Babkina, V. (2018). Phonological interference of mother tongue over the English

Conducting a questionnaire
The questionnaire was resolved by a number of native or near 
native English teachers working with Peruvian learners in different 
institutions around Lima.
The questionnaire question: To what extent does each case of 
phonological interference impede meaningful communication? 
Options:
A - In most cases it is difficult to understand a speaker.
B - Quite unintelligible but the meaning can be deduced from the 
context.
C - It is easy to understand the speaker.
The objective of the questionnaire was to identify the extent to 
which each case of phonological interference selected for the study 
impeded meaningful communication. This was done in order to narrow 
down the number of the cases of phonological interference to those that 
cause serious misunderstanding problems during oral discourse. In other 
words, only the cases mostly marked with A or B options were 
considered relevant for the study. 

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Graph 1 shows the percentage of the answers given by the teachers 
of English as regards to each case of phonological interference. 
Graph № 1. The extent to which each case of phonological interference impedes 
meaningful communication.
Generally speaking, the extent to which each case could impede 
meaningful communication varies between the option A and B. In other 
words, most of the time the cases were defined by the teachers of English 
as either unintelligible (A) or unintelligible, but deducible from the 
context (B). Even Cases 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, that were marked C, were at least 
once marked as either A or B.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
case 1
case 2 case 3 case 4 case 5 case 6 case 7 case 8 case 9
option A
option B
option C

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Therefore, all the cases emphasised in the research are of great 
importance and demand attention.
However, not all the cases were further included in the intervention 
(Part 2). According to the results of the questionnaire, only seven cases 
of phonological interference were chosen as the most relevant ones to be 
targeted in Part 2 of the study. All of the chosen cases received the 
highest percentage of either A or B answers with none or low C letters.
Cases marked A: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 
Cases marked B: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Cases marked C: 2, 3, 4, 6, 9.
Cases 1, 5, 7, 8: The teachers opted for either A or B answers only. 
Nobody marked C. This means that the teachers consider these cases to 
be quite problematic for Peruvian learners of English. Cases 1, 5, 7, 8 
became the subject of the present investigation.
Cases 3, 6, 9: These cases received low percentage of a C answer 
along with the given high percentage of A or B answers. This means that 
the majority of the teachers still consider these cases to be paid special 
attention to. The researcher included the mentioned cases of phonological 
interference in the intervention.
Cases 2, 4: The questionnaire showed that the majority of the 
teachers find these two cases as either deducible from the context or easy 
to understand. Moreover, the teachers gave the cases 2 and 4 the highest 
percentage of answer C and the lowest percentage of answer A.
Therefore, this study will not focus on the two mentioned cases. 
But they could be the subject for further investigation in the future.
To conclude, seven cases of phonological interference chosen in