A Linguistic Analysis on Errors Committed by Jordanian EFL Undergraduate Students: A Case of News Headlines in Jordanian Newspapers

Abstract

This study investigated some linguistic errors committed by Jordanian EFL undergraduate students when translating news headlines in Jordanian newspapers from Arabic to English and vice versa. The data of the study was collected through a test composed of (30) English news headlines and (30) Arabic ones covering various areas of news occurring in a large corpus of Jordanian newspapers, i.e., two leading and prominent newspapers were selected. The test was administrated to a randomly selected sample consisting of (40 female, 20 male) third and fourth year undergraduate students in the Department of English Language and Literature in the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Arts at UNRWA University in Amman, Jordan. Results from the first analysis of the translated Arabic news headlines indicated that the EFL students had grammatical and lexical errors respectively. The second analysis of the translated Arabic news headlines showed that the EFL students had inadequate knowledge of the English headlines rules. The analysis of the translated English headlines revealed that the EFL students' main difficulties were grammatical followed by discoursal and lexical types. In light of these results, the researcher proposes a number of pedagogical recommendations related to translating news headlines and future research.

Using Awareness Raising in Syntactic and Semantic Errors to Foster Translation Performance among Majmaah University EFL Students

“…El-banna and Naeem (2016) employed a translation common error remedial program Arab World English Journal www.awej.org ISSN: 2229-9327 207 to help students avoid syntactic, semantic and pragmatic errors in translation from English into Arabic. Other previous studies also have emphasized the importance of error analysis in developing students' translation performance such as Abbasi and Karimni, (2011), Al Karazoun (2016), Utomo (2016) and Wongranu (2017). Thus, when the students become aware of the reasons and sources of their errors and how to correct them, their metacognition awareness is developed (O'Brien, 2015).…”

“…Ardeshiri and Zarafshan (2014) found that understanding the pragmatic aspects was the most frequent problem in translating from English into Persian. Al Karazoun (2016) concludes that linguistic errors of EFL students in translation are grammatical, discourse and lexical ones. Utomo (2016) classifies students' grammatical translation errors as those of omission, addition, selection, and ordering.…”

“…To achieve this competency and proficiency in translation, researchers have studied and analyzed the causes of errors made by second or foreign learners due to the complexity or difficulties in the source or the target language. For example, (Studies of Adrienn, 2012;Al Karazoun, 2016;Na, 2005;Zaho, 2013). It is suggested to raise students' awareness of their errors to avoid them.…”

Analysis of English writing errors committed by students learning English as a Foreign Language at Al-Istiqlal University in Palestine

“…Some studies focused on the spelling ( Al-Jarf, 2005;Al-Jabri, 2006;Al-Taani, 2006;Al-zuoud and Kabilan, 2013;Fender, 2008 ) others emphasized articles errors (Alhaysony, 2012;Bukhari and Hussain,2011;Lakkis and AbdelMalak, 2000;Mizuno,1999). Other studies concluded that the most frequent errors were grammars, lexical, spelling, and semantics, tense, preposition/conjunctions, language use and subject verb agreement (Alhaisoni, Al-Zuoud & Gaudel, 2015;Al-karazoun, 2016;Barzanji, 2016;Darwish, 2016;Flynn & Featherstone, 2017;Hamdi, 2016;Herdiawan, 2015;Joan, 2016;Mohsen & Qassem, 2016;Mulya and Syamsul, 2017;Murad, 2015;Ngangbam, 2016;Owu-Ewie, & Lomotey, 2016;Sychandone, 2016;Thyab,2016).…”

İngi̇li̇z Di̇li̇ Eği̇ti̇mi̇ Öğretmen Adaylarinin İngi̇li̇zce İyeli̇k Eki̇ni̇n Yazim Kurallari Ve Telaffuzu İle İlgi̇li̇ Farkindaliği Araştirmasi

“…In a different study, Al-Shujairi and Tan (2017) similarly indicated that Iraqi EFL learners lacked sufficient knowledge of possessive case in English as the learners tended to omit the possessive case in their writings where they had to use it. An analysis on the linguistic forms which Jordanian EFL learners used while translating some news headlines to English revealed that even though the learners did know the rules of possessiveness, they still misused the possessive mark omitting (where necessary) or overusing it (Al Karazoun, 2016). Also, whether the possessive case was problematic as a linguistic form to learn for Turkish ELF learners or not was investigated and it was found that the possessive case was found to be one of the linguistic forms which the Turkish elementary learners make errors in writing (Atmaca, 2016).…”