Mother tongue interference is suspected to be the cause of the disappointing results in writing exams of Dutch ESL students in their graduating secondary education year. Research confirms that L1...Show moreMother tongue interference is suspected to be the cause of the disappointing results in writing exams of Dutch ESL students in their graduating secondary education year. Research confirms that L1 interference could be a problem since it mostly ensues in cognate languages, such as Dutch and English. As L2 learners are often unaware of their interference errors the problem can be persistent. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine to what extent and in what ways L1 interference is of influence on the writings of the Dutch ESL students. Therefore, two sub-questions were formulated: “What are the possible mother tongue interference mistakes for Dutch learners of English?” and “What is are the most frequent mistakes made by Dutch ESL students in HAVO 5?” An error analysis of the students’ writings was carried out, using a coding tool developed for this research. The tool, based on relevant literature on L1 interference and error analysis, provides an elaborate overview of possible Dutch interference. The major findings of this analysis are in the first place that the majority of the found errors are interference related revealing wrong word as the most frequently occurring error, however affecting all aspects of language on both a grammatical as well as textual level. In the second place, the data also show a teachers’ preference to focus on a selection of error patterns to mark. Finally, the analysis confirms the correlation between the nature of errors and the nature of assignments. Future research could focus on the most occurring errors. Moreover, the developed analysis tool can be used for future error analysis.Show less
