An Investigation Into the Effects of Mother Tongue on Vietnamese First-year English-majored Students' Writing Skills

ABSTRACT This research focused on finding the patterns of mother tongue interference in written English of first-year English-majored students at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi as well as discovering effective methods to mitigate them. It analyzed how much students are affected by Vietnamese, their mother tongue in terms of grammar, vocabulary and sentence conjunctions. The researcher examined 84 students’ questionaire and interviewed 9 random students. From the data collected, it can be seen that most students’ writings consisted of grammatical inaccuracies related to Vietnamese writing habits. Conversely, the frequency of lexical mistakes was quite low. In terms of sentence conjunctions, most students still forgot to use a comma before certain linking words. Based on the findings, it is advisable for students to ameliorate the Vietnamese influences by familiarizing themselves with native speakers’ thinking system with several tools such as books, TV shows and forums. Keywords: mother tongue, first language, interference, English-majored students