Errors Made by an Arab Learner of English as a Second Language - Case Study Example

Academia Research The ……………….. 12th May, 2009. The Analysis of the Errors Made by an Arab ESL learner Englishis taught as Second Language in many Arab Countries. The Arabic speaking learners have a very rich language as their mother tongue. The influence of mother tongues affects their second language learning. Both languages have very few common grounds and many points of differences. The student feels a great difficulty in pronouncing different English words because certain sounds are not present in their mother tongue. They also face a lot of difficulties in learning the grammar of English as Arabic sentence structure and grammatical rules vary in numerous ways from English sentences. The orthography poses a great problem as English is written from left to right while Arabic language is written from right to left. Keeping in view all these problems, a teacher of English has to perform a very difficult task in making his students master English language. The present study probes into different aspects regarding errors made by Arabic speakers during ESL learning. A sample of composition from an Arabic speaking student has been analyzed to highlight commonly occurring errors. In the following paragraphs we will first point out the errors and then find out the possible cause of these errors and in the end certain remedial measures would be suggested. Different researchers have also paid attention to this issue and have studied Arabic speaking learners to find out the possible solutions. The persistence of these errors suggests that some pedagogical intervention to raise students consciousness about them is necessary.( Cowan,2008).Lado(1957) hypothesized that errors in the second language (L2) are caused by the interference of the students native language. Such errors reflect the students inability to separate L1 and L2. Therefore, a contrastive analysis of L1 and L2, he thought, will help predict the areas of difficulty in L2. Odlin (1989): James (1980); Brown (1980) pointed out that students’ errors in L2 are caused by several processes. These include transfer, overgeneralization and communication strategies. There are many problematic areas for the students of English language in Arab countries. From the very beginning, he/she realizes that he/she is learning a different language which has many sounds which are not present in their mother tongue. The sounds which become difficult for the Arab learners are: Consonants /p/ , /t/ , /d/, /ŋ/,/tʃ/ ,/v/ The Arabic speakers mostly replace / p/ with / b/ sound that is the reason that they feel difficulty in pronouncing words like People, popular , perpetuate .In this case we will hear /b/ sound instead /p/ which may seem funny and incomprehensible in some cases. /tʃ/ sound is a sound which makes difficulty for Arab students. In most cases this sound is replaced by /ʃ/ sound which is found in shoe. The word Chocolate when pronounced in Arabic gives the sound Shocolate. They tend to pronounce letter ‘h’ in a quite distinctive way. They separate /t ʃ/ sound into two sound one is ‘ta’ sound which is distinctively Arabic sound and has no equivalent in English language and with this sound they us ‘/ʃ/ sound . Similary , Arab students tend to pronounce consonant /v/ as / f / as in very /feri/ . The plosives /t/ and /d/ have no equivalent in Arabic language. /d/ is replaced by a sound which is close to English sound as in ‘ The’ . While /t/ sound is replaced by Arabic sound which is pronounced with tongue somewhat lower in position than the plosives.It is similar to French ‘ ta’.The vowels pose a great difficulty for Arabic speakers as in Arabic there is no such diversity of vowel sounds as in English language. Even in the beginning of their ESL course they face difficulty as they mispronounce most of the English Alphabets. I have highlighted such alphabets in italics which are generally mispronounced by our particular learner in this study. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z The Arabic Speakers find themselves in a difficult situation when they have to pronounce the vowels / ɪ /, /ə/, / ɒ/, /ɜ:/ as Arabic has no such vowels and Arab learners pronounce these vowels in a distinct Arabic accent. The word Sit is pronounced as /sit/ .There is tendency in Arabic speakers to change /ə/ sound with /əʊ/ sound for example the researcher has heard many Arab speakers pronouncing the word connection as /kəʊnekʃən/. One of the most commonly faced pronunciation problem faced by the Arabic speaking student is in the area of word which do not match its pronunciation as the students pronounce the last e of the words have and make as they do not seem to swallowing the idea of some words being silent. Similarly the words like knowledge, knife, and psychology will create a definite problem for the Arab ESL learners. The aim of this study is to analyze the language pieces from an Arabic ESL learner . In the light of this analysis the researcher will determine how much progress the learner has made since she started her learning in English language. An analysis of the errors made by her would help us evaluate the problematic areas for her. In the light of this analysis we will suggest certain remedial measures for that particular student. Certain drills and techniques would be suggested so that she may further overcome all these problems and learn English language efficiently. For the purpose of the study, the researcher has selected an Arabic speaking girl named Layla who is an ESL learner. She is so much enthusiastic about learning English language. Hence, she has very high level of motivation for learning the target language. The learner is 20 years old. She has been learning English for about 10 years in private schools. In addition, she has studied English for about 3 months in Australia. Her parents are highly educated. They teach Math in colleges and they always encourage her to study and help her learn English language. She wants to learn English to improve her speaking ability which will help her to achieve her ambition to work as a receptionist in a public library. She speaks Arabic as her first language and English as a second language. She was asked to write two or three paragraphs on the topic “ Myself”. The objective of this exercise was to get a written script of her language performance. Through the written composition the researcher will not only judge her mastery of language but also highlight certain errors made by her. For the ease of analysis the composition has been divided into sentences and every sentence is numbered so as to analyze each sentence separately and then comment on the whole composition piece. The researcher has paid attention to the following errors mad by the learner. 1: Grammatical errors 2: Spelling errors 3: Errors of expression 4: Punctuation errors 5: Pronunciation error (phonemes, stress and intonation) 1:My name is Layla. 2:I from Saudi Arabia. 3:I like study English. 4:I am interesting in practice English every day. 5:I have two brothers and one sister. 6:He study English too. 7: My sister is student in high school. 8:My other sister study business in king saud university. 9:We love study hard and we spend a lot time reading difference books and magazines. 10:Now I taking special courses in English in the international institute for English. 11:This is my 4th week and I benefit a lot from it. 12: my father is encourage me to study hard. 13:My mother teach me new words every time. 14: My country is very big. 15:People love to travel a lot. 16:Also they love going to the beach to relax and for fun. 17: My father work for the government and my mother work for her own. 18:We have big house and three cars. 19:In the holidays we travel by airplane to Europe and the united states 20:. I always try to speak English we I travel. 21:I hope I could give you some information about my self and about my country. The composition has been analyzed and the sentences with errors have been underlined. By analyzing the second sentence, the researcher has come to know that the learner makes many grammatical errors in this passage. Most of the errors are of omission and commission. In the second sentence copular verb ( be in this case am) is omitted. The learner has made this mistake because of the influence of the mother tongue as this sentence in Arabic can be translated as ( Ana min Saudia).The Arabic expression has no equivalent for am in this expression that’s why Arabic students tend to make this mistake. In the third sentence, student has not used the infinitive properly .Here she should have to write ‘I like to study English’. This again shows the influence of mother tongue as the infinitive form in Arabic consists of only one word unlike English which uses to with the verb. In the fourth sentence instead of using the past participle interested the student has used present participle form which is commonly made error by Arab students. The 6th sentence contains the error of morphology. As English language uses inflectional forms for showing the person and past form of the verb i.e s, es , ed. The Arabic students frequently use the verbs without proper inflections. They need a lot of exercise in this area. Sentence No 8 contains the same error as in the fourth sentence and there is also punctuation mistake. The student fails to capitalize first letters of King, Saud and University as in Arabic no such capitalization is required. Sentence No 9 contains three errors. Error in the use of infinitive. Error in the use of phrase and error in the use of noun instead using adjective. Sentence No 10 again shows the omission of auxiliary form of the verb as Arabic uses no such auxiliary form. In Arabic Simple Present Tense ( Muzarey) is used for continuous tense as well. For example (Howa yadhab) means both He goes and He is going That’s why Arabic speaking students fail to use it properly. Sentence No 11 shows the wrong use of perfect tense. The learner has not used perfect form ‘have benefited’. Again in sentence No 12 , the student did not capitalize the first letter of the sentence as there is no such practice in Arabic. Capitalization is the notion of English grammar which poses a great deal of problems for Arabic speaking students. The wrong use of present form of the sentence is also there the student instead of using present form encourages has used is encourage which is commonly occurring error in foreign language learner’ composition. Sentence No 13 again shows the omission of the inflectional s which again happens because of the bilingual effect. Sentence No 15 shows the missing of the definite article The by the learner. This is because English gives specific rules for the use of definite article. Lack of knowledge of these rules results in such kind of errors. Morphology is again the problematic area for the ESL learner in sentence No 17 as she misses the required inflection with the verb to indicate third person present tense. Sentence 18 contains the error of indefinite article a. The learner fails to use an indefinite article with common noun as this kind of expression is not present in his mother tongue. Sentence 20 shows the difficulty of foreign language learner to use subordinate clause correctly here leaner has not used When in the sentence. In the last sentence the learner has attempted a difficult construction .Here the use of perfect would have been appropriate instead of I could give. Perfect tense is always a problematic area for the Arabic speakers and mostly they fail to use it correctly. In the Second phase of the research, the researcher paid attention to the spoken expression of the learner and analyzed the errors made by this particular learner in the use of English language. The researcher has used informal conversation for this purpose. Through conversation the researcher has found out that the learner has problems with certain phonemes i.e /p/ ,/t/ , /d/, /ŋ/,/tʃ/ ,/v/ / ɪ /, /ə/, / ɒ/, /ɜ:/ . Like a typical Arabic learner our subject is unable to pronounce /p/ consonant .She uses /b/ in exchange for this sound. That is why when asked to pronounce pick, she pronounces it as /bik/.In the pronunciation of this word she replaces /b/ with /p/ and also fails to reproduce exact vowel /I/.Another problem was her pronunciation of /v/ .She replaced with /f/ sound. When asked to pronounce very she pronounced it as /feri/.She also fails to reproduce exactly the plosives /t/, /d/ .She pronounces these consonants like French speakers. Similarly she showed a great difficulty in reproducing certain vowels. The vowel /ɜ: /as in bird /bɜ:d/ could not be pronounced correctly by the subject. Another tendency we found in the speech of our subject was to insert vowels between consonants. While pronouncing the words clothes she inserted a vowel in between the last two sounds hence changing the stress pattern of the word. It resulted in sound like /klƏƱðIz/ with stress on the second syllable. In the cases of intonation, our subject used rising pitch instead of falling pitch for the ‘wh-questions’ and for the tag questions. This falling pitch is the signal of confirmation not of asking questions. After a careful analysis of the written composition and spoken discussion of the subject, the researcher found out that the learner has an initial level of proficiency in English language. She can express herself in English language quite easily but her expression contains a lot of grammatical, pronunciation errors. Through the analysis of the written composition, the researcher has come to know that the learner has some command of English spelling. But when assigned difficult passages, she may face problems. According to the composition and the spoken interview, she has some weaknesses in the area of English pronunciation. She has some problems in the area of segmental phonology. But most of these problems are because of L1 transfer. Even then she has to work on this area and should study phonemes intensively. In the area of supra-segmental phonology, she should work on English stress patterns and intonation. As she has shown tendency to change short vowel into long vowel and changing the syllable. She needs an intensive training in the area of vowels. A listening practice in this regard will be quite useful and pieces of language from native speakers will be quite beneficial in mastering the pronunciation of the target language. Oshisho (2008) has taken the issue of pronunciation quite leniently and he has tolerant views about foreign learner’s spoken performance. Morley (1991) attended to the issue of Arabic speaker’s spoken performance and highlighted the problematic areas in the supra-segmental phonology. The syntactical and morphological errors may be avoided by studying the problematic areas of English phonology and having exercises regarding irregular morphology. The learner should consult grammar books on the issue and the teachers should guide her in this regard. The researcher also noted that the issue of spelling errors did not come to light through the analysis of the composition as learner relied on her own vocabulary to express her personal, so there was no considerable spelling error found in the passage. But this is also a problematic area for the foreign learner and needs lot of attention on the part of teacher and students. The needs a strong listening training in this regard .Her ear should be tuned to English words and her exposure to English language should be made more frequent. She should also be made aware of discrepancies in English sounds and orthography and special dictation practice should be given to her to master irregular spellings. As it has been observed that one reason for the errors made by Arab children may be due to the extensive reliance on phonological strategies when dealing with spelling task.(Joshi,372).Student’s memory will play a vital role in this practice. To improve short-term auditory memory span and concentration, student should listen to the conversation or lecture once. No requests for repetition should be accepted. Van Duzer (1997) gave several activities that can develop listening skills: doing (physical); choosing; transferring; answering; condensing; extending; duplicating; modeling; and conversing. Conclusion Arabic speaking learners make many errors during their ESL learning .The major reasons behind these errors is L1 transfer. This L1 transfer hinders their efforts to master the communicative skill in English language. They come to learn English language already equipped with a language which has many contrastive elements from the target language. Both have different orthographies (writing systems). Most of the phonemes in one language do not exist in another language. This thing further aggravates the communicative situation of the Arab learners. Their ears are tuned to listen to different phonemes and their articulators are engaged in producing different sort of sounds .So, our particular learner when she had to pronounce phonemes such as /t/ , /d/, /ŋ/,/tʃ/,/v/ , was faced with a great problem. As a teacher of English language, one has to be mostly tolerant towards some of her speech habits and did not even try to change her habits especially in the production of the above mentioned phonemes. In this regard she was allowed to produce these sounds in the light of her previously acquired habits. As it is also possible that she may be trained in producing sound which is somewhat near native pronunciation .But this practice should be avoided in the situations where the students is less motivated towards learning English language as they would find it difficult and ultimately stop learning English language. The teacher may correct their pronunciation where she tends to stress some unstressed syllables as this happens in the case of short vowels where Arabic speakers tend to convert these short vowels into long vowels .Hence she is prone to stress such words. Mostly Arabic speakers convert the short vowel shwa /ə/ into some long vowel and stress that syllable. Like in connection, They tend to pronounce it as /kəʊnekʃən/. Then there are other sources as well. Sometimes the lack of motivation on the part of the students makes them miss certain important points of the target language. Another reason is that Arabic students have less interaction with English language as in most Arab countries English is foreign rather than second language and it is not used as medium of instruction in the daily life. It is only a classroom language that is why the students have less exposure to this language. The present study analyzed the language proficiency of an Arabic ESL leaner. Focus was on the written and spoken performance of the leaner. One composition piece and one spoken discussion were analyzed and the results were drawn from the data. In the light of findings, the weak areas of the learners have been highlighted and in the end certain possible remedial measures have been suggested in this regard. Works Cited Brown, H.D. (1994). Principles of language teaching and learning (3rd ed.). Eaglewood Cliffs,N.J: Prentice-Hall Regents. Cowan, R.(2008).The Teacher’s Grammar of English: A Course Book and Reference Guide. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Joshi,R.M. Aaron,P.G.(2006) .Handbook of Orthography and Literacy.London: Routledge Punblishers. Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Morley, J. "The Pronunciation Component in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages." TESOL Quarterly, 25, No. 3 (1991), 481-520. Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer: cross-linguistic influence in language learning.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Oshisho,E.(2006). Techniques of Teaching Comparative Pronunciation in Arabic and English. Piscataway : Gorgias Press. Van Duzer, C. (1997). Improving ESL learners’ spelling skills: At the workplace and beyond. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED406855 Read More