First Languages and Its´ Impact on the (English) Language Competency of Students. A Statistical Analysis

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Language, grade: 7, , language: English, abstract: This study examines the influence linguistic competence has in learning a second language.Language use, be it in reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension, requires knowledge of linguistic competence. This knowledge should be tacit and implicit especially among the second language learners. This means that students should have conscious access to the principles and rules that govern the principles used on this particular language. Such idea is akin to the current study. Hence, the purpose of this study was to find out the First Language Influence on the Linguistic Competence of the respondents.This was carried out among the one hundred sixty three (163) Grade 10 students. The linguistic competence, acculturation, and cognitive academic language proficiency theories served as the theoretical backbone. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Using the purposive sampling procedure, data was collected via an adopted survey questionnaire on first language influence and an IELTS-based test. Mean and standard deviation were observed. These were carried out further using the Spearman - Rho Correlation to measure the strength of association or correlation between the cited variables. Likewise, this test was used to measure the influence of the first language to the linguistic competence in relation to the sampling population as described by the correlation coefficients.Results revealed that the respondents' linguistic competence was slightly correlated to the influence of first language. To address the gap, an instructional module was proposed in order to improve the linguistic competence of the respondents.