The influence of Bahasa Malaysia on student's writing while learning English as a second language in a national primary school

Students' writing in a second language encounters both social and cognitive challenges which are  related to second language acquisition. This qualitative case study is meant to identify how LI  (Bahasa Malaysia ) of the Malay students influence their L2 (English) writing. The dependent  variable is the students' number of errors they did in the writing tests and the independent  variable is the students' writing tests. 30 students of Year Five from a rural school were selected  as a cluster sample from an intact class. Observations, questionnaire, interviews, collection of  students' written exercises and three stages of writing ·activities inclusive of pretests and  posttests were used to collect data. The research question 'Does Bahasa Malaysia, as LI of the  Malay students, influenced their L2 (English Language) writing skill?' is answered through the  conduct of the writing tests. The result is, there is influence of LI but with a number of  exercises and explanations the errors were minimized. The errors of LI interference were analyzed  based on Corder's (1974) Taxonomy of Error Analysis. Key words - LI, L2, influence, LI interference, errors.