Common spoken errors in English by native speakers of Arabic/ L1 Arabic speakers

Abstract

This work consists of an analysis of common grammatical errors made by a sample of 30 Arab speakers of English who are currently studying at the University of Malta and who were interviewed for this study. The participants in this study come from Libya and Kuwait. They are following various degree courses in: English, Medicine, Science, and Engineering. The study of grammatical errors was based on analysing the transcript of 30 interviews taken as a sample and selected from the target population. The results showed that the three most frequent types of errors were in the use of tenses, articles and prepositions. Among the major findings of this study were the following: Arab speakers of English find the past tense to be the most difficult English tense form to master. Also, the findings indicate that the English tense causes more problems for Arab speakers than prepositions and articles. In addition, the number of errors ascribed to insufficient mastery in the target language itself exceed the number of errors related to mother tongue interference. In terms of the possible causes of errors identified in this study, negative transfer (interlingual) from the first language (Arabic) to the second language (English) and the difficulty in the target language itself (intralingual) such as overgeneralisation, ignorance of rules restriction, incomplete application of rules and false concepts hypothesized seem to be the most common sources of errors.