Persistent Errors in English Writing and speech Made by Urdu Undergraduates at UAJK

A Case of Mother Tongue Interference

Abstract

The learning process of second or foreign language learners can be improvised by identifying and rectifying the errors these learners commonly made. Errors found in the inter-languages of second language learners are broadly categorized as developmental and interference errors. The developmental errors reflect a normal pattern of development common among all language learners while the interference errors are the result of overgeneralization and of fossilization of the rules which are transferred from the learners' native languages to the target language. This paper deals with the most persistent and numerous kind of interference errors i.e., article errors, found in written composition written and speech production of Urdu learners of English. The subjects were forty-one undergraduate students enrolled in BS English; first semester of the academic session 2014-18 at University of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. Forty-one pieces of written composition were collected from these subjects on the topic ‘A/An (terrifying/ happy/ displeasing/ exciting/ unforgettable) experience’ of their lives and ten participants were randomly selected and audio-recorded whilst narrating ‘I have a dream’. The results of the study show the most problematic area in the use of articles is the omission and the substitution of definite article ‘the’. It appears that incorrect omission and substitution of ‘the’ is not independent of context. These Urdu speakers overuse ‘Ø’ before nouns ‘made particular in context’ and ‘the’ before ‘bare plural and mass nouns in generic context’.