No abstract

The present study investigated the production of British English (BrE) vowels by Yemeni-Arabic learners of English. Specifically, the most problematic BrE vowels for those learners were explored in relation to Lados’ (1957) contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) and Flege’s (1995) Speech Learning Model (SLM). Sixty-seven Yemeni EFL learners at different proficiency levels completed a questionnaire, which mainly explored how difficult the BrE vowels are for them, and a vowel production test, which measured the learners’ production accuracy of the BrE vowels. Overall, the results revealed that Yemeni EFL learners encountered some difficulties when pronouncing BrE vowels, but their production accuracy rates increased as their levels grow. It was found that the same vowels, /e/, /ɒ/, /eə/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/ & /u:/, were found to be the most inaccurately produced sounds by learners at all levels. The subtle differences between vowels might have caused the learners’ production problems. Findings also showed that learners’ L1 vowels that are different from the BrE vowels were easier to produce, and this is congruent with the SLM.

The current study, which employed a new analysis approach -an explicit and implicit data collection method-, investigates the perception of the English modal verbs by forty-six Saudi EFL undergraduate learners. Findings revealed that Saudi EFL students struggled with the semantic functions of English modals more than the pragmatic ones. Deontic possibility modal verbs like can and might were the most challenging forms for the EFL learners. Functional complexity, input frequency, students’ L1 influence, and cultural variation were thought to cause students’ misunderstanding of these modals. Students, on the other hand, appeared to perceive the pragmatic functions with ease, reinforcing the role of the input frequency in the acquisition of English modality because modals of Request, Suggestion and Offer are frequently introduced to students in the classroom. Furthermore, findings revealed that students’ performance in the perception test was better than the explicit one, which could be attributed to the lack of explicit instruction of the English modals. Some pedagogical implications were suggested.

This study explores the alternative forms to simple past produced by Saudi learners of English across different proficiency levels, with a particular focus on the lexical aspect. Based on the analysis of 62 Saudi EFL learners’ responses to a cloze test, findings showed that learners’ alternative patterns were of six types: base and present, progressive, aux+ present/past, perfect, blank and other forms. The main competing patterns to simple past were the base and present, progressive and aux + present/past forms. The lexical aspect appeared to have a partial influence on the production of the alternative patterns in the past context, whereby progressive was highly used with activity, which is consistent with the Aspect Hypothesis, but it was also overused with states, which is not in line with the Aspect Hypothesis. Evidence of the learners’ L1 influence was displayed in their inaccurate use of progressive with states, overuse of base/present forms and their low frequency of the perfect.

A considerable body of research has investigated the use of metadiscourse in academic writing in different languages, and it is assumed in the literature that the use of metadiscourse is language- and culture-specific. However, little research has investigated how Arab writers interact with their readers in Arabic research articles (RAs). Thus, following Hyland’s (2005) models, this study explores the use of the interactional metadiscourse in the introductions of 94 Arabic RAs totalling 88,350 words published between 2013-2022. Findings showed that Arab writers tend to establish a relationship with readers and involve them as discourse participants through the use of the inclusive pronoun naḥnu نحن ‘we’ and the rhetorical forms. Arab writers used both grammatical and lexical items to express their views with confidence with a high degree of commitment. They were found to use reader-accuracy markers to mitigate their arguments. They, however, appeared not to evaluate what is presented through their personal feelings, and this might be due to sociocultural reasons, which requires further investigation.