The purpose of this study is to examine whether L1 had an impact on the ESL (English as a Second Language) grammar skills of the beginning ESL language learners. An experimental research design was conducted at University of Jaffna. The study involved qualitative methods of data collection. General English Proficiency Test was administered among the subjects randomly, the data collected from the subjects’ responses were analyzed, and the findings were derived. The findings show that there are a number of problems which are found to impede the learning of English due to the greater dissimilar features found between English and Tamil. The results will be beneficial for material development, ESL teaching and learning process in future. The major finding on overall error rates demonstrates that there is statistically significant difference in error rates with the comparison of students’ L1 and English. Evidence provided by the written samples suggests that L1 played a role in the process of beginning ESL learners’ writing in English. Understanding linguistic difference between students’ L1 and English may help the learners reduce interference from their first language.

L1, Linguistic difference, error analysis, ESL writing, Contrastive analysis.

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