Cognitive Awareness of the EFL Learner of Contrastive Linguistics Between English and Arabic: A Case Study

Abstract

Corpus-based contrastive linguistics has rarely been thoroughly explored with regards to cognitive awareness of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Arabic first language (L1) speaking learners. The current study, based on an intervention, quasi-experimental quantitative research design, aims at presenting a pedagogical implementation of learners’ awareness driven instructions on contrastive linguistics between English and Arabic languages interchangeably. A purposefully selected sample of 69 beginner level (A1 CEFR) Saudi EFL learners were placed into an experimental group (n = 35) and a control group (n = 34). Learners in the experimental group were exposed to four grammatical contrastive linguistics criteria (between English and Arabic) over a 14-weeks semester duration, and the control group underwent a normal taught course with no intervention over the same teaching duration. Both groups were assessed via purposefully designed, 20-items grammar test before and after the 14-weeks duration. The gathered data was analysed with one sample and independent samples t-tests. The analysis revealed the outperformance of the experimental group compared to the control group in all four grammatical contrastive linguistics criteria. The study concludes with pedagogical implications on the principle of utilising contrastive linguistics as a pedagogical tool in an EFL context.