Writing Interference Errors Committed by Libyan EFL University Students

Abstract

This exploratory study aims to identify the impact of mother tongue interference on the writings of Libyan EFL university students' writing. Understanding linguistic differences between students' L1 and English may help learners to reduce interference from their first language. This researcher employs a quantitative method, to fulfill the aims of the study. The researcher examined English writing samples of 20 EFL university students and then categorized the errors according to the following taxonomies; Morphological, Syntactic, Lexical and Orthographic types of errors. The researcher also discussed those errors taking into account two approaches: error analysis and contrastive analysis. The findings revealed that the most common errors committed by participants were syntactic, orthographic, morphological and lexical errors respectively. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications and recommendation are given. Finally, this study provide useful insights for improving the writing skills among Libyan EFL university students in order to help students create coherent, coherence, error free pieces of writing. It also opened new doors for further research to tackle other problems related to English writing.