describe number of items or people. For instance, they may make statements such as “We saw his news friends” instead of “We saw his new friends”. Also, some fail to recognize that the word structure changes in some instances to represent the plural instead of adding letter -s at the end. For instance, “The Childs have come back” instead of “The children have come back”.
Prepositions and Possessives Interference
In prepositions interference, the EFL learners do not understand the use of prepositions properly. For instance, they make statements such as “David killed to him” instead of “David killed him”, “For what have they come” instead of “What have they come for” and “After to eat supper, we watch television” instead of “After eating supper, we watch television” . These statements are in English, but the propositions make them confusing to the intended listener (Phuket and Normah 105). Other errors in preposition may include use of phrases such as “suffering of” instead of “suffering from” and “come with” instead of “come by”. Sometimes the prepositional errors are due to lack of practice after learning new concepts in English.
For the case of possessive interference, some EFL learners fail to show the particular pronouns that indicate ownership in their statements. For instance, the following sentence, “Monica washed the hair” can simply be interpreted that she washed somebody’s hair. Alternatively, some listeners can interpret it that the hair was separate from the owner. However, the correct statement should be “Monica washed her hair”, which shows that she owned the hair. In some situations, the EFL learners use the word “of” to show possession. For instance “I went to the house of Daniel” instead of “I went to Daniel’s house”. The use of “of” to show possessiveness may cause confusion to the listener.
Grammar and Punctuation Interference
EFL transfer is faced with grammar interference where the learners are unable to cope with the instructor’s speed (Solano 40). In this regard, they write wrong spelling and memorize incorrect pronunciation. Therefore, at applying the learned words, the learners cause confusion. Additionally, they may fail to practice properly due to the fear of making pronunciation and spelling errors thus, encouraging more transfer interference.
According to Murad and Mahmood (479), the EFL transfer may also exhibit punctuation interference where the learners are unable to identify and place punctuation marks in a sentence correctly. In this perspective, the learners write statements that cannot be read and interpreted correctly. This can be illustrated by the following statement “John owns a car bicycle motorbike and tractor.” If this statement is read in an ordinary way by a native English speaker, it will be interpreted that John owns one item called car bicycle motorbike, and a tractor instead of the intended meaning that “John owns a car, bicycle, motorbike, and tractor”. Missing correct punctuation may result to the EFL learners being misinterpreted in their statements (Yildiz 58).
Conclusion
There are a number of interference problems in EFL transfer, which occur from the influence of mother tongue and the difficult of English language when the learners do not practice regularly. EFL transfer errors occurring in classroom learning cause confusion to the listeners and readers such that some statement cannot be interpreted at all while others are assigned an incorrect meaning. Based on this introductory discussion, it can be identified that there are many EFL interference issues that should be researched and identified. This is a basic representation of the presence of EFL interference problems in classroom instruction, and an intensive research should be carried out to make comprehensive conclusions for improved efficiency in EFL learning.

Works Cited
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