Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No.

(60) 2012

The Effect of EFL Learners' Mother

Tongue on their Writings in English :
An Error Analysis Study

Assis. Lecturer
Nada Salih A. Ridha
University of Basrah
College of Education

Abstract
Writing is a complex process which demands cognitive
analysis and linguistic synthesis .It is even more complicated to
write in a foreign language , and it takes considerable time and
effort to become a skillful writer. Many studies indicate that for
EFL students, there tends to be interference from their first
language in the process of writing in English. The present study
seeks to explore EFL learners' major writing difficulties by
analyzing the nature and distribution of their writing errors and
it also investigates whether there is a relationship between
students' L1 and their writing in English .To fulfill the aims of
the study , the researcher examined English writing samples of
80 EFL college students and then categorized the errors
according to the following taxonomy: grammatical, lexical/
semantic, mechanics, and word order types of errors.
Understanding linguistic differences between students' L1 and
English may help the learners to reduce interference from their
first language.

) 22 (
‫‪Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah‬‬ ‫‪No. (60) 2012‬‬

‫تأثير اللغة األم لمتعلمي اللغة االنجليزية‬

‫كلغة أجنبية على كتاباتهن باللغة‬
‫االنجليزية‪:‬‬
‫دراسة أخطاء تحليلية‬
‫الملخص‬
‫انكراتح عًهٍح يعقدج ‪ ،‬ذحراج إنى ذحهٍم يعسفً وذىنٍف نغىي‪ .‬وهرِ انعًهٍح ذكىٌ‬
‫أكثس ذعقٍدا عُد انكراتح تهغح أجُثٍح‪ ،‬كًا أَها ذسرغسق وقرا وجهدا كثٍسا نٍصثح انكاذة‬
‫ياهسا‪ .‬ذشٍس انعدٌد يٍ اندزاساخ إنى أٌ طالب انهغح اإلَجهٍصٌح كهغح أجُثٍح‪ًٌٍ ،‬هىٌ‬
‫إنى أٌ ٌكىٌ هُاك ذداخم يٍ نغرهى األو عُد انكراتح تانهغح اإلَجهٍصٌح‪ .‬وذسعى هرِ‬
‫اندزاسح إنى انكشف عٍ انصعىتاخ انكثٍسج انرً ذعرسض يرعهًً انهغح اإلَجهٍصٌح يٍ‬
‫خالل ذحهٍم طثٍعح وذىشٌع أخطائهى انكراتٍح‪.‬كًا إٌ هرِ اندزاسح ذسعى نهكشف عًا‬
‫يا إذا كاَد هُاك عالقح تٍٍ نغح انطالب األصهٍح و كراتاذهى تانهغح اإلَجهٍصٌح‪.‬‬
‫ونرحقٍق أهداف اندزاسح‪ ،‬دزسد انثاحثح عٍُاخ كراتٍح ل‪ 08‬طانة يٍ طالب كهٍح‬
‫انرستٍح‪ -‬قسى انهغح اإلَجهٍصٌح وقسًد األخطاء وفقا نهرصٍُف انرانً‪ :‬أخطاء َحىٌح‪ ،‬يعجًٍح‬
‫‪ /‬دالنٍح‪ ،‬يٍكاٍَكٍح ‪ ،‬وأَىاع ذسذٍة انكهًاخ‪ .‬أٌ فهى االخرالفاخ انهغىٌح تٍٍ انهغح‬
‫األصهٍح انطهثح وانهغح االَجهٍصٌح قد ذساعد انًرعهًٍٍ نهحد يٍ ذدخم نغرهى األونى(األو)‪.‬‬

‫‪1.Introduction‬‬
‫‪It is commonly believed that the first language(L1)* has an‬‬
‫‪effect on the second language (L2)* or foreign language. An‬‬
‫‪English native speaker ,for example, can tell whether someone‬‬
‫____________________‬
‫‪*L1 refers to Arabic language‬‬ ‫‪as a mother tongue language‬‬
‫‪*L2 refers to English as a‬‬ ‫‪.‬‬ ‫‪second or foreign language in‬‬
‫‪this study‬‬
‫( ‪) 23‬‬
Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

is French , or Arab after few words of English . It probably

comes as no surprise to anyone that different cultures think in
different ways. Western ways of thinking and writing are very
different from Eastern or Middle Eastern ways of thinking.
EF teachers are the ones who suffer from such a problem.
That the most important part of their task is to teach their
students how to think and to use a foreign language as its native
users do. The influence of the native language is clearly shown in
the written form which is the basic (main ) technique , a foreign
language teacher uses in testing the proficiency of his students.
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in studies
related to writing because such skill is very important in
academic studies and outside academic institutions . It is clear
that "writing structures our relations with others and organizes
our perception of the world "(Bazerman and Paradis,1991:3;in
Khuwaaileh and Al-Shoumal, 2000:174).As early as 1966,
Kaplan stated that speakers of Arabic transfer rhetorical patterns
from their mother tongue into their English writing .This
interrelatedness is not specific to Arab students, Wang (199) also
investigated the use of references in(L1)Chinese and their effect
on cohesion in (L2)English.Studies which had been done in this
field , showed that EFL learners commit errors because they
think in their native language and that they translate their
thoughts into L2 or foreign language.

2.The Definition of Errors

Errors are studied in order to find out something about the
learning process and about the strategies employed by human
beings learning another language (Lungu, 2003:323).The term
"error" was defined differently by many experts . These
definitions contain the same meaning while the differences lie
only the ways they formulate. Two important definitions are put
in this article. They are adequate to reveal the errors in written
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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

texts. Norrish (1987:7) defines errors as "a systematic deviation

, when learner has not learnt something and consistently gets
its wrong" . A second definition is put by Cunningworth(1987
:87). He says that" errors are systematic deviations from the
norms of the language being learned". Thus it is clear from
these two definitions that the key word is "systematic deviation"
which can be interpreted as the deviation which happens
repeatedly. In the present study , the term " error" is going to be used
to refer to a systematic deviation from a selected norm or norms.
Before studying errors , it is necessary to make a distinction
between the two terms "errors" and "mistakes". These two terms
are strongly associated with Corder in various papers (e. g 1967),
the distinction is drawn between errors and mistakes. An error is
" a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native
speaker reflects the competence of the learner", while mistake
refers to " a performance error that is either random guess or
a slip in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly".
James (1998:83)also tried to differentiate between them. He
defined the former as " cannot be self corrected " whereas the
latter as " can be self corrected if the deviation is pointed out to
the speaker". Errors are "systematic ", i.e they occur repeatedly
and not recognized by the learner.
Another distinction between "error" and "mistake" has been
put in Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics(1992) and by Richards, and Schmidt(2002), it is
mentioned that " a learner makes mistakes when writing or
speaking because of lack of attention, fatigue , carelessness,
or some other aspects of performance.Thus ,mistakes can be
self corrected when attention is called" . Whereas , an error is
defined as "the use of linguistic item in a way that a fluent or
native speaker of the language regards it as showing faulty or
incomplete learning". In other words , it occurs because the

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

learner does not know what is correct , and thus it cannot be self
corrected. Thus, in this study the focus will be on learners' errors
not mistakes.

3.What is Error Analysis (E.A)?

Researchers began to suggest that learners' errors are , in
fact, very important providing insight into how far a learner has
progressed in acquiring a language , and showing how much
more the learner needs to learn (Ringbom, 1987:69). Simply, "it
is the examination of those errors committed by students in both
the spoken and written medium"(Ali,1996:1).
Error analysis spread in 60's and 70's of the previous century.
It was also the era when foundations of communicative
methodology were laid . It is a type of linguistic analysis that
focuses on the errors learners make. This term is strongly
associated with Corder(1967). He is regarded as the "father" of
this field (E.A). He dealt with errors in a totally different point of
view that they were dealt with before. Corder showed that errors
were regarded as "flaws" that should be eradicated , but he
considered them as very important 'devices' that the learners use
to learn ; they are ' indispensable' (Abi Samra ,2003). Then after
that , researchers started to deal with errors as a key containing
valuable information to be used in the process of acquiring a
language.
Another concept of error analysis is given by Brown
(1980:160 in Hasyim, 2002:43). He defined error analysis as
"the process to observe , analyze , and classify the deviations of
the rules of the second languages and then to reveal the
systems operated by learner".

4.The Classification of Errors

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

Errors have been classified and identified in different ways

.Corder(1971) in his model, classifies in terms of the differences
between the learners ' utterance and the reconstructed version.
This model is presented below( in Brown, 2000:220 and
Hasyim,2002:43)

Figure 1 : Corder's Model (1971)

(Adapted from Brown,2000:221 and Hasyim, 2002:43)

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

Brown (2000:220) in his analysis of Corder' model , states

that"any sentence uttered by the learner and subsequently
transcribed can be analyzed for idiosyncrasies. . A major
distinction is made at the outset between overt and covert errors.
Overtly erroneous utterances are unquestionably ungrammatical
at the sentence level. Covertly erroneous utterances are
grammatically well-formed at the sentence level but are not
interpretable within the context of communication". Then ,
Corder (1973:277) classified errors into four main categories
:omission of some required element, addition of some
unnecessary or incorrect element, selection of incorrect
element, and misordering of elements. Within each category,
levels of language can be considered: phonology, morphology,
lexicon, grammar and discourse.
Burt and Kiparsky (1974:73 in Lengo, 1995:24) distinguish
between global and local errors .A global is one which involves
" the overall structure of a sentence" and a local error is one
which effects "a particular constituent". Erdogan (2005:264)
clarifies that " global errors hinder communication". They
prevent the message from being comprehended , as in the
example below:
* I like bus but my mother said so not that we must be late
for school.
On the other hand , local errors do not prevent the message
from being understood because there is usually some minor
violation of one segment of a sentence that allows the hearer to
guess the intended meaning as follows:
* If I heard from her, l would let you know.
Errors may also be viewed as two related dimensions:
domain and extent. This suggestion is put by Lennon (1991),
and they are defined as the following: "domain is the rank of
linguistic unit from phoneme to discourse that must be taken as

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

context in order for the error to be understood", and "extent is

the rank of linguistic unit that would have to be deleted ,
replaced , supplied or recordered in order to repair the
sentence"(in Brown , 2000:224). This classification is similar to
that one which is put by Corder(1973) and had been mentioned
above.

5. Sources of Errors
To analyze students' errors , it is necessary to determine
the sources of errors .Two main sources are mentioned by Brown
(2000:224). They are : interlingual and intralingual.

5.a. Interlingual (Interference ) Errors

Errors found to be traceable to first language interference
are termed "interlingual" or" transfer errors". This kind of errors
is the main concern of this study. Those errors are attributable to
negative interlingual transfer. The term "interlingual " was firstly
introduced by Selinker (1972). He used this term to refer to the
systematic knowledge of an L2 which is independent of both the
learner's L1 and the target language(Abi Samra, 2003:5).While
the term "transfer" , which is derived from the Latin word
"transferre", means "to bear' , "to carry" or "to print" a copy from
one surface to another(Webster 's third new world international
dictionary , 1986). It is also defined(ibid) as " a generalization of
learned responses from one type of situation to another ".
According to Kavaliauskiene (2009:4), transfer of errors
may occur because the learners lack the necessary information in
the second language or the attentional capacity to activate the
appropriate second language routine. Transfer is of two kinds:
positive and negative . The transfer may prove to be justified
because the structure of the two languages is similar – this case
is called 'positive transfer' or 'facilitation', or it may prove
unjustified because the structure of the two languages are
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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

different – that case is called ' negative transfer' or

'interference'(Wilkins, 1972:199). The primary focus of this
study is to analyze the students' errors that are attributed to first
language interference . Interlingual errors may occur at
different levels such as transfer of phonology , morphologi-cal ,
grammatical and lexical –semantic elements of the native
language into the target language.

5.b. Intralingual (Developmental ) Errors

Intralingual errors are the errors which result from faulty or
partial learning of the target language rather than language
transfer (Keshavarz, 2003:62;Fang and Xue-mei , 2007:11)
.Erdogan (2005:266) adds " intralingual errors occur as a result
of learners ' attempt to build up concepts and hypotheses about
the target language from their limited experience with it". These
errors are common in the speech of second language learners and
they are often analyzed to see what sorts of strategies are being
used by the learners. Intralingual errors include:
overgeneralization , simplification, communication- based and
induced errors .

6. Methodology
6.1 Research Objective
The objective of the current study is to examine the errors
Iraqi EFL college students make while writing and to analyze
the sources of these errors . The types of errors will be presented
in the following divisions: grammatical errors, mechanical
errors, semantic/ lexical errors and word order errors. The study ,
more specifically , attempts to answer the following questions :-
1- Is negative transfer a cause of errors in the writings of
EFL students?

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2- What types of errors common in the writings of EFL

students, in other words which of these errors are due to
the influence of the students' first language?

6.2 Limitation of the Study

The data that was used for this research is derived from
the written production of only 80 third year EFL students at
college of Education , University of Basrah . The data that was
collected came from one piece of writing that was produced in a
monthly exam .

6.3 The participants

The participants were eighty third- stage Iraqi students
from the Department of English, College of Education at the
University of Basrah for the academic year 2007-2008. The
subjects were similar in age, rating from 19-21 years old, but
factors such as age or sex were not controlled in this study.
The participants were requested to write on one of the three
following different topics [women rights ( an argumentative
essay), an orphan story(a narrative essay), the qualities of a good
neighbor(a descriptive essay)]. The essays were ranged from one
and a half to two single spaced pages in length. The students did
not know that their writings are going to be under investigation.
Eighty essays were collected and analyzed to check various
interlingual errors and numbers and ratios were counted.

6.4 Results and Discussion

The interligual errors in this study are classified as follows:-
The grammatical errors( analyzed at both word and sentence
levels in relative to tense, singular /plural markers, prepositions,
articles and pronouns), the mechanical errors, semantic/ lexical
errors, and word order. A total number of interlingual errors
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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

amounted to 1255 out of 1767 total number of errors. The

classification of interligual errors were as the following: 517
were of the grammatical category,308 of semantic/ lexical errors
,337 of mechanical errors and 93 of word order errors ) . Figure
2 shows the number of interlingual errors and their distribution
according to their categories. It is clear that the grammatical
category is the dominant error category. Then in the second
place comes the mechanical error category as it includes a
problematic aspect of the target language which is spelling. In
the third place comes the semantic / lexical errors and finally is
the word order errors.

600
500
400
300
200
100
0

Grammatical errors 517

semantic / lexical errors 308
mechanical errors 337
word order errors 93

Figure 2: Interlingual Errors

6.4.1 Grammatical Errors

Figure 3 gives a detailed account of the different
grammatical subcategories .It is obvious that the (223)tense
errors form the most troublesome area for different reasons
which will be illustrated later, articles errors (97), , pronouns
errors(76), singular/ plural nouns errors(48) and preposition
errors(73) .
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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

Tense is the most prominent feature in the writings of Iraqi

students .The students did many grammatical errors for different
reasons: they could not write correct negative or interrogative
sentences especially in the simple present and simple past tenses
because there is no equivalent of auxiliaries (do, does and did) in
Arabic (See examples 4,5 and 6 ).It has also been noticed that
the students tended to use or add one of the different conjugated
forms of the verb "to be"as a filler with simple present and
simple past tense forms ,no verb (be) in present and past tenses(
see examples 7, 8,9 and10 ),simple present tense in Arabic
covers meaning of simple and progressive in English (see
examples 11and12 ), these errors are of negative transfer because
there is no mirror equivalent forms between L2 continuous,
perfect and future and these in L1.

1-*he was live in a big house 2-*She was love him.

3-*She was work ….. 4-*they was not speak frankly.
5-*is she come early. 6-* I was not go early.
7-* they slaves. 8-*The two girls faraway.
9-*He ill suddenly. 10-*they very weaks and poors.
11-*They talking highly. 12-*She speaking now.

Moreover, the participants depend in their writing mostly on

using simple present and past tenses for all cases .This finding
revealed that participants did not have compre-hensive
knowledge on the use of different verb tenses (particularly
continuous tenses and passive voice tenses) simply because there
are no equivalent forms in L1. In Arabic , the passive form is
____________________
* is used in front of every incorrect example
derived from the active form by means of internal vowel
change(e.g /shariba/- /shuriba/: drink- drunk).
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With singular /plural markers , there seemed to be a certain

trend of erroneously omitting the plural morpheme 's' even when
obvious plural quantifiers such as ' many ' and 'all' were present ;
this seems to be a transfer from the spoken medium of L2 as
Arabic speakers tend not to read or pronounce the plural 's'
morpheme as it is shown in the following examples:

13-*The man discovered every 14-*all peoples heard the

things. voices.
15-*the policeman collected all 16-* others stars were shining
the evidence ….
17-*The blind boy has eleven 18-*many childerns playing
brother and sister here and there
19-*I always ask him to help 20-*the informations are
me in writing my homeworks spread…

Examples 17 and 19 , show that EFL learners resort to literal

translation from Arabic to determine whether certain words in
English are singular or plural. The two words' homework' and
'information' take the plural form in Arabic and are plural in
number.
Preposition form an area of error that is exclusive to EFL
learners. Using the appropriate preposition is one of the most
difficult tasks of EFL learners that’s because in English there are
various prepositions which have the same function. Thus , the
learners are not sure which preposition to use in a certain
sentence. The following examples

21-* they were defense about the 22-*they were living

poor people. from a small farm.

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23-*to see his mother stood on the 24-* Nature feel us in

door wait him happiness.

25-* When I finished from my 26-* I called him in

lunch,.. phone and…..
27-*She was thinking about a good 28-*I went for them .
way to solve her problem.

Articles are also misused by students. They are quite

confusing because , abstract nouns may refer to ideas ,
attributes, or qualities are used in English without the article '
the' to refer to that idea whereas in Arabic such abstract words
are preceded by indefinite article equivalent to 'the ' in English
(Diab,1996:72).See the following examples:

29-*The money is very 30-*The women are equal to

important the men
31-*The success is a final aim 32-*The education is free for
of every human being. all peoples.

Definite articles are affixed to a noun or an adjective in L1 .

In general , errors such as the omission or addition of those
articles are used in a way that proves the direct transfer of L1
rules to L2 specifically in the cases where names of countries or
cities were mentioned , such as in the following examples:

33-*My uncle travelled to the 34-*The young girl went by

U.S.A before ten years. the car.
35-*In the spring, the weather 36-*I decided to depart at the 6

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

is very nice. o' clock.

36-*In the Saturday, …… 37-*The two girls had uncle
who is very harsh.

The misusing of many pronouns can be attributed to the

negative transfer of L1 .The reason behind such errors is that it
is possible to use a verb with its embedded pronoun without
having recourse to an isolated pronoun (independent )in Arabic
.In L1, personal pronouns are often added to verbs as it is shown
below:
38-*After three years of marriage ,have been facing pressure
from their family.
Moreover, pronouns are problematic because there are no
exact equivalent counterparts in L1or L2 , for instance ,the
pronoun 'it' as a neutral pronoun is not available in L1. Thus 'he '
or 'she' is used by EFL learners for inanimate objects or concepts
. Object pronouns as well cause some sort of confusion since the
word or morpheme may represent both an object pronoun and a
possessive adjective like in(his/him, her/her, their/ them,
your/you).The following illustrate this aspect clearly:

39-*the man when he saw the 40-*he had two girls from her
accident, he called the
policemen.
41-*he bought a car that he can 42-*so that was very difficult
go to work by it for him to….

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preposition
14%

pronouns tenses
15% 43%

articles
19%
singular/ plural nouns
9%

Figure 3 : Grammatical errors subcategories

6.4.2 Lexical/ Semantic Errors
On the level of this category ,the lexical errors counted
were either a word or two words (e.g collocation)or whole
phrases or sentences .Examples of lexical errors due to L1
transfer can be seen in the following examples:

43-* The children went to special 44-* He started to learn me

schools. (private schools) how….(teach )
45-*they theift the house.(stole) 46-*My brother travelled
outside the countery. (aboard)
47-*The right appear…. 48-*they remembered me to go
at once.(reminded)
49-*He didn't bear anything on 50-*she wished to play with
his shoulders.(carry) girls equal to her.(similar)
51-*I cut a promise to help others 52-*In the Spring, the flower
people. begin to open.(bloom)
53-*I say with my self…. 54-*Nature feel us in happiness.
55-* The man pushed all his 56-*He plural things
money to save his child life. quickly.(collects or gathers)

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It is obvious that most of the errors are funny ones. They

occur when learners translate directly from L1 to convey their
ideas in English( using a noun instead of a verb , see example
56) . Another reason for making such errors due to the learners '
limited English vocabulary( see examples 43, 46, 49 51 and 52) .
The negative transfer of the L1 due to the fact that Arabic is a
'root language' and the changes from one part of speech to
another often involved morphological variations such as
germination(doubling of consonants)(see examples 44 and 48).
The 'faux-aims' lexical subcategory had the least number of
errors . The previous term means deceptive cognates in French
(false friends ). This happens in cases when a transfer from L1 or
L2 ends up with the use of a word or an expression with an
opposite or very remote meaning from the intended one . For
instance, " on the other hand" is used in L1 as an additional and
not of contrast as it is used in L2 as it is shown in the following
example:
57-*Women have to do their jobs perfectly on one hand. On the
other hand, they are responsible about homeworks.

6.4.3 Mechanic Errors

Arabic has a phonetic based writing system and thus
unlike L2 does not have allographs that are sound based but the
allographs that exist in L1 are to do with a letter shape
according to its position in a word: i.e . initial , medial or final
position . Students tended to replace an allograph with another.
The types of errors with phoneme/ grapheme correspondences or
representations included problems with mainly vocalic
phonemes and their graphemes but also with consonantal
phonemes as well. L1 consists of 3 primary short vocalic
phonemes with their respective long versions. these vowels
are:/i,a,u/ and their long counterparts:/i:, a: , u:/. These vowels ,

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nonetheless , have various regional and idiosyncratic allophonic

variations (Chebchoub,2006 :32). The same problem may be
diagnosed in using consonants particularly/ v, p, t ∫/. The misuse
happens because the learners are unable to distinguish or
perceive auditory differences between voiced or voiceless
counterparts of these sounds which are distinct phonemes that
appear in minimal pairs, thus spelling errors may occur in EFL
learners' writings as it is illustrated in the following examples:

58-* My brother travelled 59-* in the secaned day,

outside the countery. he….
60-*The head master in the 61-*The chuchment ….
combany….
62-*He put his head on his 63-*He gave many
ped. prooves
64-*The scene is very 65-*Nixt time, ….
peautiful.

It is also noticed that students neglect one of the most

important rule in writing that is they should write in a shape of
paragraphs and they have to follow all the other instructions such
as :the first line should be intended and each sentence should
start with a capital letter.The latter phenomenon may be due to
the fact that capitalization is a writing convention that should be
implied in L2 but not found in L1.Some learners didn't capitalize
the names of persons , months or cities(see examples 66, 67, 68
and 69). Moreover, the learners tend to overuse commas. This
can be attributed to the fact that in L1 ,it is acceptable to write
long sentences separated by commas. So , it is expected that the
learners use 'and ' to link between two , three, or even four
sentences. Finally, spaces between words are also recognized as

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one of the serious problems because it was very hard for the
instructor to know from where some words
start and where they end.

66-*The seventh of 67-*…..to mixico.

february…
68-*John adams…. 69-*They sent the present to bill

140
116
120 106
95
100
80
60
40 20
20
0
spelling captilization punctuation paragraph fomat

Figure 4: Mechanic errors subcategories

6.4.4 Word Order Errors

Faulty word order is a common syntactic error that the
learners commit as a result of L1 transfer. Three categories are
included in the analysis: subject/ verb order, adjective/ noun
order and possessive adjective/ noun order. Students often
neglect the order which should be followed in English and came
up with constructions that are applicable in Arabic (L1) such as
(verb-subject – object)(see example 70 , 71and 72).In English ,
an adjective precede the noun it ,modifies whereas in Arabic the
adjective follows the noun and corresponds with it in number and
gender.Examples like 73 , 74and 75 are due to the transfer of this rule
to L2. Possessive adjectives are added to nouns in L1 . Students
who are unaware of this rule may follow the L1 rule and apply it to
L2 .Thus such errors may occur, see examples 76 and 77.

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

70-*was the accident a disaster 71-* imagin he everything.

72-*causes he many problems 73-* I read many books difficult

74-* my nighbouir did a lot of 75 -* They should follow three
things good steps very important
76-*She put the bag them 77-*she leave the room of her
certain places. flowers.

46
50
40 32
30
20 15
10
0
possessiveadject
subject /verb

adjective/ noun

ive/noun

Figure 5: Word order errors subcategories

7- Conclusion
This study attempts to identify , describe, categorize and
diagnose the errors in English essay writing of the EFL Iraqi
college students and it is found that most of the students' errors
can be due to the L1 transfer .The current study came up with the
following results. Most of the learners rely on their mother
tongue in expressing their ideas. Although the rating processes
showed that the participants ' essays included different types of
errors, the grammatical errors and the mechani-cal errors were
the most serious and frequent ones. This is shown by their high
frequency and the results of the their percentage .
The overt influences of Arabic on the students' writing
of English indicate that language teachers need to take careful
stock of the transfer and interference of the students' mother

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

tongue in their production(spoken or written ). Also, EFL

learners must accumulate knowledge about word usage: only in
this way can they free themselves from the negative transferor
influence of their mother tongue(Jing,2008:61).
There are some specific ways for language teachers to
help students correct the errors. One way to highlight the
influences of the mother tongues on the students' learning of
English is to collect these errors and ask the students to analyze
them and if they could to correct them .
Note
There are two types of Arabic, spoken and written.
Spoken Arabic consists of dialects. Arabic is the descendant of
the language of the Koran.. The orientation of writing is from
right-to left, and the Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters. The
Arabic alphabet can be extended to ninety elements by writing
additional shapes, marks, and vowels (Tayli & Al-Salamah,
1990). Most Arabic words are morphologically derived from a
list of roots; it can be tri, quad, or pent-literal. Most of these
roots are three constants. Arabic words are classified into three
main parts of speech: nouns (adjectives, and adverbs), verbs, and
particles. In formal writing, Arabic sentences are delimited by
commas and periods as in English, for instance. Many English words
come from Arabic: alcohol, algebra, check, magazine, and tariff.
Standard Arabic: is the formal language of literature and
written expression.
Colloquial Arabic: is the ordinary familiar language used in
everyday conversation among Arabic speakers.
When discussing MTI from Arabic it should not be forgotten that
some errors are caused by interference from standard and others
by interference from colloquial Arabic.
(Abi Samra, 2003:25)

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Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah No. (60) 2012

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