Arabic-speaking EFL Learners Research Articles

Investigating the Influence of Cultural Background Knowledge on Reading Ability among Arabic Speaking EFL Learners in a Saudi College

Investigating the Influence of Cultural Background Knowledge on Reading Ability among Arabic Speaking EFL Learners in a Saudi College

Investigating Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ understanding of French gender markers: a typological primacy model approach to a third language

Investigating Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ understanding of French gender markers: a typological primacy model approach to a third language

English-Arabic Translation of Humour: Challenges and Strategies

This research aims to investigate the challenges that native Arabic-speaking EFL learners face in rendering the equivalent meaning of humorous excerpts selected from Plum Pie (1966), a collection of short stories by English humourist P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975). The researchers examined the translation strategies used by a sample of 16 senior Arabic-speaking BA and MA students specialising in English and translation at the University of Sharjah, to solve the problems that they encountered in the translation process. The findings indicated that the participants encountered lexical, semantic, grammatical and syntactic problems in the process of translation. The findings showed that the participants used 10 main strategies to translate the excerpts, with literal translation being the most frequently employed. The findings also revealed several mistranslations or errors, which have been classified as lexical errors, grammatical errors, mistranslations of cultural references or items, and inappropriate use of certain translation strategies. These results led us to conclude that some translation strategies (e.g. the use of literal translation instead of idiomatic, and vice versa) were unsuitable and reflected a need for improvement of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language, which is essential for enabling Arab EFL learners to translate humorous literary texts.

Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners’ Pronunciation of British English Vowels: A Production-Based Study

The present study investigated the production of British English (BrE) vowels by Yemeni-Arabic learners of English. Specifically, the most problematic BrE vowels for those learners were explored in relation to Lados’ (1957) contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) and Flege’s (1995) Speech Learning Model (SLM). Sixty-seven Yemeni EFL learners at different proficiency levels completed a questionnaire, which mainly explored how difficult the BrE vowels are for them, and a vowel production test, which measured the learners’ production accuracy of the BrE vowels. Overall, the results revealed that Yemeni EFL learners encountered some difficulties when pronouncing BrE vowels, but their production accuracy rates increased as their levels grow. It was found that the same vowels, /e/, /ɒ/, /eə/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/ & /u:/, were found to be the most inaccurately produced sounds by learners at all levels. The subtle differences between vowels might have caused the learners’ production problems. Findings also showed that learners’ L1 vowels that are different from the BrE vowels were easier to produce, and this is congruent with the SLM.

The comprehension of English compound nouns by Arabic-speaking EFL learners

The comprehension of English compound nouns by Arabic-speaking EFL learners

The Impact of Vocabulary Preteaching and Content Previewing on the Listening Comprehension of Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of pre-listening activities on Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ comprehension of spoken texts. Background: This study aims to contribute to the current research and to increase our understanding about the effectiveness of pre-listening activities. Specifically, this study seeks to clarify some of the research in this area that seems to be incongruent. Methodology: The study investigates two widely implemented activities in second language (L2) classrooms: vocabulary preteaching and content previewing. Ninety-three native-Arabic speaking EFL learners, whose proficiently levels were beginner, intermediate, or advanced, were randomly assigned to a control group or one of three experimental groups: the vocabulary-only (VO) group, content-only (CO) group, or vocabulary + content (VC) group. Each of the experimental groups received one of the treatments to determine which pre-listening activity was more effective and whether additional pre-listening activities yield additional comprehension. Listening comprehension of the aural text was measured by a test comprising 13 multiple-choice and true-false questions. Contribution: The present study provided additional explanations regarding the long-standing contradicting results about vocabulary preteaching and content previewing. Findings: The results showed that pre-listening activities had a positive impact on Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ listening comprehension, with the VO group significantly increasing their scores on the posttest compared to those of the control or other groups. Vocabulary preteaching was particularly beneficial for more advanced learners. With regard to which pre-listening activity contributed the most to better listening comprehension, vocabulary preteaching was the most effective. Content previewing did not increase comprehension for the CO group and had no additional benefit for the VC group. Recommendation for Researchers: This paper recommends that researchers explore new pre-listening activities that have never studied. Future research should be extended to include other nations and contextual situations to extend our knowledge about the effect of pre-listening activities. As far as listening comprehension can only be achieved when listeners are attentive and engaged, the listening text should be interesting and the lexical coverage of the listening text should be appropriate for all participants. Future Research: The results are to be interpreted carefully because they are limited by the students’ L2 proficiency, demographic, and cultural backgrounds (i.e., first language (L1) proficiency, age, gender, Middle Eastern culture). Results might be quite different if the study was conducted with different populations who have different life and language learning experiences (Vandergrift & Baker, 2015). Therefore, the results of this study indicate there is much room for improvement and a need for further research.

The impact of incidental learning on the acquisition of the sound /p/ by Arabic-speaking EFL learners

Abstract The effect of incidental learning on acquiring the pronunciation of the phoneme /p/ by Arabic-speaking English as foreign language learners was the focus of this study. This phoneme was chosen because it does not exist in the phonemic inventory of Arabic. Eighth graders studying at Al-Ethra’a Secondary School in Alkarak were tested on the pronunciation of words containing /p/ in context (pre-test). For three weeks, they were taught the primary stress of English words containing the target phoneme in their first or second syllable (treatment/incidental learning). The learning exercises consisted of explaining the stress rules and listening to native speakers uttering the words, followed by the participants’ repetition. The students were then re-tested (post-test) to determine whether incidental learning had affected the participants’ pronunciation of /p/. The results reveal that the treatment (incidental learning of /p/) had a positive impact on the participants’ answers on the post-test.

The Perceptions of Arabic-Speaking Jordanian EFL Learners about Multiculturalism and Multilingualism

This study presents quantitative research on the opinions of Jordanian EFL learners regarding multiculturalism and multilingualism. It evaluates how learning English is linked with the cultural association of these learners. The communicative competence model, which explains multilingualism and multiculturalism as being associated with the different competencies of students in acquiring a language, is applied. It applies a survey methodology to investigate the perceptions of Jordanian EFL students regarding their multilingualism and multiculturalism. A sample of 426 undergraduate students was used in the analysis. The main findings showed that the students prefer collaborative learning strategies. It also showed that the students are more interested in standard English and have a relatively low cultural affiliation with native English-speaking countries such as the United States and Britain. Jordanian students seem to have relatively low levels of multiculturalism, although they consider themselves citizens of the world in seeking to learn English as the language of globalization. Multilingualism for Jordanian EFL students seems to focus mostly on standard English.

Translation Difficulties of Polysemous Words from English into Arabic: A Case Study of Yemeni EFL University Students

This research paper aims to shed light on one of the Arabic-speaking EFL learners' lexical problems, concerning translating words used in context from English into Arabic. It focused on translating polysemous words when they are used both in their direct core and indirect secondary meanings. In order to investigate this problem, a translation test was administered to a sample comprised 28 male and female students studying English at the Faculty of Education- Yafea, University of Aden, Yemen. The test consisted of 10 English sentences used to collect quantitative data from the participants. Each five sentences tested one polysemous word (break and sound,). The meanings of the polysemous words in the first sentence in each five sentences is direct, core meaning; whereas their meanings in the other 4 sentences are indirect secondary meanings. Based on the results of the study, it was found that Arabic-speaking EFL learners were unable to a great extent to translate the words well, especially when those words were used in their indirect secondary meanings. Based on the results, this research suggested that polysemous words should be given much attention in ELT B.educational courses at all stages of English language learning and teaching because of students' drastic incompetence in understanding the different meanings of polysemous words.

Stress Misassignment in the Pronunciation of English by Arabic-speaking Learners: Erratic Practice or Crosslinguistic Influence?

The role of L1 interference in English stress assignment produced by Arabic-speaking EFL learners has received little research attention. This study aims to investigate whether faulty stress assignment by Arab learners is arbitrary or systematic. It also attempts to discover a linkage, if any, between Arabic phonotactic rules of stress placement and stress misplacement in English by Saudi learners. 120 learners from Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University were randomly chosen from 3 different levels of English proficiency (lower-intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced); they were asked to pronounce 72 stimulus words that covered all morpho-syllabic word structures that the learners often mispronounced. The recordings were analysed using WASP spectrogram software and also by two independent raters. Results strongly indicated that crosslinguistic influence may have caused the learners to consistently a) place the stress on a specific syllable in a word even when this word has multiple stress assignments with a difference in meaning, b) stress the second item in a compound noun instead of the first, c) place the stress on the penultimate syllable of most polysyllabic words, d) place the stress on the second syllable of contracted negative auxiliary verbs , and e) misplace stress irrespective of their level of English proficiency..

Teaching English Grammatical Collocations to Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

Teaching English Grammatical Collocations to Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

Investigation of Factors Influencing Speaking Performance of Saudi EFL Learners

Equal focus needs be placed on teaching all four basic skills of language learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. However, it is observed that due attention is not devoted to developing speaking skills in Saudi EFL learners; this task is especially challenging as English is not widely used or spoken in their day-to-day communication. The current study aims to investigate the psychological factors which affect learners’ speaking performance by: (a) examining the strategies learners use for developing speaking skills, (b) identifying obstacles confronted by learners in developing speaking skills, and (c) suggesting ways to facilitate the acquisition of English speaking skills. The research seeks answers to these questions: (1) What are some psychological factors affecting speaking skills of students? (2) Why do learners find speaking in English so difficult? . I distributed a questionnaire among 200 female and male participants majoring in various fields at Majmaah university in Saudi Arabia. I employed SPSS to analyze the accumulated data and displayed the results in descriptive tables. The results reveal that affective factors impacting students’ performance in speaking skills are shyness, peer pressure, anxiety, and fear of making mistakes. Other factors that hinder speaking performance are paucity of necessary vocabulary, lack of exposure to the target language, and scarce opportunities to practice speaking outside the classroom. The study contributes to the existing English language learning (ELL) literature through its focus on the affective factors impacting speaking performance in Arabic-speaking EFL learners.

Phonological and orthographic vocabulary knowledge and processing speed of L2 written text: the case of native Arabic EFL learners.

Reading in a foreign language is one of the key defining aspects of successful L2 acquisition. However, research has repeatedly suggested that Arabic-speaking learners of EFL expend a great deal of their reading time in phonologically decoding words letter-by-letter before they are able to access their meanings. To further our understanding of this unique reading difficulty, this study investigated the relationship between the phonological and orthographic lexicons and L2 reading speed among 82 native Arabic learners of EFL. Two measures tapping aural and written modalities of vocabulary knowledge, and a measure of reading speed were administered to the participants. The results showed that phonological vocabulary knowledge correlated more strongly with L2 reading speed (r = .61) than did orthographic vocabulary knowledge (r = .32). Regression modeling also showed that only phonological vocabulary knowledge was able to explain unique variance in learners' L2 reading speed (R2 = .37). The findings indicate that Arabic-speaking EFL learners do in fact depend greatly on their L2 phonological lexicon when processing English written text. The discussion addresses the importance of developing an orthographic lexicon of suitable size in L2 learners in order to read efficiently in English.

On the comprehension of metonymical expressions by Arabic-speaking EFL learners: A cognitive linguistic approach

AbstractThis study aims to examine the comprehension of L2 metonymies by Arabic-speaking EFL learners and to investigate the extent to which the participants’ L1 conceptual and linguistic knowledge of metonymies can affect the processing of L2 metonymies. A comprehension task was administered to elicit data, and the results showed that the participants encountered various degrees of difficulty comprehending different types of metonymies. Though metonymy has been regarded as a universal cognitive device, numerous factors can collaborate to hinder its comprehension process. The researchers argued that the non-conventionality of conceptual metonymies, the non-compositional nature of metonymy processing, the lack of direct exposure to metonymy as a cognitive referential device in L2, and the differences between L1 and L2 possibly contributed to the participants’ faulty answers on the administered test. The study concluded with a set of pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research studies.

Lexical Aspect in the Development of the English Progressive Among Arab EFL Speakers

Recent research calls into question the predictive power of the Aspect Hypothesis as it has been found that it is advanced learners rather than beginners who show the developmental pattern predicted by the hypothesis. Following the identification of several design issues including lack of rigorous treatment of proficiency level and reliance on controlled elicitation tasks, this cross-sectional study used an Arab learner corpus (BALC) that controls proficiency level and task. This corpus-based study analysed the development of tense-aspect among Arabic-speaking EFL learners at two levels, beginner and advanced, by comparing their performance on 200 essays. Contrary to the recent research on Aspect Hypothesis, it was found that lexical aspect influences the early acquisition of the English progressive as the lower proficiency level in the present study extensively attached the progressive on activity verbs.

Teaching Antonyms to Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

This study investigates the impact of different teaching techniques, e.g. projecting pictures using an overhead projector and the traditional way of teaching, in improving Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ production of antonyms in English. A production test was administered, including 20 pairs of antonyms, to assess the students’ knowledge of English antonyms before the instructional intervention. To this end, 40 grade six students were divided into two groups: treatment and control. After the instructional intervention, a Pictionary Test was implemented, including 10 pairs of antonyms as post-test to determine if projecting pictures via an overhead projector can be an effective technique in increasing students’ production of English antonyms. The results showed that the number of accurate answers provided by the treatment group (who were taught using pictures via overhead projector) was higher than that provided by the control group (who were taught via the traditional method). This suggests that the former teaching technique may have played an important role in their performance on the test. It can be concluded that teaching via overhead projector with pictures seems to be an effective instructional intervention in teaching English antonyms.

The Use of Twitter and Facebook in Teaching Mechanics of Writing to Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

This study aims to compare the effect of Twitter and Facebook in teaching mechanics of writing by 20 Arabic-speaking EFL learners in an attempt to determine which tool is more effective. We adopt the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to measure the participants’ knowledge of English mechanics of writing before and after the treatment, which involved taking part in describing a picture on these two social media networks for two weeks. We divided the 20 participants into two groups: one used Twitter and the other used Facebook to complete the description task. We administered a 100-word essay task as the pre- and post-test to determine whether the use of Twitter helped the participants improve their knowledge of the mechanics of writing more than the use of Facebook or vice versa. The results reveal that the difference between the numbers of errors produced by both groups were not statistically significant even though, the group that used Facebook produced a lower number of errors on the post-test. The subsequent semi-structured focus group discussions provided more insight into the answers of both groups on the post-test. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.

The Acquisition of the English Plural Morphemes by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

This research paper analyzes the extent to which Arabic-speaking EFL learners are aware of the English plural morphemes and whether they are able to recognize them in context. The study also investigates whether the participants’ English proficiency level may play a role in their ability to recognize these morphemes. For the purpose of the study, we designed a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT), which was by sixty students from Al Ain University of Science and Technology, Al Ain, The United Arab Emirates (UAE), to elicit data. The sentences used in the test were adapted and modified from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) in order to suit the students’ English proficiency level. The results revealed that there is a little awareness of the English plural morphemes among Arabic-speaking EFL learners. In addition, the participants’ English proficiency level had a little effect on the participants’ use of English plural morphemes. Finally, the paper concluded with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.

The Effect of Incidental Learning on the Comprehension of English Affixes by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners: Acquisition and Application

This study aims to examine the effect of incidental learning on the comprehension of 30 English affixes by 50 Arabic-speaking EFL learners in an attempt to determine which affixes are more easily comprehended. We adopt the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to measure the participants’ knowledge of English affixes before and after the treatment, which involved taking part in the prediction of the meaning of English affixed words in context for one academic semester. To this end, we divided the 50 participants into two groups: treatment and control. We administered a 30-item multiple choice test as the pre- and post-test to determine whether the treatment helped the participants expand their knowledge of English affixes.

On the Awareness of English Polysemous Words by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

This study measures the extent to which Arabic-speaking EFL learners are aware of polysemy in English. It also investigates whether the English proficiency level of Arabic-speaking EFL learners plays a role in their ability to distinguish between the various meanings of English polysemous words, and whether they face problems when they encounter these words in unusual contexts (i.e. the contexts that employ the extended meanings of the target polysemous words). To these ends, a translation test in which the participants were asked to give full Arabic translation for fifteen English sentences was designed. The words open, run, and make were the target polysemous words in this study. The Results show that Arabic-speaking EFL learners have little awareness of polysemy in English, and their English proficiency level does play a role in their ability to distinguish between the different meanings of English polysemous words. It was also found that Arabic-speaking EFL learners have no problems guessing the primary meaning of the English polysemous words. However, they face difficulty guessing the extended meanings of polysemous words in unusual contexts. Moreover, some Arabic-speaking EFL learners can guess the extended meanings of the polysemous words they encounter in familiar contexts, or when they understand some cues provided to disambiguate these words. This study concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further studies.