Abstract
This study aims to find out the most common spelling errors committed by the Saudi EFL learners, their plausible reasons and the successful remedial strategies. The study may help the EFL teachers in their task of enabling their learners to complete their writing essays and assignments without any spelling mistakes and errors. This is a purely qualitative study. Thirty male EFL teachers and fourteen female EFL teachers have participated in this research study by sharing their teaching observations and experiences and helping in categorization of learners’ errors and in finding reasons and remedies for the learners’ spelling errors. Moreover, in the light of the feedback provided by the teacher participants, the researcher analyzed 50 writing drafts of Level-4 male Saudi EFL learners and 50 Level-4 female Saudi EFL learners at Preparatory Year Programme at Qassim University. The study concludes that the Saudi EFL learners usually use interlingual and intralingual transfer strategies due to problems in phonemic differences, loan words; phonemic, orthographic, homophonous, morphological and compounding confusions; ignorance or overgeneralization of spelling rules, and the impact of social media. The study recommends a number of teaching techniques for their rectification.
Highlights
BackgroundSpelling is important for all English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Saudi Arabia like all EFL learners around the world
The researcher collected the common spelling errors committed by Saudi EFL students in PYP in Qassim University by using two important tools: a) 100 students’ (50 male and 50 female) writing samples were marked by the researcher
The study shows novelty and originality because it found that the Saudi EFL learners have many problems in their spellings due to the interlingual and intralingual transfers
Summary
Spelling is important for all EFL learners in Saudi Arabia like all EFL learners around the world. It is as important and critical as any other skill such as speaking, listening, writing and reading. El-Helou (2001) has mentioned that many jobs are missed and employees are often let go because of spelling deficiencies. This is absolutely true if the job requires the employee to be skillful and knowledgeable in English in jobs such as teaching English as a second or foreign language, or translation from Arabic into English or vice versa. Even though the communicative approach does not support teaching spelling, EFL learners need to demonstrate correct spelling in many aspects of the language such as written activities, grammar drills, dictation, writing stories and many other classroom activities (El-Helou, 2001)
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