Mother Tongue Influence on English Basic Skills: A Systematic Review

Abstract

English functions as a global lingua franca, yet its acquisition in multilingual contexts is shaped by the structural and cognitive influence of learners’ mother tongue. This study examined the influence of mother tongue on students’ performance in English listening, speaking, reading, and writing through a systematic review of empirical studies. The review synthesized evidence on skill-specific effects, patterns of positive and negative transfer, and methodological trends within the existing literature. Findings indicate that mother tongue affects English performance at phonological, grammatical, lexical, orthographic, and discourse levels. Speaking and writing demonstrate more persistent structural transfer, particularly where typological distance between the first language and English is substantial. Reading reflects both facilitative and constraining effects depending on literacy system compatibility, while listening is influenced by phonemic and prosodic differences, though it remains comparatively underexamined. Furthermore, transfer operates in both direct and proficiency-mediated pathways, suggesting that its impact evolves across stages of language development. The review also identified uneven skill coverage, limited cross-contextual comparisons, methodological heterogeneity, and insufficient discourse-level analysis as prevailing gaps in the literature. Overall, the findings position mother tongue influence as a structured and context-sensitive factor in English language acquisition, with implications for research design, instructional practice, and multilingual education frameworks.