The Mind or the Mother Tongue? : A study of grammatical errors among L1 Swedish learners in Year 9

Abstract:

This study aims to analyse errors written by Year 9 and examine whether the errors derive from the pupils´ mother tongue (Swedish) or not. 20 essays collected from a school in southern Sweden were examined for this study. The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, which states that grammatical errors in L2 English are the result of interference from L1 Swedish, was used as the theoretical basis for this study. Different processes of errors in second language acquisition were then analysed, which are called transfers and generalisation. Four different types of grammatical errors will be described and the errors found in the essays are discussed on the basis of these linguistic errors. In addition, some lexical errors will be accounted for. This study aims to find out whether it is possible to see any connections with the pupils´s errors to Swedish. The results show that some errors can be directly linked to their mother tongue, such as direct translations of prepositions, which were by far the most common type of errors. Some errors are however more likely to be generalisations, where the pupils´ have used their previous knowledge of English syntax, in a new context.