Résumé:
Abstract
The present work attempts to investigate and study the first language influence on EFL students’ writing at the English Language Department of Mohamed Boudiaf University of M’sila. This research seeks to find the difficulties that students encounter when they are learning the FL, mainly in writing. To this end,One of the main goals of teachers and students is to accomplish a satisfactory level in writing in English. However, many students are incapable to write adequately because they have difficulties owing to the first language interference. Hence the main purpose is to recognize if students’ difficulties in writing are due to L1 interference. This research has been carried through a questionnaire administered to ten (10) teachers in the English division at M’sila University to ask them about the main causes and the different types of errors committed by third year EFL students. In addition, twenty-five (25) paragraphs written by third year students were analyzed to determine the main errors. Thedata analysis revealed that third year EFL students commit different types of errors mainly because of mother tongue (Arabic) interference and lack of practice.Furthermore, it has been noticed that third year students rely basically on their mother tongue (Arabic) compared to English when it comes to writing. So, students should be taught how to think in the target language to avoid negative transfer.The findings recommend that the decrease of making transfer helps students to produce a good piece of writing. The more learners’ linguistic competence is high the more they write well and vice versa. Obviously, the findings would guide us to suggest recommendations that may help students to improve their level in writing.