The Effects Of Mother Tongue Interference In The Learning Of English Language
[SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ILORIN WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF KWARA STATE]

CHAPTER TWO
2.1 REVIEW OR RELATED LITERATURE
    Mother tongue is the language which a group of people considered to be the inhabitants of an area, acquire in their early years and which normally becomes their natural instrument of thought and communication.
    Bamisaye (2015) supported the view when he stated that first language or mother tongue is the first language a child pickup. It is not learnt but acquired. It is language that encodes early concepts of the child.
2.2 BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NIGERIA.
The term English is often referred to as the language of England and southern Scotland. English language became the official language of Nigeria when Nigeria gained her independence from British in 1960. And it covers all areas such as education, government, commerce, media, and industry.
    The introduction of English in Nigeria was a product of evangelical expediency in which the missionaries passed the language baton to the colonial administrators until English became the official language of the country. English still occupies pride of place in Nigeria especially in our school system.
    Nigeria is a multilingual country with many local languages but the national policy on education (NPE) laid more emphasis on three major languages which are Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba. Other languages are Kanuri, Ibibio, Efik, Tiv, Ijaw, Edo, Fulfulde, Urhobo, Nupe, and Igala. They function mainly at the local level.
    A museghan (2007) highlighted the place of English language as the second language in our educational system to make place for improvement in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
    The importance of English language learning as subjects in our educational system cannot be over emphasized because the use of English language improves communication among students and various ethnic groups in Nigeria. One problem that has caught public interest recently is the poor performance of students in public examination i.e. West African Examination Council and National Examination Council (NECO).The poor foundation as a result of interference of the mother tongue.

2.3    MOTHER-TONGUE INTERFERENCE ON ENGLISGH LANGUAGE
The importance of mother tongue in the learning of English language cannot be over emphasized because language is said to be universal and the issue of interference is not peculiar to Nigeria alone.
Errors may occur due to the fact that some of the English sounds are not found in their mother tongue. First language of a learner is highly motivated and is surrounded by a conductive linguistic environment which the second language lacks.
Aladeyomi and Adetunde (2007) are of the view that language learning is generally difficult, second language learning has greater problems which results in the greater number of errors in the performance of second language users.
Bheld (1999) is of the opinion that as much as the second language learning environment encompasses everything the language learner hears and sees in the new language, the leaner’s goal is the mastery of the target language. The learner begins the learning task of learning a second language from point zero through the steady accumulation of the mastered entities of the target language.
Interference occur when speaking or writing in a second language is a lifelong experience which needs continue attention, even up to adulthood, the lexical stress patterns of their mother-tongue is reflected in their second language especially oral production.
In Nigeria, interference can be identified according to regional variation especially in phonology and lexis. Certain pronunciations are identified with members of an ethnic group, accent are easily identified of the speaker.
    Onike (2009) said interference is a psycho-linguistic concept which is a reality in language learning. Errors in second language learning are partly attributed to interference.