ERROR ANALYSIS: ARABIC SPEAKERS’ ENGLISH WRITINGS

Running head: ERROR ANALYSIS: ARABIC SPEAKERS’ ENGLISH WRITINGS

An Analysis of Errors in Arabic Speakers’ English Writings

Nada AbiSamra
(Email me if you have any comments or questions)

American University of Beirut
Instructor: Dr. Kassim Shaaban
Second Language Acquisition
English 345
January 2003

Click here to get it as a Word Document
(Original Form)

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Table of Contents

1.      Importance of communication
2.      Communicative competence
3.      Oral & Written communication
4.      Emphasis on written communication, the more difficult component
5.      Native Speakers of English vs. Non-Native Speakers (Arabic speakers)
6.      Mistake vs. Error => self-correctability factor
7.      Rationale of study: Problems relating to the teaching of English as a
First language to Arabic speakers are understudied.
8.      Aim of paper: Attempt to identify, describe, categorize, and diagnose Arabic
speakers’ errors in English essay writing + suggest some solutions.
9.      Research Question: Is negative L1 transfer/interference the major cause for
errors in the English writings of Brevet students?

B. Theoretical Background:

1.      Error Analysis
2.      Models for Error Analysis
3.      Sources of Errors

C. Procedures:

1. Error/Data Collection
2. Error Identification and Categorization & Taxonomy Adopted

D. Results

E. Implications

F. Limitations & Suggestions for future research

G. Conclusion

H. References

I. Appendixes:

1. General List of Abbreviations

2. School mission statement (soon)

3. Student Survey

4. Arabic: General Language Characteristics

5. ESL Tip Sheet 1: Arabic (Sofer & Raimes, 2002)

6. Table 1: Error Categories & Sources + Abbreviations

7. Table 2: Categorizing & Diagnosing Errors

8. Table 3: Categorizing & Diagnosing Errors- Interlingual / Transfer Errors

9. Table 4: Categorizing & Diagnosing Errors- Intralingual / Dev. errors

10. Table 5: Error Sources & Numbers Compared

11. Oral & Written Presentations: Guidelines & Expectations

12. Error Analysis Exercises & Objective Tests for Remediation

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Introduction

“My purpose in being Part in the goverment is Change. I want to change the world. Change in the means of War, Freedom, and equalness. Also as being part of the government, One should have self-confidence, can stand-up for self, and others, and at the same time have a degree in a great proffession.Then How am I working now, I’am participation in every activity Possible, that has to do with improving our community today. On top of that, I always keep in mind that to work hard, and keep my self on the right track.”

Written by a Brevet student.
December 2002

Communication, "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior" (Merriam-Webster Online, 2003), is at the heart of all human interactions; it is the basis of life.

No one can live alone. By the word "live" I do not just mean "survive" or "subsist", but "have a life rich in experience" (Merriam-Webster Online, 2003). "Communicative competence involves communicating in accordance with that fundamental system of rules that adult subjects master to the extent that they can fulfill the conditions for a happy employment of sentences in utterances" (Habermas, 1979). As we all know, we communicate orally and/or in writing. Our focus in this paper is on the written part. "In spoken conversations with others, we make sense of the dialogue in a complex back-and-forth process of negotiation of meaning between speakers. In written texts, this back-and-forth negotiation is not possible; there is only 'one passÃ.' The sentence is written and it is read. Because there is no possibility of negotiating meaning of written documents, the inevitable problems of misunderstandings are exacerbated" (Penman, 1998).

Hence, we can say that writing is an “intricate” and complex task; it is the “most difficult of the language abilities to acquire” (Allen & Corder, 1974, p. 177). Its level of difficulty varies between native speakers (NS) who think in the language used (in our case it will be English) and non-native speakers (NNS) who think in their own native language (in this case it will be Arabic). While writing, non-native speakers have, in general, to think about all those rules they need to apply, rules that native speakers are supposed to have automatized. Therefore, non-native speakers are more prone to making mistakes and/or committing errors.

It is essential here to make a distinction between mistake and error; both Corder (1967, 1971) and James (1998) reveal a criterion that helps us to do so: it is the self-correctability criterion. A mistake can be self-corrected, but an error cannot. Errors are “systematic,” i.e. likely to occur repeatedly and not recognized by the learner. Hence, only the teacher or researcher would locate them, the learner wouldn’t (Gass & Selinker, 1994). And it is in this light that I choose to focus on students’ errors not mistakes.

As an English teacher, I am well aware of the fact that my Arabic speaking students in grade 9, brevet section, commit a lot of errors in essay writing. You can tell from the quotation with which I begin this paper. These students have been studying English their whole lives and still, their errors are numerous. Hence, I have decided to conduct an error analysis--the best tool for describing and explaining errors made by speakers of other languages (Johanson, 1975) -- in order to know the sources of these errors and the reasons behind their continued occurrence year after year with different groups of learners. I need to familiarize myself with the types of errors that my students make in order to determine the sequence and emphasis of instruction.

“Very surprisingly there are few published descriptions of how or what children learn. (There... is) little about what mistakes the children made and how these can be explained, or what generalizations and learning strategies the children seem to be developing” (Richards, 1974, p. 181).

After having reviewed the literature, I noticed that no study had been done (that I knew of, at least!) which involves Arabic speaking students who have been studying English since nursery; students who are studying English integratively, as a FIRST language. However, it is essential here to mention the fact that the language these students speak at home is mainly Arabic, not English (see appendix 3); hence, we can venture to say that they are ESL students, however immersed in English they might be at school.

“To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult,” said Samuel Johnson in 1761.

Can this fact account for our problems? Is my students’ native language (L1) “contaminating” their English (L2)? If this were to be true, then we could say that the reason behind all those errors is Negative L1 transfer/Mother Tongue interference. And the best way to discover such a transfer is through error analysis (Sridhar, 1980). However, can transfer alone justify all the errors made?

Our research question is then:

“Is negative L1 transfer/interference the major cause for errors in the English writings of Brevet students?”

This paper will attempt to do the following:

Provide a theoretical background for: a) Error Analysis, b) Models for Error Analysis, & c) Sources of Errors. (It will also examine related terms such as interlingual errors, negative L1 transfer/interference, interlanguage, and intralingual errors);
Identify, describe, categorize, and diagnose Arabic speakers’ errors in English essay writing in order to find the sources of those errors and a way for remediation;
Cover the implications of the findings for teaching ESL/English to Arabic speaking students; and, finally,
Discuss the limitations of this study and propose future areas of research.

Theoretical Background

Error Analysis

Systematically analyzing errors made by language learners makes it possible to determine areas that need reinforcement in teaching (Corder, 1974).

Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners make. It consists of a comparison between the errors made in the Target Language (TL) and that TL itself. Pit Corder is the “Father” of Error Analysis (the EA with the “new look”). It was with his article entitled “The significance of Learner Errors” (1967) that EA took a new turn. Errors used to be “flaws” that needed to be eradicated. Corder presented a completely different point of view. He contended that those errors are “important in and of themselves.” For learners themselves, errors are 'indispensable,' since the making of errors can be regarded as a device the learner uses in order to learn. In 1994, Gass & Selinker defined errors as “red flags” that provide evidence of the learner’s knowledge of the second language. Researchers are interested in errors because they are believed to contain valuable information on the strategies that people use to acquire a language (Richards, 1974; Taylor, 1975; Dulay and Burt, 1974). Moreover, according to Richards and Sampson (1974, p. 15), “At the level of pragmatic classroom experience, error analysis will continue to provide one means by which the teacher assesses learning and teaching and determines priorities for future effort.” According to Corder (1974), error analysis has two objects: one theoretical and another applied. The theoretical object serves to “elucidate what and how a learner learns when he studies a second language.” And the applied object serves to enable the learner “to learn more efficiently by exploiting our knowledge of his dialect for pedagogical purposes.”

The investigation of errors can be at the same time diagnostic and prognostic. It is diagnostic because it can tell us the learner's state of the language (Corder, 1967) at a given point during the learning process, and prognostic because it can tell course organizers to reorient language learning materials on the basis of the learners' current problems.

Before we proceed, it is essential here to define a few terms that we shall use in this paper:

· Interlingual/Transfer errors: those attributed to the native language (NL). There are interlingual errors when the learner’s L1 habits (patterns, systems or rules) interfere or prevent him/her, to some extent, from acquiring the patterns and rules of the second language (Corder, 1971). Interference (negative transfer) is the negative influence of the mother language (L1) on the performance of the target language learner (L2) (Lado, 1964). It is 'those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language' (Weinreich, 1953, p.1).

Error analysis emphasizes “the significance of errors in learners’ interlanguage system” (Brown 1994, p. 204). The term interlanguage, introduced by Selinker (1972), refers to the systematic knowledge of an L2 which is independent of both the learner’s L1 and the target language. Nemser (1974, p. 55) referred to it as the Approximate System, and Corder (1967) as the Idiosyncratic Dialect or Transitional Competence.

· Intralingual/Developmental errors: those due to the language being learned (TL), independent of the native language. According to Richards (1970) they are “items produced by the learner which reflect not the structure of the mother tongue, but generalizations based on partial exposure to the target language. The learner, in this case, tries to “derive the rules behind the data to which he/she has been exposed, and may develop hypotheses that correspond neither to the mother tongue nor to the target language” (Richards, 1970, p. 6).

Models for Error Analysis

Corder (1967 & 1974) identified a model for error analysis which included three stages:

Data collection: Recognition of idiosyncracy
Description: Accounting for idiosyncratic dialect
Explanation (the ultimate object of error analysis).

Brown (1994, pp. 207-211) and Ellis (1995, pp. 51-52) elaborated on this model. Ellis (1997, pp. 15-20) and Hubbard et al. (1996, pp. 135-141) gave practical advice and provided clear examples of how to identify and analyze learners’ errors. The initial step requires the selection of a corpus of language followed by the identification of errors. The errors are then classified. The next step, after giving a grammatical analysis of each error, demands an explanation of different types of errors.

Moreover, Gass & Selinker (1994, p. 67) identified 6 steps followed in conducting an error analysis: Collecting data, Identifying errors, Classifying errors, Quantifying errors, Analyzing source of error, and Remediating for errors.

Sources of Errors

In 1972, Selinker (in Richards, 1974, p. 37) reported five sources of errors:

1. Language transfer

2. Transfer of training

3. Strategies of second language learning

4. Strategies of second language communication, and

5. Overgeneralization of TL linguistic material.

In 1974 Corder (in Allen & Corder, p. 130) identified three sources of errors: Language Transfer, Overgeneralization or analogy, & Methods or Materials used in the Teaching (teaching-induced error).

In the paper titled “The Study of Learner English” that Richards and Simpson wrote in 1974, they exposed seven sources of errors:

Language transfer, to which one third of the deviant sentences from second language learners could be attributed (George, 1971).
Intralingual interference: In 1970, Richards exposed four types and causes for intralingual errors:

overgeneralization (p. 174): it is associated with redundancy reduction. It covers instances where the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structures in the target language. It may be the result of the learner reducing his linguistic burden.
ignorance of rule restrictions: i.e. applying rules to contexts to which they do not apply.
incomplete application of rules
semantic errors such as building false concepts/systems: i.e. faulty comprehension of distinctions in the TL.

Sociolinguistic situation: motivation (instrumental or integrative) and settings for language learning (compound or co-ordinate bilingualism) may affect second language learning.
Modality: modality of exposure to the TL and modality of production.
Age: learning capacities vary with age.
Successions of approximative systems: since the circumstances of language learning vary from a person to another, so does the acquisition of new lexical, phonological, and syntactic items.
Universal hierarchy of difficulty: this factor has received little attention in the literature of 2^nd language acquisition. It is concerned with the inherent difficulty for man of certain phonological, syntactic, or semantic items or structures. Some forms may be inherently difficult to learn no matter what the background of the learner.

James (1998, p. 178) exposed three main diagnosis-based categories of error:

Interlingual: interference happens when “an item or structure in the second language manifests some degree of difference from, and some degree of similarity with the equivalent item or structure in the learner’s first language” (Jackson, 1987: 101).
Intralingual:

Learning strategy-based errors:

i. false analogy

ii. misanalysis

iii. incomplete rule application

iv. exploiting redundancy

v. overlooking cooccurrence restrictions

vi. hypercorrection (monitor overuse)

vii. overgeneralization or system simplification

Communication strategy-based errors:

i. holistic strategies: e.g. approximation, language switch, calque

ii. analytic strategies: circumlocution (expressing the concept indirectly, by allusion rather than by direct reference.

Induced errors: they “result more from the classroom situation than from either the student’s incomplete competence in English grammar (intralingual errors) or first language interference (interlingual errors) (Stenson, 1983, p. 256):

Material induced errors
Teacher-talk induced errors
Exercise-based induced errors
Errors induced by pedagogical priorities
Look-up errors

According to Dulay & Burt (1974), there are four types of “goofs”:

Interference-like goofs
L1 Developmental goofs
Ambiguous goofs (either interference-like or L1 developmental goofs)
Unique goofs (neither interference-like nor L1 developmental goofs)

The studies relating to the process of language transfer and overgeneralization received considerable attention in the literature. Swan and Smith (1995, p. ix) gave a detailed account of errors made by speakers of nineteen different L1 backgrounds in relation to their native languages. Diab (1996) also conducted a study in order to show through error analysis the interference of the mother-tongue, Arabic, in the English writings of EFL students at the American University of Beirut. Okuma (1999) studied the L1 transfer in the EFL writings of Japanese students.

Work on over-generalization errors, on the other hand, is reported by Richards (1974, pp. 174-188), Jain (in Richards, 1974, pp. 208-214) and Taylor (1975). Furthermore, Farooq (1998) identified and analyzed two error patterns in written texts of upper-basic Japanese learners, in an EFL context. He focused on both transfer and overgeneralization errors. Habash (1982) studied common errors in the use of English prepositions in the written work of UNRWA students at the end of the preparatory cycle in the Jerusalem area and found out that more errors were attributable to interference from Arabic than to other learning problems.

All these studies focused on Transfer &/or Overgeneralization errors, however, none of them dealt with “ESL” students who have been studying English as a First Language. The reason why I called them ESL students is that, at home, they speak mainly Arabic.

Procedures

1- Error/Data Collection:

For the selection of a corpus of language, following the guidelines offered by Ellis

(1995, pp. 51-52), a sample of written work was collected from 10 students. Those students are in grade 9, Brevet section (cf. appendix 2). They have been studying English since nursery (cf. appendix 3), and have been taught English mainly by American & Canadian teachers. However, there is a point that needs to be mentioned here, and it is the fact that most of them speak Arabic at home with their parents and at school with their friends. (cf. appendix 3).

These students were provided with the topic ‘What are your plans for the future?’ and were asked to write on it in 200 to 250 words. They were given sufficient time to write (Ellis 1997, p. 114). They had to start with an outline, then a first draft and a final draft. This was their mid-term examination at school, in December 2003.

2- Error Identification & Categorization:

As a first step, we developed, based on the literature (Corder, 1974; Richards, 1974; James, 1998; Selinker, 1972 in Richards, 1974; Richards & Sampson, 1974), a Taxonomy for Error Analysis including the following categories and sub-categories: grammatical (prepositions, articles, reported speech, singular/plural, adjectives, relative clauses, irregular verbs, tenses, and possessive case), syntactic (coordination, sentence structure, nouns and pronouns, and word order), lexical (word choice), semantic, & substance (mechanics: punctuation & capitalization, and spelling). As for the organizational/discourse errors, we shall mention them but will not quantify them since, first, it is difficult to do so, and, second, we had trained our students, prior to the exam, to write a well-organized essay (thesis statement, restatement of the thesis, and the use of transition words).

After setting the categories, we chose, also based on the literature, the error sources that we wanted to study, and they are mainly Interlingual (negative L1 Transfer) & Intralingual (Developmental).

Please refer to table # 1 in the appendix for further details.

So, the errors were explained in grammatical terms, and thoroughly examined to find their sources, paying particular attention to negative L1 transfer, since we needed to address our research question: “Is negative L1 transfer/interference the major cause for errors in the English writings of Brevet students?” Being myself a native Arabic speaker holding a master’s degree in translation (from/to Arabic, French, & English) and based on the literature (refer to appendix 5), I was able to perceive and pinpoint the errors due to L1 (Arabic) Transfer. (However, we should not forget that some errors are caused by interference from standard Arabic and others by interference from colloquial Arabic.)

In addition, since I have been teaching English as a second language for over 12 years, and since I have finished the coursework for my second master’s in Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language, I was able to detect the developmental errors in my students’ essays, and these are listed in detail in table # 2 in the appendix.

Results:

The total number of errors that we found in the 10 essays we studied was 214. Here they are, in the graph below, divided according to the different categories:

Graph 1

29 grammatical, 35 syntactic, 26 lexical, 3 semantic, and 120 substance (mechanics & spelling) errors.

Graph 2

Graph number 2 shows the percentage of Transfer vs. Developmental errors for each category. The total percentage of Transfer/Interlingual errors was 35.9%, whereas the total percentage of Developmental/Intralingual errors was 64.1%. Based on this graph we can tell that the highest percentage of Transfer errors was in Semantics & Lexis, respectively 100% & 73% (refer to table 3 in the appendix). As for the highest percentage of Developmental errors, it was, by far, in Substance (mainly spelling; refer to table 4 in the appendix).

Graph 3

Graph number 3 shows the number of Transfer vs. Developmental errors for each category. The total number of Transfer/Interlingual errors was 77, whereas the total number of Developmental/Intralingual errors was 137.

Based on these findings we can tell that Brevet students do commit errors because of Negative L1 transfer, however, their biggest number of errors is due to Developmental/Intralingual reasons.

Examples of Negative L1 transfer Errors: (table # 3 in the appendix)

Grammatical errors:

I would like to follow in my father’s footsteps. (على خطى أبي)

Prepositions pose a great difficulty for an ESL learner since there are various prepositions in English that have the same function. As a result, when students are not sure which preposition to use in a certain sentence, they often compare that sentence with its Arabic equivalence, giving a literal translation of that Arabic preposition in English. However, "prepositions seldom have a one to one correspondence between English and Arabic. An Arabic preposition may be translated by several English prepositions while an English usage may have several Arabic translations" (Scott and Tucker, 1974, p. 85).

Evil is▼ force that can enter a person’s soul and conquer it. (الشرّ قوّة) => omission of the article in Arabic (refer to appendix 5)
When the evil comes (عندما يأتي الشرّ => use of article in Arabic)

In English, abstract words referring to ideas, attributes, or qualities are used without the article 'the' to refer to that idea or attribute, etc. which belongs to everybody or everything. In Arabic, however, such abstract words are preceded by a definite article equivalent to 'the' in English. Hence, errors pertaining to the misuse of the article 'the' occur (Diab, 1996).

I wonder what god has written for me, what’s my destiny?
(أتساءل ما هو مصيري)
Calling others kids to come (مناداة الأولاد الآخرين)

“In Arabic, adjectives agree in number with the nouns they modify. As a result, agreement errors of this type occur in the English writings of Lebanese students” (Diab, 1996).

Syntactic errors:

For, them not to hate me they need to respect me and realize how much I love them and how hard I work for them. (repetition of “wa”)

“In English, items in a series are separated by commas, and the coordinate conjunction 'and' is used just before the last word. On the other hand, in Arabic, each item in a series is preceded by the conjunction 'wa' which is equivalent to 'and'” (Diab, 1996).

I have learned a lesson in my life, that you should never ever give up (تعلّمت درساً في حيا تي ، وهو ...)
What I want to be? (ما أريد أن أكون ؟)
I have a lot of people in my family that are computer engineers. (colloquial Arabic)
That, I have been doing since a long time ago. (منذ وقتٍ طويلٍ)
...most people when they grow up (معظم الناس حين يكبرون ...) (also colloquial)

In Arabic, personal pronouns are often added to verbs.

Lexical Errors:

If I hit an animal it would loose trust in me and stay on irritating me while curing it. (colloquial)
Some animals are nice pets to have, when they have the right health and medications. (الصحّة الجيّدة )
They should have veterinarians around them in case they get sick or any strong disease stricked them. (حولهم)
They should have veterinarians around them in case they get sick or any strong disease stricked them. (مرضٌ شديدٌ )
Animals are usually very afraid of high sounds. (أصواتٌ عالية )
For me acheiving these goals makes me happy. (بالنسبة لي ...)
How ever each person must succeed to his ability. (حسب قدرته)
You never know what god has installed for you. (وضع لك )
For me to be counted as a one of a kind mother I need to take (أُعَدُّ ...)
In my free time I will practice on improving my basketball fundamentals.(أتمرّن على )

Semantic Errors: (Literal translation)

a. When I secure a job my goal is to become partner and have a quarter office.

عندما أؤمّن عملا

b. By accomplishing these plans I will insure myself an outstanding life.

أؤمّن لنفسي

c. Architecture works my brain.تشغّل عقلي))

Substance (Mechanics + Spelling):

Punctuation

i. However▼evil has its shapes and forms. (لكنّ الشرّ...)

ii. As a result, I intend to get a good education, and job, which will allow me to raise a family in a suitable enviroment.و عملآ

iii. Obtaining a good job will be a crucial part of my life for various reasons. One of which, is that it enables me to have a stable income.

iv. It is known to be, that a person would be more appreaciated, and treated better▼ if he were an educated individual than a failure. (من المعروف أنّ...)

v. Personally▼ I beleive that you can never be sure. (شخصيا أظنّ...)

vi. When I get to university▼ I will try my best to get high honors in architecture. (حين أدخل الجامعة سأبذل جهدي ل ...)

Capitalization (No capital letters in Arabic)

i. last but not least, if I was giving an animal a shot I have to make sure that I am giving it in the right place.

ii. Afterwards I want to get a university level education in the united states.

iii. Next I move to wall street.

iv. arabs

Lack of capitalization in the Arabic alphabet and very different punctuation conventions. No distinction is made between upper and lower case (Sofer & Raimes, 2002).

Examples of Interlingual / Transfer Errors:

(Please refer to table # 4 in the appendix where all the errors are transcribed)

I would just like to mention here the problem of spelling. It has nothing to do with L1 transfer since Arabic is extremely different from English.

“The general question of how bad or good English children are at spelling was investigated by the National Foundation for Educational Research (Brooks et al, 1993), who looked at essays written by 1492 secondary school children in England at the two ages of 11 and 15. One measure was how many mistakes children made in the first ten lines of an essay. At the age of 11, only two children out of ten had no mistakes; two out of ten had five or more. By 15, four children out of ten had no mistakes; one out of ten had five or more. To quote the report, 'A good deal of improvement occurs between the ages of 11 and 15. However, even by age 15 there is still a minority of pupils who have relatively severe problems with spelling, to the extent that their ability to communicate in writing is seriously handicapped.'
The NFER research classified spelling mistakes into five major categories:- -

- insertion of extra letters, such as the <l> added to 'untill';
- omission of letters, such as the <r> missing from 'occuring';
- substitution of different letters, such as <a> instead of <i> in 'definate';
- transposition of two letters, such as <ei> for <ie> in 'freind';
- grapheme substitution involving more than two letters but only a single cause, for example when an equivalent according to sound correspondence rules is substituted for the usual form, as in 'thort' for 'thought'” (Cook, 2002).

Hence, we can say that our students are not the only ones to make so many spelling mistakes. However, this does not mean that we should not train them to write properly.

Implications:

“We cannot really teach language, we can only create conditions
in which it will develop spontaneously in the mind in its own way”
Von Humboldt (Corder, 1967).

Brevet students are, according to this study, facing two kinds of problems in essay writing: Translation from Arabic, their mother tongue & Incomplete learning of essay writing rules and conventions. What should we, teachers, do then?

First, it would be very useful to increase the number of assignments for the sake of which the students would have to do a lot of research during their free time, hence they would be reading a lot of English material and thinking in English, especially if they have to make oral presentations for their work. (cf. appendix 11 for “Oral & Written Presentations: Guidelines & Expectations”). In addition, if we implement Team Work in class (http://nadabs.tripod.com/team.html --there are some useful guidelines on this site) and we get the students to work in groups on their projects, they would have to practice together for their oral presentations, and speak English with each other instead of Arabic. Besides, they would, hopefully, correct each other’s mistakes.

As for the writing rules and conventions, these need to be “enforced” much earlier. All teachers (from grade 1 and on) would need to get together in order to try to solve this problem. In the meantime, I can suggest a few error analysis exercises and objective tests (Appendix 12) that would help the students be more accurate, but still, nothing can replace Essay Writing itself in order to improve writing. The aforementioned project/presentation assignments are good, but they are not enough. The students need to write in class, at home, in their journals... They need to be given some well defined Essay Writing Rules (for the thesis statement, introduction, conclusion, transition words, etc...), and some samples of their writings need to be transcribed and distributed to them for correction and analysis: they would be learning from their mistakes!

In brief, we definitely have to adapt ourselves and our curriculum to their needs.

Limitations & Suggestions for Further studies

“We should be aware that different types of written material may produce a different distribution of error or a different set of error types” (Corder, 1974, p. 126).

“The recognition of error ... depends crucially upon the analyst making a correct interpretation of the learner’s intended meaning of the context” (Corder, 1974, p. 127).

“It has already been noted that learners often appear inconsistent in their production of errors” (Corder, 1974, p. 131).

We need to keep all these facts in mind when conducting an error analysis and reaching conclusions on which we would base all our teaching. Besides, this study was conducted on a small number of students, and also on a very limited number of essays. Therefore, the conclusions reached are far from being decisive.

We consider this study a preliminary one that just “gives an idea” of those brevet students’ sources of errors. It should set the pace for other studies which would be much more comprehensive, covering a bigger number of students and a wider range of materials; we hope to be able to conduct one ourselves in the near future.

Conclusion:

“Humans are prone not only to commit language errors themselves but also to err in their judgements of those errors committed by others”

(James, 1998, p. 204).

We need to be careful when conducting an error analysis study.

This study attempted to identify, describe, categorize, and diagnose the errors in English essay writing of the Arabic speaking Brevet students. Just as George (1972), Lance (1969), Richards (1971), and Brudhiprabha (1972) found that only one-third of the second language learner’s errors can be attributed to NL language transfer, this is what this study came up with. Most of the errors are caused by an overapplication of L2. We do need to incite our students to speak English at home and with their friends in order to reduce the number of mistakes due to Negative L1 transfer, but we also need to try to teach more effectively the rules and conventions of writing.

However, when trying to solve these problems, we need to bear in mind that

“L2 users’ knowledge of a second language is not the same as that of native speakers even at advanced levels. L2 users’ knowledge of their first language (L1) is not the same as that of monolingual native speakers. L2 users think in different ways to monolinguals. ... Trying to get students to be like native speakers is ineffective; their minds and their knowledge of language will inevitably be different. The benefits of learning a second language are becoming a different kind of person, not just adding another language. The main obstacle to setting the successful L2 user as the goal is the belief that the native speaker speaks the true form of English. This implies the comparison of one group with another: the language of non-natives has always to be compared with that of natives; anything that deviates is wrong. For other areas of language study, William Labov established that it is discrimination to treat one group in terms of another group that they can never belong to, whether women as men, black Americans as white Americans, or working-class as middle-class. People must be allowed to be what they are when this is an unchangeable effect of birth or of early up-bringing.

An appropriate goal for many students is then using the L2 competently for their own purposes and in their own ways, which may very well not be the same as those of a monolingual native speaker and indeed may not involve native speakers at all. Students can become successful L2 users rather than forever ‘failing’ the native speaker target” (Cook, 1999).