Grammatical Errors of Saudi Students in English - Assignment Example

TESOL assignment Grammatical errors of Saudi in English “To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult“ (Samuel Johnson, 1761) Introduction This paper explores the kind of grammatical errors that Saudi students make frequently when writing in English, attempts to explain why these errors are made, and suggests how such errors can be reduced in their compositions. It is assumed that the Saudi students are well versed in their native language of Arabic and that English is being learnt as a second language. The attention is therefore on the difficulties in writing in English with respect to grammar as experienced by Arab learners of English. Furthermore, the terms Saudi learner and Arab learner are used interchangeably so no distinction is made between Arab learners from different parts of the Arab world. In addition, the focus is on errors instead of mistakes. James (1998) distinguished the two by stating that a writer is unaware of the errors they make, which can therefore be systematic, whereas mistakes such as ‘slips’ are accidental and therefore self-correctable. Writing is a complex task as it involves putting one’s thoughts into words carefully according to certain rules so that the reader is able to clearly understand what has been written. The need for clarity is important because usually the writer is not available at the time his or her writing is being read by someone in order to respond to any comments. In this way, writing is more demanding than speaking, which allows for a two-way communication and therefore the opportunities for elaborations and clarifications. Penman (1998) stated there being no possibility of negotiating the meaning of what has been written inevitably leads to the potential exacerbation of misunderstandings. For non-native speakers of English, the need to ensure readability and clarity of meaning is intensified so writing becomes a difficult task. This is because they are not normally as proficient in English as they are in Arabic and they have to be more consciously aware of the grammatical rules they are applying. Thus, many Arabs are prone to making mistakes and grammatical errors when writing in English and this increases the likelihood of misunderstandings arising. Identification of the errors Many of the difficulties in writing in English can be attributed to differences between the two languages. Notable differences in terms of grammar that could be a potential source of errors are as follows: Arabic only uses a definite article and has no indefinite article. Arabic has no genitive marker as in English In Arabic, adjectives come after the noun they qualify whereas in English they precede the noun. In relative clauses, Arabic constructions require a pronoun that is not needed in English. There is no verb in Arabic to express the English verb ‘to be’ in the present tense and no equivalent for the auxiliary ‘do’. Arabic uses a single form for the present tense whereas English has simple and continuous forms for the present tense. Arabic does not distinguish between completed actions with and without a relation to the present. Unlike in English, there are no modal verbs in Arabic. The lack of an indefinite article in Arabic leads many Arab students either to omit the indefinite article in their English writing when it is required or to use it when it is not required. For example, an Arab student would write instead of and instead of . Furthermore, even the use of the definite article differs between the two languages leading to difficulties with using the English definite article as well. Arabic also uses the definite article for abstract nouns whereas English does not. This could lead the Arab student to make more extensive use of the English definite article than is necessary, as in instead of . The lack of a genitive marker leads to errors such as , which follows the Arabic ordering, instead of writing , or to constructions without the apostrophe such as instead of . The difference between the noun and adjective word orders between Arabic and English lead to mistakes in writing adjectives in English after the noun instead of before it. For example, an Arab student not accustomed to the English ordering might write instead of . An example of a wrong construction with an added pronoun in the relative clause could be whereas the correct construction in English would be . Errors with English noun phrases made by Arab students were examined by Zughoul (2002). The participants comprised of 25 Arabic learners of English taking part in an intensive English language program from throughout the Arab world including Saudi Arabia. Noun phrase errors accounted for up to one third of errors while verb phrase errors were more prominent. The two most common types of noun phrase errors were related to use of the articles, especially omission of the indefinite article where it would be obligatory to use, and redundant use of the definite article . It was also evident there are some differences between Arab students with different backgrounds, and addition, it was shown that many of the errors were common among ESOL learners with other non-Arabic language backgrounds. However, the error characteristics particular to Saudi students were not mentioned in the paper. In addition, Arab students tend to have difficulties with quantifiers as well, i.e. in properly using words such as little, few, many and much. A typical wrongly formed construction would be instead of and instead of . With pronouns, there are usually no difficulties because English has a fewer number of pronouns than there are in Arabic. However, the personal pronouns are sometimes used unnecessarily by adding them to verbs. For example, in AbiSamra’s (2003) study, one student wrote . Furthermore, some relative pronouns do pose difficulties, especially ‘whose’ for which other relative pronouns are likely to be used instead. For example, an Arab student might write instead of < The boy whose pen it was …>. As many of the errors are due to tenses and aspects, it is worth highlighting the differences between the two languages in respect of the verb phrases. English distinguishes between the past, present and future tenses whereas Arabic has the perfect and imperfect tenses. Consequently, Arabic has fewer tenses and aspects than in English and this poses difficulties for the Arab students. The lack of the continuous tense has already been highlighted above. In addition, students unfamiliar with past tense forms of irregular English verbs tend to use the wrong form of the verb for the past tense. Usually, the error is in either using the present tense form or to consider the verb as regular. For example, instead of writing , the student might write for the past tense construction. Another example could be instead of . Difficulties with the English past tenses are one of the main types of errors made by Arab learners of English, as found in a study at the University of Sudan (Kambal, 1980). The absence of the present tense form for ‘to be’ mentioned in the list above causes errors by Arab students such as or instead of , which is an error of omission. In Jabak’s (2007) study, the following examples are given which occurred during translation work: and . The two forms for the present tense in English causes errors such as instead of and instead of . The lack of distinction between completed actions makes the students fail to use the present perfect tense properly. The absence of modal verbs in Arabic causes errors such as instead of . Another kind error due to this deficiency is to add auxiliary verbs unnecessarily, as in instead of . Negative constructions are also difficult for Arab students, especially when dealing with the present perfect tense. In Jabak’s (2007) study on Saudi students, the following were examples of erroneous constructions: and . Although the task was to translate from the Arabic into English, it is not uncommon to see these same types of errors in composition work as well. Similarly, Arab students often fail to render interrogative sentences correctly using the simple present tense. This leads to incorrectly constructed sentences such as or instead of . Prepositional phrases are also a common area of difficulty. In Arabic, a preposition is called a harf al-jarr and it is mostly used to denote a spatiotemporal relation. In contrast, an English preposition can also function as a substantive-derived directional adverb or as a particle (Lindstromberg, 2010). Thus, there are fewer prepositions in Arabic than there are in English and this causes difficulties for Arab learners of English when they have to distinguish between the numerous English prepositions. Many of these difficulties with prepositional phrases are due to the actual prepositions within the phrases. As an example, an often-used preposition in Arabic is , which in English could mean either indicating a position or indicating a movement. In addition, it could also encompass a wider range of meaning to include , , , , , etc. depending on the context. For example, would be translated as but would be translated as , and as and as . It can be seen that whereas in Arabic, is used in all the cases, a distinction has to be drawn in English and Arabs are not always able to do so easily. The errors made by the Arabs tend to be errors of omission, errors of substitution or of redundant usage. For the same reason, machine translators also have the same problem when translating from Arabic into English. In a study by Ho-Abdullah & Hasan (2009), the different conceptual mapping domains were explained in relation to the English preposition . It was shown that Arab students faced difficulties in translation work when dealing with this English preposition. Although the participants were Iraqi students, this study could equally apply to Saudi students. In addition, although only one preposition was examined, the difficulties are representative of English prepositions in general because of differences in conceptual mapping domains as compared to other languages including Arabic. Earlier, Habash (1982) had shown that Arab students indeed make errors when using English prepositions and these were then categorised according to their frequency of occurrence. This was a useful study for this paper because the Arab students were learning English and the errors were found in their formal written work. They were not made during any linguistic experiment, which would have created an artificial environment. Several types of potential grammatical errors have been explored above in the context of Arab learners of English. It would be pertinent to also mention some peculiarities of the English language that are not present in Arabic and do not lead to errors as such, but which lead to unnecessarily complex constructions nonetheless due to lack of familiarity with the possibilities in English. Although these may not be errors, they are usually made systematically and are not mistakes because like errors they are not recognised by the students until they are told about them. A good example of these linguistic features is the morphological aspects of English. For example, English makes use of various affixes that prove useful in place of the alternative constructions, as in ‘edible’ in place of ‘can be eaten’. An Arab student, who may wish to express this meaning, may write for example, instead of . Another example would be instead of . This assumes the other grammatical aspects are correct otherwise it is possible to see such constructions written as or instead. Similarly, a useful suffix available in English is –ly, which can be used to change an adjective into an adverb, as in derived from . If the Saudi student is not familiar with the –ly construction, it is possible to see a sentence written such as or instead of . Another example could be or instead of the concise construction . Even when the student has knowledge of the –ly suffix, it is often applied incorrectly, as was shown by Jabak (2007) wherein students wrote and instead of . On the same theme, some adjectives are overused in situations where other adjectives would be more suitable. A good example is the adjective ‘small’, which is the Arabic equivalent of . An Arab would be more likely to write, for example, or instead of . This is not a grammatical but a lexical difficulty. Another aspect of the English language that does not lead to errors so much as unsuitable or long-winded structures is the use of passive constructions. These are common in formal writing, especially in technical and scientific texts but not so common in Arabic. Thus, it is possible to see a sentence such as which is grammatically correct, or which is incorrect, instead of . Possible explanations for the errors Writing in a second language especially is a complex task because there is a strict requirement to be grammatically correct. As such, it is more difficult in comparison with the other language skills, namely speaking, listening and reading. Composition work takes even more time and effort because of the need to express meaning clearly, which is only possible if the student is firstly competent in applying grammar and secondly proficient in articulation. Regardless of how articulate the student may be, lack of proficiency in English grammar becomes an obstacle. The student has to then check the work through in order to verify the constructions and even resort to using dictionaries, thesauri, grammar reference books and translation devices. This not only takes time but also increases the likelihood of constructing awkward expressions. Each language is based on its own unique system of grammatical rules. When the student is faced with the task of communicating in another language, difficulties are encountered because the student has to become accustomed to a new set of rules. Errors therefore occur as an inevitable part of the learning process. In difficult situations, when the student is unfamiliar with the correct English construction to make, he or she may try to impose their own understanding of structures and patterns for the foreign language based on their own native language. With references to the types of errors identified earlier, many of the noun phrase errors can be explained by the fact that Arabic is not as explicit as English in making certain structures. It lacks in certain words used to indicate a particular grammatical form, and some words are used to encompass a wide range of meaning. These differences make English more complicated than the native language. For example, the indefinite article is implicit in Arabic by the absence of the definite article but English requires the word to be used explicitly. The Arab students are therefore unsure when to use this article and when not to use it. The difficulty with quantifiers is explained for example by the fact that there is only a single word that could be used to mean either many or much so the Arabs are unsure which to use when writing in English. In these types of cases, they need to learn to distinguish between the differing uses whereas they have been accustomed not to make any such distinctions in their native language. The difficulties with prepositional phrases can be understood given that English makes much finer distinctions than Arabic does and has many more prepositions. True Arabic prepositions are only ten in number in Modern Standard Arabic while the remainder are some locative expressions Ryding (2005). On the other hand, English has over 90 different prepositions (Lindstromberg, 2010). However, this fact alone does not explain all the difficulties. English prepositions are problematic for many ESL and EFL students around the world for both Arab and non-Arab students alike. Mickiewieza (1993) described the English prepositions as being unpredictable and as having earned a reputation for being difficult. Actually, the prepositions do not necessarily pose difficulties to those for whom English is a first language but then they are used to their intricacies. English prepositions are numerous compared to many other languages but they also differ with respect to their domains of meanings and usages and this compounds the difficulties for non-English learners. The situation is similar for the other grammatical areas as well. The making of frequent grammatical errors in English writing is therefore by no means peculiar to Saudi students. Students of other nationalities and language backgrounds also commit certain errors in common to a greater or lesser degree. Furthermore, although grammatical errors is the focus of this study, Saudi students of English as a second and foreign language also tend to make other types of linguistic errors, the more apparent of which are phonological errors committed while speaking. Indeed, Arab students face difficulties in English in all four language skills, as shown by Rabab’ah (2005) and Suleiman (1983). Phonological errors produced by Saudi speakers of English have been studied, for example, by Schmitt & McCarthy (1997) and Binturki (2008). A similarity with grammatical errors is that many of the errors relate to sounds that are not present in the students’ first language of Arabic such as /p/ and /v/. This is just as many constructs not present in Arabic but present in English, such as the indefinite article (a/an), present difficulties for the Arab students. In an English transcribing test arranged by Al-Jarf (2009), 63% of the errors made by Saudi students were of phonological origin and the remainder were of orthographic origin. In English reading too, Arab students experience various difficulties, and these have been shown to be due to phonological differences, letter-sound disparities in English, and the reverse directionality of English (Patil, 2010). As for writing, it was noted by Dabaan (1983) that the lack of a consistent orthography in English and certain peculiarities in English writing conventions also posed difficulties for Arab students. This situation again contrasts with the characteristics of the Arabic language, which has a far more consistent orthography. That is, Arabic is spelled phonetically whereas English is not always spelled according to the phonetic markers. Consequently, spelling errors are uncommon in Arabic unlike in English, except for words of foreign origin. Swan & Smith (2006) also observed that this difference creates profound issues for Saudi students. However, they pointed out that it also provides an advantage in that the overall sentence structures are quite similar to English so they can still be easily understood. As regards actual grammatical errors being committed by other students, these have been shown to constitute a significantly large proportion of the total errors made by Korean students for example (Nelson & Chun, 2008). They showed the most frequent errors to be related to use of the English articles. Kim (2010) highlighted the difficulties Korean students also face with the English tenses. The reasons for committing errors in other aspects of writing work could also be relevant to composition. Jabak (2007) pointed out that in translation for example, Arab students find it easier to translate from English into Arabic rather than from Arabic into English because they are more familiar with the various linguistic and cultural aspects of Arabic than of English. Although translation work is different from composition work, the identification of these two aspects could apply equally to composition. Arab students fail to observe that both languages belong to entirely different language families and mistakenly apply the rules of Arabic grammar in writing in English. This is the basis of the linguistic aspect. This approach inevitably leads to the various errors highlighted at the beginning of this paper. The cultural aspect is also a significant factor in causing errors. Lack of awareness of the peculiarities of English culture is also partly to blame. Jabak’s (2007) study shows that deficiencies in cultural knowledge should also be addressed. This would be particularly important, for example, in the case of using metaphors, idioms, proverbs, collocations, etc. In the study by Habash (1982) mentioned earlier, it was shown that almost two-thirds of the errors were due to interference from Arabic while the remainder were due to other reasons. The mother tongue interference explanation was also given by Suleiman (1983) but he claimed that the whole teaching and learning process was to blame as well. Strangely, however, according to Habash (1982), the patterns that students found most difficult were not those that were completely different but those that were somewhat similar. This could be due to over confidence with structures that seem familiar whereas those that are clearly different usually receive greater attention while learning. The reasons for committing errors can therefore be boiled down to two main causes. One cause is due to influences from the student’s native language of Arabic and the second is due to variant structures in English that differ from those in Arabic. AbiSamra (2003) termed the two factors as interlingual/transfer and intralingual/developmental respectively. The former is attributed to the writer’s native language, i.e. Arabic, and the latter is due to the language being learned, i.e. English and is thus independent of the native language. When the interlingual factors have a negative impact, i.e. they cause many of the errors then this can be termed as interference. In this situation, the student’s grasp of the grammatical rules of English is weak so he/she relies on knowledge of the native language, which is then superimposed onto English. Other linguists have identified more potential sources of errors; such as seven by Richards & Simpson (1974), and James’ (1998) identification of ‘induced errors in addition to the interlingual and intralingual errors. The other sources identified included sociolinguistic situation, age, modality and ‘successions of approximative systems’. However, the two aforementioned types are the most prominent. Frequencies of occurrence of the errors Attention is now drawn to identifying which errors are most or least prominent in order to ascertain the areas of grammar that need to be taught more thoroughly. AbiSamra (2003) analysed the errors in Arabic speakers’ English writings and categorised them into grammatical, syntactic, lexical, semantic and substance, and organizational/discourse errors. Ten 250-word essays were examined. As far as the grammatical errors were concerned, the most frequent errors that were of interlingual origin were related to prepositions and particles; the second most frequent errors were with use of the articles followed by adjectives. Other errors were less frequent. The most frequent intralingual errors were with the English tenses by far, and less frequent were errors with prepositions and particles and the articles. However, the proportions of interlingual and intralingual based grammatical errors were roughly equal. The interlingual errors accounted for 48.2% and the intralingual errors accounted for 51.8%. This information is summarised in the table below. Each column lists the areas of grammar in which the errors were committed in order of frequency from highest (top) to lowest (bottom). Most frequent interlingual and intralingual errors made by Arab students in written English as identified in a study by AbiSamra (2003) Interlingual errors (transfer) Intralingual errors (developmental) Prepositions/particles Articles Adjectives Singular/Plural Reported spelling Tenses Prepositions/particles Articles Irregular verbs Possessive case This study is useful in identifying the relative frequency of occurrence of errors and in tracing them to being of either interlingual or intralingual origin. It can be seen that prepositions, particles and articles are prominent under both categories so they pose particular difficulties for the Arab students. They are especially problematic while writing in English due to influences from the native language. The single most problematic inherent grammatical feature of English is its complex system of tenses. These findings are roughly in accord with the results of Jabak’s (2007) study, which also identified tense as the most problematic area of English grammar. Tenses accounted for 80% of the grammatical errors. These were followed by errors in using the articles, prepositions and relative pronouns in equal proportion and the least common were errors related to use of the verb ‘to be’. The relative proportions found in the AbiSamra (2003) study attributed to interlingual and intralingual factors are in contrast with the findings of Samhoury (1966). This study was based on an analysis of 200 scripts written in English by Arabic university level students in Syria. The sample size was much larger than in AbiSamra’s study but equal to the sample size in Jabak’s study. The causes were ascribed to interference from Arabic totally, so it appears that the study did not acknowledge any causes as attributed to intralingual factors. Actually, the researcher denied any role of the teaching material, the teacher and the methods and did not make a clear distinction between interlingual and intralingual factors. On the other hand, a study by Emam (1972) in which written compositions by secondary level students were analysed, revealed that the mother tongue, in this case Egyptian Arabic, was not a significant source of errors. There were exceptions however, in cases where the two languages had some grammatical features in common. The above two contrary findings suggest there may be differences among speakers of different varieties of Arabic and the need for further studies to compare the relative importance of the different types of causes. Nonetheless, identification of the different types of errors and the most prominent among them has been established. Besides errors directly related to grammatical aspects of the language, errors due to lexical aspects are also common. In English, lexical meaning is contextual and situational. Arab students tend to disregard the contextual aspect and this leads to lexical difficulties (Jabak, 2007). However, the focus was on grammatical errors and attention is now drawn to suggesting possible strategies in order to help Saudi and other Arab students minimise them. How the errors can be minimised Before the student is made to correct the errors, it would be very helpful for him/her to be made aware of the possible errors that could arise and this should be grounded in thorough research. Recognition of potential weaknesses can help to enhance understanding of the important grammatical rules because the student will be more likely to then focus on these aspects of the grammar that would be of most practical use. Likewise, TESOL teachers could also give greater attention to those areas of grammar in writing classes that would help to minimise the chances of making grammatical errors according to the background of the students. This would make the teaching more effective and would ultimately benefit the student by making them feel more confident in their writing abilities. Coping with the potential difficulties and preventing errors requires the adoption and implementation of communication strategies. Several taxonomies have been devised to develop communication strategies for students but one influential one is that of Tarone (1977) is illustrated in the diagram below. In the context of Arab learners of English and writing for composition work, this should be seen merely as an example of a communication strategy taxonomy that could then be adapted for Saudi students by the TESOL teachers familiar with their communication difficulties and needs. Taxonomy of communication strategies of Tarone 1983 The components that are of practical importance are the actual strategies. These are mostly similar in other taxonomies such as those of Bialystok (1983) and Willems (1987), the differences being mainly in their structuring. According to the above three pronged taxonomy, the student should make use of avoidance, paraphrasing and borrowing or conscious transfer and the specific strategies are mentioned under each. Arab learners of English and other students in the same situation employ a communication strategy anyway irrespective of whether they are conscious of it or not and whether it is formal or not. It is a natural response to cope with the communication difficulties when they lack proficiency in the second language. However, awareness of and practice with such strategies could help them to know the options that are available and gain expertise in using them to cope. Avoidance, paraphrasing and borrowing are not ideal responses but they are better than making errors and better than giving up with the L2 altogether. Sometimes, even native speakers resort to such strategies so it is not demeaning. AbiSamra (2003) recommended that the students should be given more writing assignments. While practice would be beneficial, it should be targeted to help them minimising errors. The quality is therefore more important than the quantity of exercises. Awareness, targeted teaching, and specific strategies should form parts of the TESOL program to help the students in writing in English. The awareness should include not only awareness of possible errors and the error they are prone to make individually but also of relevant aspects of English culture. In short, it is necessary for the Arab students to make a complete switch from using their Arabic linguistic and cultural toolkit when composing in English to using the English one, as it would be more appropriate and would lead to making fewer errors. Conclusion Several types of common grammatical errors made by Arabic learners of English were identified based on studies of others as well as the writer’s own experience. Several examples were also provided. The errors covered the areas of noun phrases, verb phrases and prepositional phrases in particular. Other systematically committed erroneous constructions were also highlighted. In identifying the possible causes of the errors, these were categorised into interlingual/transfer errors, which are due to influences from the mother tongue deemed as interferences, and to intralingual/developmental errors, which are purely due to the nature of the English system of grammar itself. Studies were also explored to identify the most frequent types of errors, which were found to be tenses, articles and prepositions. Of these, difficulties with English tenses were largely of intralingual origin. It was suggested that students be made aware of the possible errors that could arise and for the TESOL program to give particular attention to these areas of English grammar. Furthermore, the students could be taught to use certain strategies to help them cope better in their English compositions. References AbiSamra, Nada. 2003. An analysis of errors in Arabic speakers’ English writings. Thesis submitted to American University of Beirut. Al-Jarf, Reima. 2009, 9 March. Phonological and Orthographic Problems in EFL College Spellers. Tellus Conference Proceedings. Azad Islamic University - Roudehen, Iran. Bialystok, E. 1983. Some factors in the selection and implementation of communication strategies. In C. Faerch and G. Kasper (Eds.), Strategies in Interlanguage Communication. 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