Arab EFL Learners’ Writing Errors: A Contrastive Error Analysis Study

Abstract

The present study delved into the impact of students' L1 (Arabic) morphosyntactic system on their L2 writing skills; the influence of Arabic socio-cultural and educational context (where students learn L2) on students’ writing; students’ attitude towards L2 writing and EFL teachers’ perceptions and interpretations of students' writing difficulties. The study was conducted in 8 public higher education institutions in Oman. The participants of the study were 598 Omani EFL students who studied at The General Foundation Program and 54 EFL teachers. The study was underpinned by two theories: transfer of learning theory (Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901) and interlanguage theory (Selinker, 1972). The conceptual framework was arrived at by employing two models, contrastive analysis (CA) and error analysis (EA). A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data employing a questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and a writing test (essay writing). The findings revealed that students’ intralingual (L2 rules) errors were larger than their interlingual (L1 interference) errors. It was also found that students had a positive attitude towards L2 learning. Further, the teachers’ interviews confirmed that teachers were cognizant of students’ writing errors but they could not identify and determine the sources of those errors.