A study of L1 Interference in Paragraph Writing of Grade 12 Students of Bunluawittayanusorn School

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze and describe features of L1 interference in paragraph writing by 17 grade12 students of Bunluawittayanusorn School. Two levels of L1 interference, namely words and sentences were analyzed from samples of the students’ paragraph writing. 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. These chronic writing problems should be solved in an appropriate way for the quality of written product of ESL/EFL paragraph writing.