Bridging Linguistic Worlds: Mother Tongue Influence on English Writing Competence

Abstract

This study explores the influence of mother tongue (L1) on English writing competence (L2) among multilingual learners using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analysis of writing samples and qualitative interviews were conducted to examine how L1 impacts various aspects of L2 writing, including sentence structure, lexical choices, cohesion, and rhetorical organization, across different proficiency levels. The findings reveal that L1 transfer effects are most pronounced among beginnerlevel learners and gradually diminish with increasing proficiency, although certain features persist even at advanced levels. Significant variations were observed across linguistic groups, with learners from languages with greater linguistic distance from English experiencing higher transfer effects.