Analysis of Grammatical Interferences in the Oral Communication Presented by PIBBI Participants

This present study aims to analyse and describe features of L1 interference in oral communication by PIBBI Participants of Level 5 who enrolled in an intensive language program at LTC, SWCU. The data were collected by giving oral tasks when describing something, giving opinion and explaining how things work. A stimulated recall interview proposed by Dornyei (2007) was used to explore the findings in detail. The analysis presents the type of grammatical interferences, the frequency of occurrence of each interference type and their detailed description. Analysis of data revealed that students in high level still experience grammatical interferences in producing Indonesian speech. It is hoped that this study will give a better suggestion for the advanced foreign language learners and provide information for teachers on common interferences in language learning which can be used as a reference in developing the teaching materials.


INTRODUCTION
The ability of foreign learners to collocate words that are acceptable and natural in the target language both in speech and in writing is important in foreign language learning.The language learning should emphasize four language skills which are speaking, listening, reading and writing.Speaking is one of the language skills that should be mastered by language learners in order to communicate well with others.Speaking skill can be assessed in the way the learners use the language in various ways such as greeting someone, describing things, giving opinions, etc.However, in the process of learning a new language, learners may produce errors in their speech.Errors occurred as a result of the negative transfer of mother tongue patterns into the learner's L2 (Ellis, 1994).Sometimes the native language is negatively transferred and it is commonly known as interference.James (1998) reported that interference happens when structure in the second language manifests some degree of difference from, and some degree of similarity with the equivalent structure in the learner's first language.The influence of the mother tongueon the learning of other languages is awidely researched phenomenon.Nunan, (2001) believed that a learner's first language (L1) has an important influence on the acquisition of a second (L2).For example, when someone learns English, the way they pronounce words is almost the same when they pronounce words in their own language.It means that the learner's L1 also affects the other language levels-vocabulary and grammar (Ellis, 1986).Another example is when someone masters foreign language, for example Indonesian; they tend to transfer the pronunciation, spelling, lexical, and grammatical of the English into Indonesian.
A number of researches have been done which studied the influence of L1 interference in learning second language through writing.A study conducted by Bennui (2008) found L1 interference at the level of words, sentences and discourse in the study of paragraph writing of 28 third-year English-minor Thai students at Thaksin University.Bennui reported that the lexical interference takes the form of literal translation of Thai words into English whereas the interference at the sentence level involves structural borrowing from Thai language such as word order, subject-verb agreement and noun determiners.It had been also suggested by Widyanti (2005) who found that 19 items of grammatical errors were caused by L1 interference in the analysis of the grammatical errors of level 5 PIBBI participants in learning Indonesian language at LTC in SWCU.Those previous studies were focused on first language interference of written text.However, the grammatical accuracy in spoken language is different from written language.Beattie as cited in Chang, Mahadhir, and Ting (2010) stated that spontaneous speech contains many mistakes, sentences are usually brief.
This study focus on grammatical interferences found in oral communication.The definition of grammatical interference is formed by Mackey (1969) who defined grammatical interference as the first language influencing second language in term of misusing grammar due to wrong subjectverb agreement along with deletion of word items.According to Lekova (2010) grammatical interference focused on changes in the structure and the structural elements in the foreign language which are caused by semantic and formal resemblances and distinctions between the native and the foreign language system.To summarize, grammatical interference is the use of first language in second language context which influence the language structure because of the differrence and similiarity between native and target language.
Language learners who participated in this research were students of intensive language learning program called PIBBI (Program IntensifBahasadanBudaya Indonesia), offered bySatyaWacana Christian University, where the non Indonesian speakers can learn Indonesian language and culture.This program is held twice a year in January-February and in June-August.Through this program, the learners are expected to improve their communication skills as a means to understand Indonesian language and culture.It is expected that the language they use should be accepted in the social context, where they will communicate with others using good Indonesian structure.
In the communicative context, learners are expected to develop their speaking skills when describing something, giving opinions, and explaining how things work.When they explain or describe something using target language, sometimes they carry over their knowledge of their native language to help them learn the target language.The influence of their native language can help them in delivering messages, ideas or feelings.Ellis (1986) stated that the interference of L1 can be considered as a communication strategy when the learner lacks knowledge of the appropriate language structures.In addition, usually a learner will fall back to their L1 in order to input existing knowledge.Indeed, when the first and second language share a meaning but express it in different ways, an error is likely to arise in the L2 because the learner will transfer the realization device from his first language into the second.The learners will try to translate a familiar expression from their first language into the language they are learning.One of the most typical situation is when a learner has been asked to communicate something, for instance in speaking performance, naturally they will fall back on the language which they are familiar with.
Therefore, this study closely examines two PIBBI participants on the influence of L1 in learning their L2 in the oral communication.
It aims to answer the following research question: What are the grammatical interferences found in the oral communication presented by PIBBI participants of level 5 (intensive program)?Presently, this study can help the language learners to be more aware of their errors.The finding of this study also helpsthe teachers in providing a reference to the areas of interference that must be considered in developing the materials.

METHOD
This research used case study design.According to Gay (1976) in Sevilla, Jesus, Twila, Bella, and Gabriel(2006,p. 71) the aim of this design is to tell a condition which happens in time the research taken, and investigate the causes of it.Moreover, this research is not used to prove a certain hypothesis.Case study is a qualitative approach in which the investigator explores a bounded system (acase) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (e.g.observations, interviews, audiovisual material, and documents and reports), and reports a case description and case-based themes.For example, several programs (a multi-site study) or a single program (a within-site study) may be selected for study (Creswell, 2007,p.73).This research is categorized as qualitative research in the form of case study.This study describes systematically grammatical interferences found in oral tasks.Moreover, the focus of this study is to explore and describe the use of specific language structures or particular words in spoken Indonesian.
Data are the core of the study and it serve as foundation for this research.The sources of the data of this study were respondents and documents.The respondents of this study were two participants of the PIBBI program.All of the participants were enrolled as students at the Australian National University (ANU).They came from Australia and were varied with regards to their age and cross-cultural experience.In this study, the participants were selected on the basis that they have completed lower level of Indonesian class in their home country and regarded as advanced level students according to the PIBBI placement test.This level was the highest level and described as a near native speaker level.The students are supposed to have adequate proficiency in speaking Indonesian.This means that they already have sufficient knowledge in mastering language structure and vocabulary.Although they were in high level with high mastery of grammar, the interferences are still likely to occur in spontaneous speech since they do not have opportunity to prepare their speech first.Documents are written information which contain important information that support the data collected from interview.In this study, documents are in the form ofaudio recording of oral tasks in spoken Indonesian.
The data of this study is collected through two ways: oral tasks and stimulated recall interview.The oral tasks were divided into three categories which are describing something, giving opinions, and explaining how things work.The topics given were describing some places that they have visited in Indonesia, giving opinion about living in Salatiga and giving explanation about how they enrolled in their university.The oral tasks were given in informal situation to create a comfortable atmosphere so that the participants felt relaxed.The oral tasks were recorded for 30-45 minutes and later transcribed for further analysis.After the oral tasks were done, the participants were interviewed individually using stimulated recall interview proposed by Dornyei (2007).The stimulated recall interview was given to retrieve their thoughts by listening to a recording where the grammatical interferences were identified.They were asked to explain why and how they used a specific first or second language structures or particular words.The results of the interview were noted down and later were used to support the obtained data.
In an attempt to answer the research question, the data analysis procedures involved reading transcripts collected from the first, second, and third oral tasks.Then, all the data was categorized into grammatical interferences proposed byJames (1998).Jamesidentified grammatical errors into syntax errors and morphology errors.Syntax errorsaredevided into Phrase structure error (Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Adjective Phrase, Adverb Phrase and Preposition Phrase), Clause errors that involved whole phrases that enter into the structure of clauses, Sentence errors are errors that involved the selection and combination of clauses into larger units, Intersentence errors are errors of using conjunctive and sentence connectors.Morphology errors are similar with lexical errors.There are five lexical word types in English: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition.Based on the data from the subjects, the results were listed from the most common and the least source of grammatical interferences.Moreover, the interview was used to support the obtained data.Ultimately, the conclusions were drawn based on the result and discussion.

RESULTS AND DISCCUSSION
In this section, results of the error analysis on grammatical interferences in spoken Indonesian are presented.This part is the core of the study which deals with the presentation, analysis and interpretation of the data.The interferences committed by PIBBI participants of level 5 are classified into six categories.Figure 1 showed the results of the number of interference.The results of this study indicate that the most frequent interferences appear in the oral communication are verbs/verb phrases with the number of percentage 30%, nouns/noun phrases 19%, adverbs/adverbial phrases 18% and followed by prepositions/preposition phrases 15%.The less frequent grammatical interferences appear on adjectives/adjectival phrases 11% and sentence errors 7%.

Verbs/ Verb Phrases
The grammatical interferences occurred in the oral communication were mostly found in verbs/verbs phrases.As indicated in Figure 1, the verbs/verb phrases interferences in the spoken data for non native speakers are relatively high.Out of the total of 27 interferences, verbs/ verb phrases cover 30%.The results indicated that the subjects were uncertain of the correct usage of verbs/ verb phrases.Through the analysis, it was found that most of the interferences occured when the subjects made a direct translation of L1 into L2.The phrase in no. 1 membuatteman-teman comes from direct translation make friendsin which the correct form should be berteman.The same factors also occurred in no.2 had in which the meaning in Indonesian is mengalami.This case had been included into grammatical interference because the problem of direct translation from word to word.Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) asserted that literal translationrefers to errors caused by a process of direct translation, whether they are single words (such as many errors involving verbs) or an entire string of words (as in the case of errors involving idioms).L1 form also involved a process of direct translation.But apart from that, this process also involved the transfer of an underlying syntactic feature from the mother tongue to the secondlanguage.Some interferences are also found related to diction.The word in no.6"leave" has several different meanings in Indonesian such as meninggalkan, pergi, membiarkan, berangkat, etc.The same factors also occurred in no.7 "hit" which has varied meanings such as memukul, menabrak, membentur, mengenai.In this case, one word in the source language can refer to more than one word in the target language.Therefore, the choice of words is very crucial in determining the correct word to be used as the equivalence.Thus, with so many possibilities of equivalent words in the target language, the participants can face problems in selecting the most appropriate one.Table 1.showed the results of analysis.Saya bias berkunjung di Indonesia dan membuat temanteman di Indonesia.
I visit Indonesia and make friends with Indonesian people.
My father had an accident with his father.
I did not buy (the monkey) and instead asked for a cheaper price.
We were not allowed to make noise after eleven pm.
Sometimes people in the angkot laugh at me.

Diction
No.
Incorrect Indonesian Forms English Forms Correct Forms
I want to study at ANU because I want to leave my parents' house.
My head hit with my friends' head.
My brother will stay with our parents until he earns money.

Nouns/ Noun Phrases
The second most frequent grammatical interferences in this study were found in nouns/ noun phrases which cover 19 %.Table 2 showed that errors in using the correct plural form of nouns were also found in the spoken text.A major errors in plural forms occurred when the participants overgeneralized the noun of the target language.Ellis (1997) pointed out that over-use of certain grammatical forms in L2 acquisition can occur as a result of intralingual processes such as overgeneralization.Overgeneralization errors arise when learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of other structures in the target language.
Phrase in no.9,banyak ular-ular showed that the subjects overgeneralized the pluralizing of nouns by reduplication noun without considering that the word banyakalready indicated plural form.The participants failed in identifying Indonesian plural form is due to L1 influence.When a grammatical feature is functionally similar in the L1 and L2, such as -s suffix for plural nouns, then the participants tend to transfer the rule from L1 into L2.
The grammatical interference also found when the participants made literal translation from English into Indonesian.Phrase in no.11 showed how the participants directly translate my expectation into mantanpikiran to express their opinion about living in Salatiga.Phrase in no. 12 "permission letter" was also translated directly from word to word into suratpermisi.Table 2. showed the results of analysis.

Orang hutan juga ada, komodo dan banyak ular-ular.
There are also orangutans, komodo dragons and many snakes.
If his team kicks the ball between the two poles.

Literal translation
No. Incorrect Indonesian Forms English Forms Correct Forms
This town is much bigger than my expectations.
Permission letter to study in Indonesia Surat ijin belajar di Indonesia.
(I helped people who suffered from) mental illness, who had depression and who had broken leg or bone fractures.

Adverbs/ Adverbial Phrases
Adverbs/Adverbial Phrases cover 18% of all the interferences.The participants tend to have difficulty in applying Indonesian structure as the target language.Most of the common interference occured when they use the word banyak then followed by noun.The interference was found in the following sentence: Tapi ada juga mahasiswa yang belajar banyak tahun di Australia.Sneddon (1996) noted that nouns indicating a period of time can bereduplicated and prefixed with ber-to indicate duration of an indefinite number of such time periods.This can optionally be followed bylamanya'long (of time)' or preceded by sejak'since.' For example :He has been wandering around here for weeks.Dia berkeliaran di sini berminggu-minggu.The wrong choice of words also found in adverbial phrases.When the participants attempted to convey a message but lack of vocabulary, they tend to deliver the message according to the words they knew.Table 3. showed the results of analysis.

Literal translation
No.
Incorrect Indonesian Forms English Forms Correct Forms

Ada mahasiswa yang belajar banyak tahun di Australia.
There are students who study for many years in Australia.
I visited Torongga zoo many times.

Diction
No.
Incorrect Indonesian Forms English Forms Correct Forms
The government pays some money (to me).
The mountain has many rice fields on the its' slope.
But between Sydney, Melbourne and the suburbs the prices are different.

Prepositions/ Preposition Phrases
Many languages, such as English, express thematic roles by means of prepositions.Almost 15% errors due to L1 interference committed by the subjects were prepositions.The subjects demonstrated confusion for correct usage of prepositional verbs.Cowan (2008) asserted that preposition can occurs as part of a prepositional verb; a two word unit made up of transitive verb and a preposition.Typical examples of prepositional verbs were found in phrases 19 and 20.He added that the verb and preposition usually have the meaning of a single-word verb; for example, "look for" means mencari and "stare at" means menatap.In fact, the participants have difficulty in describing the meaning in Indonesian.As we know that in Indonesian there were no prepositional verbs so it made them not really familiar with prepositional verbs.When they learned prepositional verbs usually they tend to transfer them from source language to target language.The difficulty in mastering prepositions, according to Tetreault and Chodorow as cited in Cowan (2008), "seems to be due to the great variety of linguistic functions that they serve" and choices which need to be made depending on the intention of the writer (we sat at/on/near/by the beach).
The problem with prepositions also occurred due to incorrect choices.According to Salim (2007) preposition 'in' has varied meanings in Indonesian such as di, dalam, di dalam, dengan, secara, etc. Table 4. showed the results of analysis.
People in Angkot stare at me.

Diction
No. Incorrect Indonesian Forms English Forms Correct Forms

I still needed to buy vegetables from the supermarket
Saya masih perlu membeli sayuran di pasar swalayan.
There are three people in the group.

Adjectives/ Adjectival Phrases
Adjective is one class of words which has descriptive functions.It describes characteristics or properties of nouns (Cowan, 2008).The results in Figure 1, indicate that 11% of grammatical interferences were caused by adjective.Adjective interferences appear when adjective patterns of native language are transferred into the target language.An example of this is Mereka menggunakan senjata seperti pistol kemudian sakit-sakit.This sentence is typically English.It seems that it is, in fact, a direct translation from English to Indonesian.The wordsakit-sakitwas derived from the word "hurts".Furthermore, the participants also faced problems in using comparative adjective phrase.In particular, the subject misused the adjective phrase kurang tua, which in English is much younger.This case has been included as incomplete application of rules which involves a failure to fully develop a structure.Table 5. showed the results of analysis.
They used the weapon like a gun and got hurt.
Ayes is much younger than her sister.

Diction
No.
Incorrect Indonesian Form English Form Correct Form
When Danny and I get drunk.We become happy and not rude.

Sentence Errors
Besides the interferences above, the participants also have problems in collocating words into simple sentence.The interferences appear when they misordered the words.The words errors were caused by language transfer.Word order differences in Indonesianand English represent one of the causes of the problemsencountered by PIBBI participants.The different rule of word order between English and Indonesian can create problems whenproducing utterances.Unlike in English the word order in Indonesian is the primary words is placed in the front, followed by the defining words, while in English the defining words precede the primary words.
The results demonstrated the wrong use of word order in Indonesian sentences.Phrase in no.26 showed how the participants wanted to emphasize the noun phrase "Mount Merbabu" by placed it in the front of the pronoun "I." Phrase no.27 showed that the participants had difficulty in applying English word order in Indonesian.Table 6.showed the results of analysis.
I not only received grades, but also a ranking in the state.
Based on the data, the participants with high mastery of Indonesian grammar still had problems when uttering Indonesian speech.There were some different opinions from the participants toward the influence of their first language in producing oral speech as follows: "It was difficult for me to describe or explain something when I don't know the vocabulary.Lack of vocabulary becomes one of factors to express what I'm actually trying to say and it makes me refer to my first language." Based on the participant explanation, it can be seen that in speaking another language, vocabulary played a great role to determine the goal of learners in communicating their ideas.Nation (1997) declared that learners may feel they are forced to use their L1 during speaking activity because their L2 language proficiency is not sufficient enough.They may not able to say what they want to say because they may not know enough vocabulary.He added that in normal language learning condition, receptive use generally gets more practice than productive use, and this may be an important factor in accounting for differences in receptive and productive vocabulary size.So when learners have enough receptive vocabulary, they can be helped to use some of it productively.In line with this idea, Read (2004) found that L2 learners are typically aware of the extent to which limitations in their vocabulary knowledge hinder their ability to communicate effectively in the target language.This is because lexical items carry the basic information load of the meanings they wish to comprehend and express.In other words, the learners realize that knowing more vocabulary will have a direct effect on their ability to use and further develop the L2 they are learning.Thus, vocabulary can lead the learners to be more confident in using the language.
Another participant stated that L1 skill was the factor that made him translate from word to word in unplanned speech.His statement can be seen as follows: "I find myself thinking very differently at this time when speaking Indonesian.I use my L1 skills to translate the words and to make you understand what I'm trying to say." As the participants try to communicate in L2, they frequently experience problems in saying what they want.To overcome this problem, they resort to communication strategies.Ellis (1997) stated that if learners do not know a word in the target language, they may 'borrow' a word from their L1 or use another target-language word that is approximate in meaning or try to paraphrase the meaning of the word, or even construct an entirely new word.To add more, Ellis and Beaton stated that when learning a new foreign language word, the learner has only one simple link to its first language translation (as cited in Nation, 2001).Moreover, L1 provides a familiar and effective way of quickly getting to grips with the meaning and content of what needs to be used in the L2.However, studies comparing the effectiveness of various methods for learning always come up with the result that an L1 translation is the most effective (Lado, Baldwin, & Lobo, 1967;Mishima 1967;Laufer&Shmueli, 1997as cited in Nation, 2003).This is probably because L1 translations are usually clear, short and familiar, qualities which are very important in effective definitions (McKeown, 1993as cited in Nation, 2003).This finding suggested that when learners had difficulty in producing oral speech, they turned to transfer native language communication strategies.It showed that this strategy helped them to communicate their ideas or messages.

CONCLUSION
This study has identified the most common grammatical interferences where spoken Indonesian is concerned.The study found that in learning Indonesian language, the PIBBI participants of level 5 still experience grammatical interferences in producing Indonesian speech.The biggest part of interferences lies on the use of verbs/ verb phrases with the percentage of 30%.Furthermore, there are several factors why the participants use their L1 knowledge in producing Indonesian oral speech.First, they have tendency to make literal translation from English to Indonesian.Second, the vocabulary collection influences the use of word choice.Indeed, as their vocabulary collection was increasing, their word choice was varying.Since the high level students still have language problems when producing oral speech, it is important to provide support as they take Indonesian language course.Therefore, two pedagogical implications can be developed from this study.First, the teacher should give much attention on the use of verbs when constructing Indonesian sentences.This can be achieved by providing learners with materials which concerned about the use of verbs.Furthermore, the teacher should be more aware of areas of similarities and differences between English and Indonesian.In this case, language learners' sensitivity and awareness of those differences will be raised and that might help them reduce their interference errors.Second, the teacher should provide a classroom speaking activity.The important of a classroom speaking activity is to provide the students with an opportunity to use their knowledge of vocabulary and language structure.The activities should include both spontaneous conversations, which are usually unplanned and planned oral presentations.Speaking activities such as story-telling, descriptions, self-reports and role play can overcome the students' limitations in speaking.Such activities encourage them in delivering intended messages and also creating words.Third, the teacher should encourage the students in using target language outside the classroom.This can be very useful where the target language is spoken in the environment.It is suggested that the students speak frequently with local people.Real-life situation encourage them to develop variety communication skills which enable them to use vocabulary which are relevant to the situation.

Table 1 :
Errors in Verbs / Verb Phrases caused by L1 interference

Table 2 :
Errors in Nouns / Noun Phrases caused by L1 interference

Table 3 :
Errors in Adverbs/ Adverbial Phrases caused by L1 interference

Table 4 :
Errors in Prepositions/ Preposition Phrases caused by L1 interference

Table 5 :
Errors in Adjectives / adjectival Phrases caused by L1 interference

Table 6 :
Errors in sentences caused by L1 interference