The Impacts of Mother Tongue Interference and Some Affective Factors in Learning Amharic as a Second Language: Wukro Second Cycle Primary Schools in Focus.
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The study attempted to investigate and examine the impacts of mother tongue interference
and some affective factors in learning Amharic as a second language in six selected
primary schools of Wukro Wereda in Tigray region.
To achieve this objective, the method employed is both qualitative and quantitative using
descriptive survey technique because descriptive survey technique helps to reveal the
existing situation and allows gathering the necessary information with out conducting
experiments. To investigate and examine th e problem, six second cycle grade eight
primary schools were randomly chosen from the 38 primary schools of Wukro Wereda.
Out of a total of 1020 grade eight students in the six schools, 138 (13.52%) students were
selected in the study. Moreover, 12 (85.7%) teachers and 12 parents of students selected
as subjects for this study using simple random sampling. To gather the data properly, five
data collection instruments: questionnaire, interview, observation, essay writing and
recording were used.
The results of th e study show that students are hindered by their mother tongue not to
speak and write correct Amharic at all levels: i. e. at phonological, morphological
syntactic and lexical levels. In addition, students' proficiency was also affected by their
attitude; their teacher's attitude and their parents ' attitudes towards the second language
and by the lack of encouragement from their teachers and parents.
Most of the responses from the sample students, teachers and parents indicate that th ey
have unfavorable attitudes towards Amharic. Regarding the motivational orientation,
students, teachers and parents in the sample area are both instrumentally and
integra/ively motivated even though the instrumental motivation is higher than the
integrative. Despite this fact, however, the students' proficiency is low and this indicates
that these motivational orientations do not playa role in enhancing students' proficiency.
The students' mother tongue interference, the attitudes and motivations from teachers
and parents playa negative role in the students' proficiency of Amharic.
In order to overcome the negative allitudes developed among the students, teachers and
parents; the government, specially the Ministry of Education, the Regional Education
Bureau, and the schools in collaboration with other non -governmental organizations
should design work shops, packages of training and other related motivational schemes
to develop awareness of the use of learning the second language for both the students,
teachers and parents and change their allitude to enhance the motivations of the students
and make the teaching-learning of Amharic as a second language effective.
In light of the findings, it is also suggested that priority should be given to the
understanding of the differences between the two languages and design language
practices for the students by trying to foster the attitudes of the students and to ยท motivate
and encourage them to learn the language. Towards this end, improving the curriculum,
designing supportive materials, motivating and encouraging the students were worth the
efforts by the curriculum developers, teachers and parents re;pectively
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Linguistics