A STUDY OF L1 INTEREFERENCE IN THE WRITING OF THAI EFL STUDENTS

Abstract

This study aimed to analyse and describe features of L1 interference in paragraph writing by 28 third-year English-minor students who enrolled in the Basic Writing course in the 2006 semester 1 at Thaksin University. Three levels of L1 interference, namely words, sentences and discourse, were analyzed from samples of the students’ paragraph writing in the final exam paper and discussed by considering four approaches: contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage analysis, and contrastive rhetoric. It was found that literal translation of Thai words into English mainly represented features of L1 lexical interference in the students’ written English. Moreover, structural borrowing from Thai language such as word order, subject-verb agreement, and noun determiners indicated features of L1 syntactic interference. In addition, levels of language style and Thai cultural knowledge in written discourse presented features of L1 discourse interference. These chronic writing problems should be solved in an appropriate way for the quality of written product and ESL/EFL writing instruction.