Arabs often pronounce many English words wrongly which leads to spelling and writing errors. This paper deals with English pronunciation errors made by two groups of native Saudi Arab speakers. The students in the first group are of English major while the students in the second group are of Arabic major. Generally, Arabic speakers use direct transfer and interference from Arabic in addition to stress shifts in their pronunciation that are not recognized stress patterns in English. Also, there are some sounds in English that have no equivalence in Arabic, which leads to vowel and consonant errors. This study identifies the pronunciation errors made by Saudi students in pronouncing words of problematic nature to Arabs in general. The students in both groups made vowel insertion and confusion, orthography, stress, intonation, errors; but the more trained students in group 1 made less errors than the students in group 2.

 Abstract-This paper investigates the effects of online exams on students' achievements and the students' perceptions of online and paper exams after taking an experimental online and paper based exams. Carefully designed exams that included various types of questions were attempted by male students in the faculty of computers and information technology and female students in the faculty of Education and Arts. The Moodle Quiz tool was used to design and conduct the online exams. The results of the online exams were compared with similar designed paper based exams. The students' performances in exams were measured in each question type (MCQ, TF, short, essay, numerical, and descriptive). Surprisingly, the mean and standard deviation statistical results were found to be similar between both paper based and online exams in the MCQ, TF, and numerical type of questions; while the essay questions results indicated that the students preferred to answer on paper rather than type on the computer screen. In the followed survey about their experiences with both exams, the students indicated to prefer certain aspects of online exams such as automatic results and feedback.

This research sheds some light on the difficulties faced by Saudi students when writing in the English language by examining specific writing errors committed by the students. Fifty female students in their fourth year of study at the University of Tabuk in the department of languages and translation who were enrolled in the subject of error analysis (a kind of linguistic analysis that emphasizes the errors learners make in a target language) were given a quiz to write approximately one page about each one of three topics: effects of social media on Saudi social life, Saudi marriage customs, and Saudi economy. The quiz was graded and the writing errors were classified into four main categories: grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical types following Hubbard et al. (1996) classifications of errors. Then, the number of errors in each category was counted and the corresponding frequency was calculated. The findings of this study show that most frequent types of errors made by the students were in the categories of grammar (tenses, singular/plural, articles), syntax (subject-verb agreement), and substance (spelling).

The main aim of this study is to highlight the writing errors made by Saudi students majoring in English. The study selected a sample of two groups of female Saudi students residing in two Saudi regions: Tabuk and Hafr Al Batin. The students were requested to write approximately three to four paragraphs about one of three topics related to Saudi Arabia: social media and its effects on Saudi social life, marriage customs in Saudi Arabia, or the economy of Saudi Arabia. In analyzing the collected writing data, the students’ writing errors were identified and classified into four categories: grammar type, syntax type, mechanics type, and lexical type errors. Then, the frequency and error percentages of each subcategory were calculated for both groups. The findings show that both groups produced most errors in the subcategory of spelling followed by tenses subcategory even though the students from the University of Hafr Al Batin made overall higher percentages of errors than the errors’ percentages made by the students from the University of Tabuk. Further investigation reveals that all students in both regions hardly practice English writing and that Arabic interference contributes to the students’ English writing errors. The findings also imply that the curricula specialists at the Saudi ministry of education might consider including more educational material to improve the English writing skills of Saudi university students.

The main objective of this paper is to identify the translational errors made by Arab natives. The study is an Arabic to English translational skills' comparison between two Saudi groups in two separate areas of Saudi Arabia: Tabuk and Hafr Al Batin. The study investigated how Arabic cultural, religious, and other factors influenced the production of such errors by the two groups. Each group consisted of selected female students majoring in the English language and attending two regional universities. The students were all of the Saudi nationality and they had obtained their school education within their region before joining a public university. A newly designed quiz was attempted by the students in each group to translate words and phrases categorized into four parts: syntax, spelling, word choice, and singular/plural. It was concluded that lack of English knowledge, unfamiliarity with some English terms, cultural and religious factors, and literal translation are the leading causes of wrong translations. Also, the Tabuk students slightly performed better than Hafr Al Batin students; and this is maybe due to better literacy infrastructure in the city of Tabuk, vibrant cultural diversity in the city with more expatriates working and residing in the region and having more private schools.