Mother tongue influences English as a second language.
In English learning, the influence of L1 is significant. That is because we tend to think in our first language when we want to communicate in English. People learn English by bringing the interference of their mother tongue, so many varieties of English turn up. On the other hand, it might get people confused or bring up misunderstandings because of the different ways of thing, different cultures. This impact of the mother tongue cannot be avoided when learning the second language. One of the things we always do is translating word by word directly. If we do so, our spoken English cannot progress rapidly.
In our group discussion, we shared our experience of learning English. From my perspective, Chinese is somehow similar to English with aspects of grammar and word order. Chinese students may have an advantage, but most of them think of English as a subject of an exam, not a tool of communication. Consequently, they don't pay more attention to the pronunciation or stress of the English words.
To sum up, we need to expand the knowledge of language such as learning more languages ad understand the system of the language. It does not matter which accent you have in producing English as long as your English can be understood, just be proud of it.
I agree. Learning many languages can positively influence us by letting us open up new perspectives and meanings of languages. In my understanding, Chinese share a lot with not only English but also Japanese; Chinese characters are used in Japan as Kanji. Then, it may be a good idea for English speaking people or Japanese people to start from Chinee before studying Japanese and English. (Koyo)
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