English Spelling Errors Made by Arabic-Speaking Students

Al-Busaidi, Saleh; Al-Saqqaf, Abdullah Hassan

doi:10.5539/elt.v8n7p181

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Fender's (2008), on a study of Arabic-speaking learners of English groups and other learners groups from Korea, China, and Japan, found that Arab Learners of English (ALEs) made more errors compared to the other group. In quite similar contexts of Arabic-speaking learners as SL, recent studies attempted to account for spelling errors where they found the mother tongue, Arabic influence, and the different linguistic systems of Arabic and ESL (Al-Busaidi & Al-Saqqaf, 2015;Alsaawi, 2015;Sabbah, 2015;Al-Oudat, 2017;Albesher, 2018;Al-Otaibi, 2018;Gibreel & Babu, 2018;Othman, 2018;Alenazi, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Spelling Errors with Relation to the Phonological Syllable Structure in the Writings of Saudi ESL Learners

Qasem¹

2020

IJEL

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Making spelling errors is one of the common issues faced by learners in any language as Second Language (SL) at the early stage of learning. This study investigated the spelling errors in the writings of undergraduate B.A. English students, University of Bisha, Al-Namas, Saudi Arabia. The study explored the spelling errors’ phenomenon with relation to the phonological syllable structure of words where the spelling errors were classified into three categories of words, (1) mono-syllabic, (2) di-syllabic, and (3) tri-syllabic and complex syllabic words. The researcher analyzed the spelling errors with relation to the sounds/phonemes positions in each syllable, (a) onset position, (b) nucleus position, and (c) coda position spelling errors. The results showed that Arabic-speaking learners made more spelling errors in tri-syllabic and complex syllabic words compared to the spelling errors in mono-syllabic words. The results explored that learners made more spelling errors in the nucleus position with 54.85% and fewer errors in the coda position 36.40%. Interestingly learners made fewer errors than the other groups with 8.75%. This suggested that English vowels, being in the nucleus position, are a more problematic position for Arab learners than consonants. The omission and the substitution spelling errors were more frequent and high compared to other categories. The study explored that the spelling errors are attributed to the different orthographical and morpho-phonological systems of L1 and L2 including the letter-to-sound correspondence and sound-to-letter correspondence, homophones, silent letters. The study concluded with some solutions to help learners avoid the spelling errors such as the importance of the phonological awareness of ESL.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Spelling Errors with Relation to the Phonological Syllable Structure in the Writings of Saudi ESL Learners

Qasem¹

2020

IJEL

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“…Several studies have discussed this problem and traced the causes of it (see e.g., Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006;Al-bereiki, 2016;Al-Busaidi & Al-Saqqaf, 2015;Al-sobhi, Rashid, Abdullah, & Darmi, 2017;Sawalmeh, 2013;Trimasse, 2016). Those authors have considered English spelling a daunting and a difficult skill, particularly to learners whose first language is not English, such as Arab students of English.…”

Section: Why English Spelling Is Difficult For Arab Learners?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Different Pedagogical Techniques to Teach Spelling at a Saudi High School: A Case Study

Althobaiti¹,

Elyas²

2019

SELT

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<p><em>This study investigates whether teaching spelling to high school students using different techniques, i.e. copy, cover, compare and flip folder, would improve students’ spelling. Additionally, it explores students’ opinions and perceptions towards these techniques. The research conducted in Granada high school in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Thirty-six male students participated in this study whose levels according to the course book were assumed to be B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In this study, a mixed research method was used where data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The first group was taught using copy cover and compare method (CCC), which emphasizes repeated practice when errors occur in students spelling, whereas the second group was trained using the flip folder technique which is a combination of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic techniques that were believed to enhance memorization. A post-test was utilized immediately after the intervention and the results showed that the CCC group outperformed the Flip Folder group. </em></p>

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“…The learners tend to add, omit, substitute or insert different letters to the words. The spelling errors are attributed to the contrastive orthographic systems of Arabic and English as seen in many studies with almost similar context (Al-Jarf, 2008;Bowen, 2011;Alhaisoni, Al-Zuoud & Gaudel, 2015;Al-Busaidi & Al-Saqqaf, 2015;Alenazi, 2018). Punctuation and capitalization errors were also frequent in the data and such type of errors is common in ESL learners' writings, as in Siddiqui's (2015) study conducted in similar context.…”

Section: Articlesmentioning

confidence: 52%

Crosslinguistic Influence of the First Language: Interlingual errors in the writing of ESL Saudi learners

Qasem¹

2020

MACL

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Writing as a productive skill is challenging for the learners as it requires rich linguistic and cognitive abilities to match words with ideas well. A learner of any language as Second Language (SL), for example English, Arabic, Chinese, or German, enters an early, natural, and inevitable stage of making various errors in writing compositions. The errors could be due to dissimilar linguistic systems of the two languages (L1 and L2) or the lack of understanding the SL linguistic rules. This study focuses on investigating the frequent and common inter-lingual errors (the negative influence) committed by Arabic-speaking learners of English as Second Language (ESL). The study is based on Error Analysis (EA) of the essays of a group of English major undergraduate students from the University of Bisha, Al-Namas, Saudi Arabia. Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) is included to predict most of the errors in the collected samples. The findings of the study show that common errors in the data are interlingual (54.03%). The errors within the Grammatical Category include the misuse of tenses, dropping the subjects, dropping verb to be-copular and word order misplacement. The majority of errors in the study are due to the interference of L1 linguistic system including the different orthographic, phonological, morpho-syntactic components. For instance, the participants’ dropping subjects in English can be attributed to the fact that Arabic as L1 and as Null Subject Language (NSL), unlike English, allows subject drop. The results also find that within the Lexical Category, preposition and article errors are the most frequent errors and that spelling errors are the most dominant errors within the Mechanics Category. The study gives some pedagogical implications and suggestions to avoid and minimize the interlingual errors of such type. For instance, teachers need to focus more on enlightening their students about the contrastive language systems from the early stage of learning ESL.

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English Spelling Errors Made by Arabic-Speaking Students

Cited by 19 publications

References 12 publications

Exploring Spelling Errors with Relation to the Phonological Syllable Structure in the Writings of Saudi ESL Learners

Exploring Spelling Errors with Relation to the Phonological Syllable Structure in the Writings of Saudi ESL Learners

Comparing Different Pedagogical Techniques to Teach Spelling at a Saudi High School: A Case Study

Crosslinguistic Influence of the First Language: Interlingual errors in the writing of ESL Saudi learners

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