The Influence of Native Language: An Error Analysis in Using Thai of Karen and Mon Ethnic Students in Kanchanaburi Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research article are to study the problem of orthographical and sentence forms of upper elementary school of the ethnic Pwo Karen and Mon students in Kanchanaburi Province and to compare group-specific problems related to Thai orthographical and sentence forms of the students from both ethnic groups. The researcher collected the data from orthographical and sentence forms of 120 students, divided into 70 of Pwo Karen and 50 of Mon. The data was analyzed according to the error analysis method by comparing the Thai language written by the students in the test with standard Thai.

            The research results revealed four orthographical problems: 1) problems in writing the initial consonants such as confusion between about double high-low class letters, initial consonants, /r/, /l/ consonants. 2) problems in writing final consonants such as omitting, repetition and adding. 3) Vowel writing problems; confusion about full - replacement vowels, short - long vowels and vowel forms and 4) problems in tone marks writing, or confusion about writing tone marks of the students, including both omitting tone marks and adding extra tone marks. Regarding sentence writing, most issues stemmed from the students' lack of knowledge about sentence structure, word types, and word meanings. These problems were partly influenced by their mother tongue, language environment, and the complexity of Thai orthography. When comparing the two ethnic groups, it was found that their spelling and sentence writing issues followed a similar pattern.