The impact of Mother Tongue on Second language learning and proficiency Akan speakers’ experience

Abstract

Language is a tool to convey one’s thoughts, feelings, and needs. Mother tongue is the language acquired by everyone at birth. A learner encounters mother tongue influence while learning or speaking a foreign language or target language. Mother tongue influence is something that affects a person’s thought process in a sense that he thinks in the mother tongue and expresses it in English or a second language. People use incorrect pronunciation of words while communicating in English language as they are influenced by the sound patterns of their mother tongue. A second language learner has an unconscious preference to convey his customs from his first language to the target language. The influence of mother tongue has become a significant region and is generally referred to as language interference. Every language learner comes across this issue. Students sometimes use words from their parents’ language while communicating in English. Several factors affect the learning and proficiency of a second language and among them is the culture, age, environment, method of acquisition, nature and structure of the first language and the amounts of efforts invested. This research work investigates the impact of the mother tongue Akan on the learning and proficiency of the target language. The research was carried out using the JSS 1 and JSS 2 students of some selected junior high schools in the Offinso Municipality where Akan is an indigenous language and is mostly used in communication outside the classroom. Written composition/utterances of the students were the instrument for data collection. The findings of the data analysis yielded categories such as vowel harmony/ nasalization, phonemic differences, insertion of vowels between consonant clusters, wrong placement of stress, wrong use of tenses, omission/wrong use of rules of concord and wrong use of prepositions. From the results of the research, it was found out that the mother tongue ‘Akan’ influences the learning and proficiency of the English language. These findings were discussed and thereafter conclusion and recommendations were made.