LANGUAGE TRANSFER IN NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE AT HUE UNIVERSITY

Based on the common reality of transferring word by word from Vietnamese to English of many B1 students in speaking skills, this research was carried out to analyze the cases of language transfer in speaking performance of B1 students in more details and grouped them into different categories. This research also aimed to explore their perceptions of language transfer. The participants of this research were 83 non-English major students of B1 level at Hue University. Two main research instruments were language transfer cases analysis and interview. The language transfer cases were taken from the recordings of 83 students. Besides, 6 students also participated into some interviews. The findings showed that 65% of the students transferred negatively from L1 to L2 in their speaking performance, which proved that this is a common phenomenon among B1 students. In addition, there were 158 cases of language transfer detected in students’ speaking performances and they were categorized into 3 main linguistic aspects namely Syntax, Lexis and Discourse. Among them, students found Syntax the most problematic. Preposition and to be were the two subcategories that witnessed the highest frequency of language transfer cases. The analysis of the detected language transfer cases demonstrated the contrasts and differences in many aspects between English and Vietnamese. Through the interview, it could be found that students were unaware of their negative transfer, there are 5 reasons why they transferred and they acknowledged both the benefits and drawbacks of language transfer. Lastly, there were some pedagogical implications to enhance the quality of speaking performance.