Learning English and Mother Tongue (Arabic) Interference

The interference of the mother tongue has always been a

major problem in teaching and learning English as a foreign
language. I particularly refer here to the trace left by
someone's native language upon the foreign language they
are acquiring. Thus, the
Frenchman who says, I am here since yesterday, is imposing
a French grammatical usage on English.

Egyptian students who learn English as a foreign language

often make lexical, semantic and phonological errors
because of the interference of their native language
(Arabic). I will survey here, as briefly as possible, the most
common errors I have observed
during my work as an EFL teacher in Egyptian public and
private schools.

Arabic speaking students often resort to redundancy when

writing compositions and essays. They usually cannot avoid
using redundant patterns. The following sentences are just
a few common examples of redundancy.

* Mona lives alone by herself.

* The problem is very serious in the nature of it.
* The boss advanced forward the date of the
meeting.
In the previous examples, the words alone, in the nature of
it and forward are redundant. It is , of course, the duty of
the teacher to explain to his students that simple, direct
and non-redundant
sentences are preferred to complicated, indirect and
redundant ones. Students should be aware of the
unnecessary information that has to be omitted. Therefore,
instead of saying, repeat again two
twins etc., students should say repeat twins respectively.

Another area of difficulty is related to using prepositions.

Arabic peaking students sometimes use prepositions where
they are not supposed to. When writing, they would
normally use affect on enjoy with or by etc. because such

verbs normally take prepositions in Arabic (phrasal verbs).

Moreover, they often make errors in choosing the correct
preposition. They tend to say ashamed from composed
from object on blame on where of, of, to and for should be
used respectively.

Students also tend to use before nouns which are not

normally preceded by this definite article, such as names of
most diseases and many other nouns. The reason for this is
that in Arabic such nouns are usually preceded by the
definite article. Notice the
following examples:

My father suffers from the diabetes.

He was filled with the sadness.
He studies the music.
He left at the twilight.

The use of run-on sentences (i.e. sentences which are

incorrectly connected) is also common in compositions and

essays written by Arabic speaking students. Look at the
following examples:

We waited a long time, he didn't turn up.

My uncle and his family lived in the capital I knew I
could stay with them.

Teachers should be able to help their students avoid run-on

sentences by using appropriate connecting words or
punctuation.

Other syntactical errors occur in using adjectives. The fact

that in Arabic, adjectives follow nouns makes it difficult for
learners of English to put adjectives in their proper place.
Therefore, students are likely to make errors such as the
following:

Tourists come to Egypt to enjoy the weather beautiful.

Men and women enjoy rights equal.
This is a book very interesting.

Arabic speaking students - affected by their mother tongue tend to make a syntactical error by using an adjective plus a
noun derived from the main verb instead of using an
adverb, thus imposing an Arabic grammatical usage on
English. The following examples
make this point clear:

The temperature rose a sharp rise (instead of: The

temperature rose sharply).
The singer performed a wonderful performance (instead
of: The singer performed wonderfully).
The prices have increased a gradual increase (instead
of: The prices have increased gradually).

Through intensive practice and using varied examples, such

errors are likely to disappear. Teachers should attract their
students attention to the correct sentence order in English.

The subject pronoun you in English is used is used to refer

to the person (singular) or to the person being spoken to,
and it has a separate plural form only in the reflexive
(yourself, yourselves). In
Arabic, the second person pronoun has various forms
depending on whether we are speaking to one person, two
people or more than two, and also depending on whether
we are speaking to males or females. Therefore, Arabic
speaking students tend to use you incorrectly when just one
person is being spoken to, e.g. You has caused me a lot of
trouble.

Another difficulty faced by Arabic speaking students is

related to the use of countable and uncountable nouns.
Many uncountable nouns in English such as information
money damage housework homework etc. are countable in
Arabic. Consequently, students often add an s to these
uncountable nouns and use plural instead of singular

forms of verbs. Following are some examples:

The informations I received were useful.

Housewives do a lot of houseworks.
The storm caused great damages.
The absence of certain English sounds in Arabic like /p/ and
/v/ causes real phonological problems for Egyptian students
who usually find it difficult to pronounce words containing
such sounds. Thus words like park and van are likely to be
pronounced bark and fan. This detrimentally affects
language learning and it particularly impeded developing
listening and speaking skills. These difficulties are
by no means insurmountable. Through giving students
sufficient practice and drills and exposing them to intensive
listening activities, teachers can attain good results,

One last area of difficulty for Arabic speaking learners of

English is related to lexico-semantic usage. Certain words
that have distinctive meanings in English, like special and
private have only one

equivalent in Arabic. Students, therefore, are likely to say:

My brother went to a special hospital.

This is a very private occasion.
For the same reason, words like economic/economical
historic/historical barrister/solicitor are often
confused and misused in Arabic.

To sum up, Arabic speaking students should be aware of the

fact that English and Arabic are quite different languages. If
students are taught how to think in English and avoid doing
a mental translation, their learning will be greatly
enhanced. Teachers certainly
have a great role to play in the process of acquainting and
familiarizing their students with the language areas that are
likely to hinder their language acquisition. We are badly in
need of more
research into this area.

References:

J. A. Bright and G.P. McGregor, 1982. Teaching English

as a Second Language. Longman Group Limited.
Myrna Knepler, 1990. Grammar with a Purpose. Heinle &
Heinle.
Randolph Quirk and Sydney Greenbaum. 1985. A
University Grammar of English. Longman Group Limited.