Foreign Language Processing of English Regular and Irregular Past Tense Verbs by Arabic-Speaking EFL Children

Purpose. This paper examines whether irregular past verbs are acquired earlier than regular past verbs by Arabic-speaking EFL children. Methods and procedure. Ninety fifth graders were tested using pictures representing 20 regular and 20 irregular past tense verbs through a sentence completion task. An introspective session was conducted with 70 children following the administration of the tests in order to determine the areas of difficulty. Results. The results mainly revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between regular and irregular verbs in favour of regular verbs. This suggests that the children learn regular forms prior to irregular ones contradicting the Natural Order Hypothesis and providing credence to the two Interlanguage strategies, namely, the L2 Overgeneralization of Alternative L2 Category Strategy and L1 Transfer Strategy. The children’s failure to produce the irregular form of the verb can be ascribed to the default system that they rely on, which is the computation system rather than the storage system. Thus, Arabic-speaking EFL children apply regular inflection of -ed whenever their memory fails to produce an irregular verb form. Conclusions. This study has demonstrated that Arabic-speaking EFL children do not follow the same sequence of acquisition as that exhibited by first language learners in acquiring the regular and irregular simple past forms. These learners acquire the regular past tense forms prior to the irregular ones contradicting the Natural Order Hypothesis. Due to the lack of irregularities in their first language, these learners apply the regular inflection rule to novel or unfamiliar verbs without sometimes considering the possibility of an existent irregular form that needs to be retrieved from memory. This also provides credence to two Interlanguage strategies, namely, the L2 Overgeneralization of Alternative L2 Category Strategy and L1 Transfer Strategy. More studies that investigate the sequence of acquisition of other types of morphemes by Arabic-speaking EFL children are needed to explore the effect of L1 and other factors such as the learning situation on the acquisition of English morphemes.