Examining the Impact of the Mother Tongue on English Grammar Acquisition

Learning English as a second or foreign language is a complex process influenced by linguistic, cognitive, educational, and social factors. One of the most significant factors affecting second language acquisition is the learner's mother tongue (or first language). Prior to the onset of English learning, the mother tongue has already established a relatively consolidated system of grammatical rules, word order, sentence structure, and conventions regarding tense, number, gender, definiteness, pronouns, verbs, and syntactic relationships within the learner's mind. When the individual encounters English, this prior knowledge is activated—either consciously or unconsciously—during the process of second language processing and production. Consequently, similarities between the mother tongue and English can facilitate learning through positive transfer, whereas structural differences between the two languages may lead to negative transfer, grammatical errors, and the formation of incorrect patterns. Applied linguistics research has shown that first-language transfer has been a central concept in second language acquisition studies since the ۱۹۵۰s; more recent research has further investigated the role of the first language in second language processing by drawing on findings from cognitive science and neuroimaging. Contemporary studies also indicate that the influence of the mother tongue on English acquisition is not a simple, unidirectional phenomenon; rather, its intensity and nature depend on the structural distance between the two languages, the learner's proficiency level, the nature of the task, the extent of exposure to English, and the level of metalinguistic awareness. Focusing on English grammar, this article examines the influence of the mother tongue on the acquisition of grammatical structures, the mechanisms of positive and negative transfer, the role of syntactic and morphological differences, and the impact of the native language on English tenses, auxiliary verbs, articles, word order, and sentence structure; it further analyzes the relevant research background and the pedagogical implications of the subject.

کلیدواژه ها:

Mother tongue ، English language learning ، English grammar ، linguistic transfer ، positive transfer ، negative transfer ، linguistic interference ، second language ، cross-linguistic influence ، grammar acquisition