The Influence of Mother Tongue and English Language on Second Language Oral Expression

Abstract

This paper presents the phenomenon of code-switching strategy in verbalization spoken the Malay language by non-native speakers (Chinese students) in the Chinese national-type primary schools or SRJKC. The use of the strategy involves not only the vocabulary of the mother tongue (Mandarin) but also the vocabulary of English. Oral expression was done individually (storytelling), and in pairing (dialogue), then it was recorded using a video recorder. A total of 986 verses were delivered through storytelling (443 verses) and dialogues (543 verses). The findings present that the subjects (130 people) used code-switching in 31 cases during the oral test. Of these, 48% were code-switching based on Mandarin, and 52% had English vocabulary. In addition, the results suggest that linguistics extra factor, which is a negative attitude (prefer to read material in the native language, like watching television programs in Mandarin, speaking in their mother tongue more frequently, does not enjoy learning the Malay language in the classroom, feeling there is no need for extra time to learn the Malay language and considering the process of learning the Malay language is difficult) and low motivation (sense of their own mother tongue gives more knowledge and skills for the purpose of the examinations) has encouraged them to use the code-switching strategy in oral verbalization.