Of the four English language skills, speaking enjoys a superior status. Accordingly, it should be given high priority while teaching. In spite of its importance, teaching English speaking skill to Arab EFL learners has always been an exacting task for Arab teachers of English because it is considered a foreign language, i.e. not widely spoken or used in everyday interactions. For such a reason, Arab teachers of English are required to persistently implement new teaching strategies to tackle the problems regarding speaking skills in the classroom. Although a number of studies have been carried out to investigate the difficulties related to teaching English language skills to the Arab students in the Arab World, the current study is regarded the first study which highlights the problems in learning and teaching English speaking skill in the Saudi School in Kuala Lumpur where English is actively spoken as a second language. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the common problems which affect the teaching of English speaking skills to the Arab learners in the Saudi School in Kuala Lumpur. Additionally, it aims at exploring the areas of difficulty that prevent the Arab students from learning to speak in the English classes. This research also scrutinises the role of Kuala Lumpur ESL context on the Arab students' English language speaking skills. The current study adheres to qualitative method, and its data were collected via classroom observations and face-to-face interviews with four teachers of English and four students selected purposively. Findings included areas like learning and teaching difficulties. The study suggested some techniques to improve the teaching quality and enable the students to overcome their lack of speaking ability such as implementing communicative approach in the English classes.

English spelling has always been described by many language researchers and teachers as a daunting task especially for learners whose first language is not English. Accordingly, Arab ESL learners commit serious errors when they spell out English words. The primary objective of this paper is to determine the types as well as the causes of spelling errors made by Arab ESL secondary school students. In order to collect the data, a fifty-word standardised spelling test was administered to seventy Arab student participants. The students’ types of spelling errors were detected, analysed and then categorised according to Cook’s (1999) classification of errors namely substitution, omission, insertion and transposition. In total, 2,873 spelling errors of various categories were identified. The study findings revealed that errors of substitution constituted the highest percentage of the students’ type of errors. In addition, the study indicated that the main causes of the students’ spelling errors were possibly attributed to the anomalous nature of the English spelling system, the Arab students’ lack of awareness of English spelling rules as well as L1 interference. Despite being conducted in an ESL context, the study was almost consistent with the findings indicated by other studies which were carried out in many Arabic EFL context. The findings suggest that spelling instruction should be emphasised while teaching English and should also be integrated with the skills and subskills of reading, writing, pronunciation and vocabulary in order to develop the students’ spelling accuracy.

The major aim of the current paper is to review and discuss three prevailing approaches to the study of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) since the middle of the twentieth century: Contrastive Analysis (CA, henceforth), Error Analysis (EA) and Interlanguage (IL). It begins with a general overview of how the CA approach was formulated and developed and discusses the three versions of CA which were displaced later by other approaches, such as EA and IL. The paper also provides an in-depth theoretical discussion of the notion of EA in terms of its definitions, goals, significance, development, causes and procedures. The discussion about the SLA approaches concludes with a review of IL which claims that language learners produce a separate linguistic system with its own salient features, which differs from their L1 and target language. Additionally, a bulk of previous studies conducted on EA in different contexts are reviewed throughout the paper.

Learners' attitude is considered a key motivational component and an important nonlinguistic factor that influences second-language learning. The primary aim of the current study is to explore Arab secondary school students' attitudes toward English spelling and writing. To collect the data, a 52-item attitude questionnaire was administered to 70 Arab students studying English as a second language (ESL) in the Saudi School in Malaysia. The questionnaire comprises two scales: (a) attitudes toward English spelling and (b) attitudes toward writing in English that includes four writing purposes: (a) School Use, (b) Social Use, (c) Official Use, and (d) Creativity. The findings of the study revealed that the Arab ESL secondary school students have a high positive attitude toward English spelling and writing. The findings also indicated that the students' attitude toward the Social Use of English is the highest, whereas their Creativity in writing is the least mean among the four purposes. In addition, the study revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between the students' attitude toward spelling and writing. The findings suggest that English literature, that is, stories and literary activities, should be integrated in the curriculum to develop the students' creativity in ESL writing. The study also recommends that other studies may investigate Arab students' spelling error analysis as well as address other important aspects of writing such as brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing.