The proposed study aimed to investigate the frequency effects of a relatively rarely used grammar structure, namely had better, and its impact on the process of second language learning. 43 university students participated in the study, who were undergraduate engineering students at a public university in Saudi Arabia. Their English proficiency level ranged between lower-intermediate and upper intermediate. The second language acquisition (SLA) literature indicates that the more frequently a language structure is encountered by a learner, the more likely the successful acquisition of that language structure is, whether this is for the learner's first (L1) or second (L2) language (Ellis, 2002;Gries, 2008). Two modal auxiliary verbs, had better and should, were particularly selected for this study. They were selected because one of them (had better) is rather rarely used (both in spoken and written discourse), whereas the other modal auxiliary (should) is used very frequently. The findings obtained from this study were analyzed in terms of form and meaning relationship. While the findings indicated that only one-third of the participants correctly identified that [‗d] in the [‗d better] pattern corresponded to had, more than half of the students (51%) thought that ['d] corresponded to would. The results for meaning, on the other hand, displayed a very different pattern from the findings for form. 65 percent of the participants correctly identified that -you'd better see a dentist‖ could alternatively be expressed by saying -your teeth are not in a good state. I advise you to see the dentist‖. These findings suggest that learners acquire the meaning of a grammatical pattern significantly more easily than the actual grammatical pattern itself, which means that they had far more trouble with form than meaning. The implication of these findings is multifold, which this article will address. Contribution/ Originality:This study contributes to the existing scholarship in that it investigates a relatively rarely used auxiliary verb (had better) and its impact on second language acquisition. More specifically, it attempts to explore the frequency of -had better‖ especially in terms of form-meaning relationship. INTRODUCTIONThis article aims to investigate the frequency effects of a relatively rarely used grammar structure, namely had better, and its impact on the process of second language learning. The modal auxiliary verb had better occurs only 507 times in the British National Corpus, whereas should, another modal auxiliary verb, which has almost the same meaning as had better, occurs 107, 822 times. In other words, the word should occurs as many as 212 times more than had better. The relatively low frequency of had better compared to should has important pedagogical

<p><em>The drive that motivated this study was an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher’s observation of a fossilized grammar pattern produced by students over an extended period of time.  The fossilized pattern “I am go” frequently emerges in the EFL context of Saudi Arabia, for which a number of factors could be accountable,</em><em> including overgeneralization of a grammar pattern, inadequate instruction, lack of negative and corrective feedback, being frequently exposed to peers’ production of the fossilized pattern, and so forth.  155 undergraduate students from a Saudi university responded to a multiple-choice question with three options.  The findings revealed that only one third of the participants identified the correct singular first person subject pronoun in English “I”, which corresponded to (</em>انا<em>) in Arabic.  Based on the results, pedagogical and methodological recommendations are made as to how the possibility of the emergence of the incorrect pattern</em><em> in question can be reduced or minimized.</em></p><p> </p>

With the rise of bilingual and multilingual approaches to teaching a second/foreign language, an overwhelming majority of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have emphasized the important role of the use of mother tongue (L1) in a second language (L2) class and have argued that the use of L2 positively contributes to the cognitive development of students. However, what aspect of L1 should be used in an L2 class have not been specified explicitly.  This study set out to investigate the extent to  which teachers believe in the efficacy of the use of L1 metalanguage and the extent to which they use it in their classes in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context of Qatar.  The second aim was to assess students’ beliefs regarding the extent to which the use of L1 metalanguage in an L2 class facilitated their learning process.  Most importantly, the study aimed to investigate whether there was a discrepancy between students’ expectations and teachers’ agendas regarding the use of L1 metalanguage in L2 classrooms.  The hypothesis that underpinned this study was that the use of L1 metalanguage to explain structural concepts in L2 contributed to crosslinguistic and metalinguistic awareness.  The study adopted a qualitative approach; two questionnaires were developed, one for students and one for teachers.  The questionnaire consisted of 5-point Likert scale statements and questions.  Twenty-six undergraduate students and eight teachers participated in the study.  The students’ proficiency level in English was elementary.  The teachers were recruited on the basis of their native Arabic language proficiency.  The findings suggested that both teachers and students viewed the use of Arabic in their English classes positively, and that no substantial discrepancy was observed between the students and the teachers over the issue of the use of Arabic in class.  A minor discrepancy was that whereas the teachers were inclined  to use Arabic slightly more for the teaching of grammar than the teaching of vocabulary, the students believed that the use of Arabic for learning vocabulary was more beneficial to their learning than it was for learning grammar.