INTERFERENCE

This study investigates the impacts of mother tongue interference on the acquisition of English among students at the University of Benin (UNIBEN). A key challenge in second language learning, mother tongue interference can manifest across phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical levels, potentially hindering effective communication and academic performance. Descriptive and quantitative research approaches were adopted, utilizing a structured questionnaire as the primary data collection instrument. The sample comprised 100 randomly selected undergraduate students from various faculties within the University of Benin. The findings revealed common grammatical structures from prevalent local languages were often transferred negatively into English sentences. Furthermore, the study identified that students with higher reported exposure to their mother tongues in non-academic settings showed a greater frequency of these interference-related errors. This suggests that the dominance of the mother tongue in daily life acts as a considerable barrier to achieving English language proficiency