Abstract:

Mother tongue includes both the speaker's dominant and home language as well as the language they learned from their mother. It is also known as the native tongue. It is an undeniable fact that today’s students have to converse in English fluently as they travel across the globe and aspire to settle in a foreign country. 65% of students learning English belong to a rural background. This study intends to find whether mother tongue interferes with the English-speaking abilities and if so; whether it affects the learners’ performance in their education. The study investigates the effect of mother tongue on speaking English language in some selected schools in rural and urban Telangana, India. It will focus on analyzing the specific errors in pronunciation that occur most frequently and try to investigate the reason behind these specific errors. The study will also look into the differences between the speaking skills of students based on their gender as well as their geographic background, that is, the difference between the speaking skills of students from rural and urban backgrounds.

Keywords:

Mother tongue interference, speaking skills, listening, communication.