Indonesian Language Transfer of Students of English as a Second Language (ESL)
Abstract
This study examined the issue of transfer for English as a Second Language (ESL) students at the elementary level. The kinds of errors made by 140 students were classified and presented. By using qualitative analysis, the data showed that the errors could be classified into nine parts. These covered the use of the root or simple present form, -ed overgeneralization, spoken target-like form, to “be” omission, “did” overgeneralization, the use of “be” and the simple past or the “ing” form, blended forms, misselection, and irregular simple past overgeneralization. However, the data showed that in the use of blended forms learners tend to use the irregular simple past and an “s” ending for third-person singular subjects in the simple present. Moreover, learners tend to avoid using the verb “to be” in the simple past. Therefore, the main result indicated that negative transfer or interference happened at a syntactic level, particularly in the use of the simple past tense, from Indonesian as a first language (L1) to English as a second language (L2). In conclusion, in second language acquisition (SLA), interference occurred at sentence level produced by elementary students, especially in the use of the simple past tense. Eventually transfer in the use of the simple past tense was seen as a learning strategy in acquiring English.
Keywords: first language, second language, second language acquisition (SLA), transfer
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