Impact of mother tongue influence on English language learning among undergraduate students: Issues and challenges

The mother tongue effect still constitutes an important variable among factors affecting the process of English language acquisition in multilingual environments, especially when it comes to higher education contexts where English learning implies more than basic correctness but academic and communicative proficiency. This paper explores the effect of first language influence on English acquisition in terms of pronunciation, morphology, syntax, and semantics and focuses specifically on the problems encountered by undergraduate students in India and similar countries. In light of current research dealing with issues related to language transfer, contrastive analysis, classroom languages, and multilingual teaching approaches, it becomes evident that L1 interference is far from a mere source of errors in learners' output but a complex phenomenon which can be either beneficial or hindering depending on how it is approached during classes. Indeed, negative transfer is most often found in areas like pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and syntax in cases of insufficient exposure to English as well as predominant translation-based learning approach in class. Simultaneously, conscious exploitation of linguistic potentialities can help promote understanding and enhance metalinguistic awareness. Finally, undergraduate English education must embrace contrastive and context-sensitive strategies which account for learners' language background.