Abstract
L1 habits often tend to interfere with the process of learning a second language. The vowel habits of Arab learners of English are one such interference. Arabic orthography is such that certain vowels indicated by diacritics are often omitted, since an experienced reader of Arabic knows, by habit, the exact vowel sound in each phonetic environment. As a result of their non-dependence on the writings of vowels explicitly, Arab learners tend to ignore writing the vowel letters in their English writings, too. Research scholars name this interference ‘vowel blindness’. This paper is a report on an investigation of the presence of this feature in a group of 20 learners of English, registered for the Foundation Program in King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. However, this report aims to show that, this vowel blindness could only be a ‘temporary blindness’, and that remedial measures significantly helped these learners overcome this interference.
Introduction
Among the three most widely spoken languages in the world, English, Mandarin and Spanish, English retains its place as the most popular tongue. Globalization and enhanced international communication are drawing more and more countries into its net. Even closed communities, such as those in Arabia and the far and remote reaches of India, are now opening up, and use English as their lingua franca. This growing interest in the language places a huge demand on the teachers of English as a second language. The methods that were used in the past may not be adequate or suitable to teach English to students with mother tongues as varied and as removed from the family of English, as Chinese, Russian and Arabic. Teaching techniques and methodology have to be customized, in accordance with the nature and needs of the diverse groups learning the language, and keeping in mind the characteristics of the L1 of these groups. Arabic students learning English are a case in point. For such students, differences in the treatment of vowels in written English and Arabic lead to learning difficulties that require a unique solution. This article pursues this issue.
Literature Review
Two pioneering articles (Ryan and Meara,1991,1996) on the transfer of Arabic L1 habits while learning English as L2 have served as ‘eye-openers’ for those engaged in the task of teaching English to Arab learners. In their abstract to their first article, Ryan and Meara (1991), point out that because of the lexical structure and orthography of their mother tongue, Arab learners of English tend to rely heavily on consonants when attempting to recognize an English word. They conclude that the results of their ‘pilot experiment’ conducted with Arab learners of English in England, were compatible with their hypothesis, but more importantly, that further experiments were needed to confirm it.
According to Ryan and Meara (1991), Arabic speaking learners of English as L2 almost always preserve the consonant structure of the English words, in their English writings. It is the vowels that are often incorrect; they are either omitted or turn up in the wrong place. Given the prevalence of this error, the researchers initiated a project to test their hypothesis that the Arabic lexical processes had a negative influence while Arabs wrote in English. The researchers hoped to find some empirical evidence to support their suggestion.
The project was in two parts. Their initial paper and pencil pilot study involving 50 subjects drawn from different language backgrounds and various performance levels, had all their 9 Arabic speaking subjects commit errors on vowel letters. Required to insert missing letters in stimulus words, they came up with entirely different words.
A sequential computer based study, aimed at eliminating possible errors of the paper and pencil test, followed. A list of 100 correctly spelt 10 letter words, was displayed on the screen, one after the other, for one second each. After each such word, there was a two second blank out. Then the word reappeared, this time either spelt rightly or with incorrect spellings, with deleted vowels. The subjects were required to press ‘Yes’ for correct spellings and ‘No’ for incorrect ones. Of the 100 words, 40 were right and 60 had vowels deleted at the second, fourth, sixth and eighth positions of these 10 letter words. The 30 subjects drawn from different language groups and performance levels had 10 Arabic speakers and all Arab speakers faltered at locating the deleted vowels. Their rate of failure vis-à-vis the other 20 subjects showed that Arabic speakers could be using mental representations of English words which ignored vowel letters and relied heavily on consonants.
The results of a similar test on Arabs learning English as L2 in the USA, (Fender, 2008) showed that while Arab and non-Arab ESL students were not significantly different in listening comprehension, that the Arab students scored significantly lower on the spelling test and reading comprehension test.
According to some observers (Ayari, 1996; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003), L1 Arabic-speaking children learn to speak a colloquial dialect of Arabic as their L1 at home. But at school, they are required to read and write using Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the formal or literary form of Arabic used for all written texts. According to them, ‘these children learn to read in what some consider an L2’ (cited in Fender, 2008).
Further, according to Crompton (2011), literature on errors made by learners due to L1 transfer is rather inadequate. He attributes this ‘to a temporary eclipse of contrastive studies and error analysis (James, 1998; Mahmoud, 2000; Odlin, 1989)’.
Shabbir and Bughio (2009), observe that, Arabic has one letter for each sound and so spellings are much easier in Arabic as compared to English and that Arab schools don’t give spelling tests, because spelling is not a problem with the Arabic language. Arab students tend to make spelling mistakes in their (English) writings because of the silent letters in the alphabet, as in Arabic there are no silent letters in the middle of the words. They usually misspell the words such as ‘half’ ‘care’ and ‘knowledge’.
In their second article, Ryan and Meara (1996) point out that some Arabic speakers, seemingly, are inaccurate in handling vowels in English words, and are prone to making errors involving vowels. According to them, the possible explanation for these effects is that Arabic speakers may transfer to English a set of psycholinguistic strategies that are more appropriately deployed in processing Arabic words. They hold the view that in Arabic, vowels are of secondary importance both in script and in word building.
On the contrary, vowels are as important in Arabic as in English or in any other language. The fact that the symbols denoting short vowels are omitted in writing, does not reflect their insignificance; rather, it speaks of the confidence of the Arabs in their vowels.
Patil, (2010) makes a valid point when he observes that, anyone who has taught English as a foreign language in the Arab world should be familiar with the problems these learners face in learning English. Since Arabic is a non-Romanized language, its native speakers face special challenges in learning to read English. These problems result from the English alphabet, the left – right direction of English texts, and the complex letter- sound correspondences of English.
This researcher concurs with the view that the arbitrary vowel-sound correspondence, which is a characteristic feature of the English language, is a challenge to any learner of English. The difficulty is even greater for Arab students, who have been used to an organized unambiguous and well-structured vowel-sound correspondence. For example, the ‘fathah’ is always as in ‘cup’, ‘kasra’ is always as in ‘bin’ and ‘dhamma’ is always as in ‘push’; there is never a variance. On the other hand, in English, each of the five vowels has a number of sounds; ‘a’, can be pronounced as in ‘apple’, ‘are’, ‘gate’, ‘hall’; ‘e’ can be pronounced variedly as in ‘bed’,‘eat’, ‘shoe’; ‘u’ can be as in ‘but’ or as in ‘pull’. Vice versa is the case too, that is, the same sound can be spelt in a variety of ways, which can be confounding to non-native learners. The spellings of words with the same vowel sound, as in the pairs ‘cup’ and ‘rough’; ‘root’ and ‘route’; ‘wait’ and ‘weight’, are classic examples.
Khan, (2011) rightly points that another important difference between the vowel systems in both the languages is the importance of stress in English, and its complete absence in Arabic. Native speakers resort to the ‘schwa’, which weakens any strong vowel sound when it is not stressed. Khan observes: ‘Stress in English more strongly determines vowel quality than it does in most other world languages … Native English speakers frequently replace almost any vowel in an unstressed syllable with an unstressed vowel, often schwa. For example, from has a distinctly pronounced short ‘o’ sound when it is stressed (e.g. Where are you from?), but when it is unstressed, the short ‘o’ reduces to a schwa (e.g. I’m from London.)’ (Khan, 2011: 4).
Background to the Study
During this researcher’s teaching assignments at several Arab institutions, it was evident that Arab learners of English were transferring several L1 habits. One L1 habit being transferred consistently by most such learners was the omission of vowels in their English writings. This was the foundation on which the present study was initiated. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reasons for their ‘vowel blindness’ and examine if learners could be helped out of this.
Free-writing
There was abundant material to test the concept of ‘vowel blindness’ in the writings of the Arab learners in this study, available in the free writing of the learners in class/home work.
In a classroom ‘Free-writing’ exercise on ‘My Daily Activities’, the glossing over and mixing up of English vowels in writing, indicative of the phenomenon of ‘Vowel blindness’, was evident in the following words shown in Table 1:
Free Writing and the Learners’ Erroneous Spellings.
Analysis
An analysis of the misspelt words provided the following information:
In all the words listed above, the consonants were almost invariably available.
They were in the same order as they occurred in each word.
The consonant letter ‘h’, was recorded in ‘wash’ and ‘brush’, but was absent in the spelling for ‘teeth’, suggesting that there was no firm reason for them to include or exclude it.
The letter ‘h’ was again absent in the word ‘khulais’, The reason could be that in Arabic there is only one letter خ for the English equivalent ‘kh’.
The only consonant misplaced was ‘p’ in the place of ‘b’, as evident where the letter ‘b’ is substituted by ‘p’, in *preakfast / *preakfacet – in place of ‘breakfast’. This is another example of mother tongue interference because the Arabic language has no / p / sound in its phonemic system. This, however, is not the subject of this study.
The study conducted by Ryan and Meara (1996) was done on Arab students enrolled in university courses in England, on learners who might have been made aware of the differences between the spelling systems of Arabic and English inside and outside the university classroom. This study, on the other hand, was on Arab learners of English stationed as yet in Arabic surroundings, where L1 habits are at their firmest.
The scope of this study is limited to learners of English as L2, whose L1 is Arabic. The learners are undergoing instruction in colleges/universities in Saudi Arabia. The study is based on errors identified by the teacher/researcher in the course of teaching English as L2 to such learners, as observed during the teacher’s several years of teaching English to Arab students in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Libya, and based specifically on the data collected from the English writings of learners of English as L2, studying in the male section of the Faculty of Science and Arts, Khulais campus of King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
These learners enjoyed only a limited exposure to the English language. They belonged to the 17-19 age group. They had undergone a grammar-based training in the language and were often diffident in speaking in English.
Research Questions
This study is an attempt to establish the influence of Arabic, the L1 of these learners, in the spellings in their writings in English and to examine as to what extent vowel blindness in Arabic students could be remedied through focused remedial work.
The data required for this project was collected, based on the phenomenon that the Arabic L1 habit of omitting vowel pointing diacritics, is transferred by Arab learners of English as L2, resulting in their English spellings often devoid of vowel letters.
Some researchers (Abushihab et al., 2011) state that, within the field of Applied Linguistics, most of the studies of foreign language learning have adopted one of the following as a basis of accounting for or explaining errors: the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CA), Error Analysis (EA) and the Interlanguage (IL).
This researcher has based this work upon the weak version of the contrastive analysis – from the observed evidence to the cause. The fact that Arab learners lose track of English vowel letters in their writings in English is tested and found to be true and established as results of mother tongue interference (Ryan and Meara, 1991). But it is this researcher’s experience that this ‘vowel blindness’ could be overcome if treated with the right remedial methods. One approach is to focus on the differences between the two languages, highlight to the students those aspects in which English as L2 is different from their mother tongue, and give special training in those areas.
Under these circumstances, it would be worthwhile to consider a few salient features of Arabic orthography in general and the role of Arabic vowels in particular. This could be of significant help to teachers of English as L2 to Arabic speakers, and help them locate the exact areas where these learners stumble (see Appendix).
The Research Procedure
Participants
A group of 20 learners was selected. This set was formed from the students of the Khulais campus of King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah. They were all male and were in the 17-19 age-group. The mother tongue of this group of students was Arabic, in which they had commendable mastery, as vouchsafed for by Arab native teachers of English, in the faculty.
Methodology
For this pilot study, these participants were given a ‘dictation test’ to record their spelling errors, if any, by testing them on their active vocabulary. After examining the errors committed by the participants, they were given suitable remedial tutorials for 2 weeks (10 hours of instruction) to help them overcome the phenomenon of ‘vowel blindness’. Finally, they were given a post-remedial/instructional test, to assess the outcome.
In order to make this process as effective as possible, certain steps were initiated, as shown below. As the researcher is himself a non-native speaker of both Arabic as well as English, the following precautions were taken for the elimination of possible shortcomings on the part of the researcher.
A native Arab teacher of English in the faculty was used for the pre-instructional dictation test. His voice was recorded on a CD and the words were played for the students in the classroom. Each word was repeated 3 times in a row allowing for a pause lasting 30 seconds, between each repetition as well as between each word. The reason for employing a native Arab voice was because the native Arab teachers of English had taught them English at school, immediately prior to their enrolment in the foundation Program at the University.
‘Natural Recorder’ software was used for the post-instructional dictation test. This software has a database of male and female native English speaker voices. The dictation words were pronounced by male and female voices alternately, beginning with a female voice. Native English voices were used because the learners needed to attune themselves to native English pronunciation eventually.
The words were dictated 3 times each, one after the other. This method was adopted for both the tests.
During the remedial-instructional phase also, native English speakers’ speech was used, including the instructional ‘Rosetta Stone’.
The post- instructional test was conducted on the first working day of the third week, to allow a cooling-off weekend period, when the instruction was expected to sink-in.
Both the pre-instructional and the post-instructional tests were held after due intimation to the students about the time, date and the location.
Choice of words for the dictation tests:
Pre-remedial test: words were chosen from the active English vocabulary of students of the faculty. It included names of familiar people, places and content words, which they often hear and write, in English.
Post- remedial test: words were chosen from among the passive vocabulary of the students of the faculty. Polysyllabic words which featured in the test were from the signboards learners would see every day, as they drive to and from the university.
Instruments
a) Pre-remedial Test
However, to confirm the research questions, a specific 10 word dictation test of the words shown in Table 2, was conducted in a class of 20 participants. The students encounter these words almost daily. Though the learners recognized the words instantly, their spellings differed.
Pre- Remedial Target Words and Their Erroneous Spellings.
Most importantly, the spellings differed in vowels , although the consonants invariably were recorded correctly.
The participants were asked to write the following very common words. It is unfortunate but true, that the participants in this study, as do most students enrolled in the Foundation Program of this rural university, had very limited exposure to the English language. Though the participants had been introduced to the English language as an L2 in the schools, their repertoire of English words does not go beyond a basic set of about 50 words. In this context, the target words that were chosen were those whose spellings were constantly visible for these participants. They would see these words displayed at various locations within and outside the university premises.
Among the proper names, the first is a household name among Muslims the world over. The next three words are names of towns and villages closely associated with these participants. They would encounter these words at direction signboards on the roads. The noun ‘college’ was chosen as the word is prominently displayed at the entrance to the university, indicating the directions to the various colleges, like the ‘College of Arts’, ‘College of Science’ and so on. Besides, the word ‘college’ had a silent vowel letter in the word final position in English, a feature that is not available in the Arabic language. The numeral ‘two’ was included for much the same reason, as also because Arab writers of English are known to write *‘tow’ for ‘two’. The three other nouns formed part of their active vocabulary. The word ‘father’ was included to see if the participants got the two vowel letters right, one in the first and the other in the second syllables. The words ‘road’ and ‘chair’ needed them to include two vowel letters in the proper order, in the word medial position. The verb ‘pray’ is an integral part of a practicing Muslim’s life, and it was hoped that the participants would be aware of the spelling of that word. Another reason to include it was because the word had a ‘CC’ consonant cluster and it was proposed to see if the participants introduced a vowel letter between the two consonants since Arabic language, usually, has an undisplayed vowel between successive consonants in its written form.
Table 2 indicates the number of erroneous spellings produced for each word.
Data Representation
Table 3 presents detailed information on the errors committed by the subjects classified along vowel and consonant divisions. It also presents the percentage of errors in each category. As in the case of the free-writing exercise, there are almost no errors involving consonants, whereas there is a high incidence of errors involving vowels.
Pre-remedial Errors Committed by the Subjects.
Findings
Based on the recording, analyses, and the findings projected by this short study of the ‘writings’ of Arab learners of English:
it is established that the percentage of errors in the use of vowels is very high when compared to that of consonants;
the Arab learners of English could be ‘vowel blind’;
this may be attributed to the phenomenon of L1 interference.
While English has a larger vowel system with 20 vowels, including diphthongs and triphthongs, Arabic has only three short and three long vowels. Vowels in the two languages have similarities as well as differences. They differ in distribution, too. The Arabic script is based on roots of consonants, and short vowels are employed when necessary as diacritics above and below the consonant. Thus, Arabic has a rich consonantal system but a relatively poor vowel system.
Remedial Work
What to Remedy?
Scholars classify Arabic vowels into four major types: (1) long vowels (2) short vowels (3) diphthongs, and (4) double vowels.
The long vowels are three in number: و ي أ ( Arabic alphabets – read right to left ) / ɑː/, / iː / and / uː /, as in / fɑː/, / siː/and / ∫uː/. This function is done by adding the letters ‘alif’, ‘ya’, and ‘wav’, respectively to the consonant letters whose sounds need to be lengthened. In addition to these, there are diphthongs / aɪ / by coupling ‘alif’ and ‘ya’ as in / paɪ / and / aʊ / by coupling ‘alif’ and ‘waw’, as in / kaʊ /. Arabic scholars also identify a set of double vowels, which are called ‘tanween’; it is the ‘double fathah’, ‘double kasra’ and ‘double damma’. This is, in fact, the process of ‘nunation’. In written Arabic nunation is indicated by doubling the vowel diacritic at the end of the word, which gives the sound of / ʌn /, / ɪn /, and / ʊn /, respectively.
The short vowels are known as ‘Haraka’. There are no special letters to denote these short vowel sounds; but they are represented by diacritic symbols, which are generally used only in teaching texts for guiding an early stage learner. These symbols are omitted in advanced learning, as the learner has by now trained to read the words without the diacritic symbols. These symbols are three:
Fathah (
) sign: an oblique dash over a consonant representing the /ʌ / sound, as in /tʌb/.
Kasra (
) sign: an oblique dash under a consonant representing the / ɪ / sound, as in /pɪn/.
Damma (
) sign: a loop over, resembling a comma, and representing the /ʊ/ sound, as in /gʊd/.
Out of these possible vowel sounds, the symbols of the first three short vowels, of fathah, kasra and damma, and double vowels are omitted in writing in advanced levels, but the long vowels can never be omitted.
As mentioned earlier, the Arabic word for the short vowel sound is ‘haraka’. ‘Haraka’, literally, means movement, and these vowels give life and movement to the consonants, and make the word readable. They are an essential and inherent part of a word, but the only difference is that the Arabs know by literary instinct, as they read the sentence, which of the short vowels is inherent and embedded within that word. The non-Arab speakers are at a loss to recognize this embedded vowel sound.
When native English speakers hear a word / blu: /, they instantly recognize whether it is ‘blue’ or ‘blew’, When someone says, ‘the sky is blue’, it is understood that the word referred to is ‘blue’ and not ‘blew’; and when someone says, ‘the wind blew’, it is understood as ‘blew’ and not as ‘blue’. In the same manner, the Arabs know the exact use of the short vowels, even if the symbols representing the short vowels are not printed in advanced Arabic books. For example, the Arabs know when it is, ‘dharabal waladu’ / ðʌrʌbʌl wʌlʌdʊ / which means, ‘the boy beat (someone)’, or when it is ‘dharabal walada’, / ðʌrʌbʌl wʌlʌdʌ/ which means ‘someone beat the boy’, though the / ʊ / and / ʌ /, are not explicitly indicated with diacritics in the word. In the written form the structures would be identical as ‘dhrbl wld’ for both meanings. The vowel is embedded in the word, and it decides whether a noun is a subject or an object. In the first example, adding a dhamma makes the word a subject, and in the second sentence, a fathah is added, which makes the word an object. Again, the word is read with a kasra, to make it a possessive or genetic case. For example, ‘the boy’s pen’ is ‘khalamul waladhi’ / kʌlʌmʌl wʌlʌdɪ / and ‘with the boy’ is ‘ma’al waladhi’ / ma’al wʌlʌdɪ /. Arabs presented with these sentence structures in writing will never read it as anything else.
The remedial work focused only on the correct English vowel letters to be supplied between connecting English consonants.
Remedial Process
During the 2 week – 10 hour instruction work, the following procedure was consistently followed.
The teacher pronounced all the vowel sounds in English one by one, five times each. The students were asked to listen.
[Objective: The students were able to understand that there are 20 vowel sounds in English.]
The teacher pronounced the vowels one by one and the students were asked to repeat.
[Objective: The students were able to pronounce the vowels in English.]
The teacher read out words consisting of a single vowel, and the students were asked to listen, and then to repeat them.
e.g. I, eye
[Objective: The students were able to understand that in written English vowels are represented differently.]
The teacher read out words with a single consonant and vowel and the students were asked to listen, and then to repeat them.
e.g. He, she, it, see, pea
[Objective: The students were able to understand that vowels in English are not represented as diacritics].
The teacher read out a list of words in which a particular vowel is used /i:/
e.g. Heed, feel, bead, pea, see.
Similar lists were prepared for all vowels and read out to the students. The teacher wrote the words on the board before reading them aloud. The students were asked to take note of the spelling.
[Objective: The students were able to identify the different vowels in English].
The teacher read out a list of words in which different vowels are used. The students were asked to find out how many vowels there were in the words.
e.g. Run, permit, submit, meet
[Objective: The students were able to distinguish and identify the vowels in English].
The teacher wrote a list of words on the board and the students were asked to copy the words and underline the part of the word containing a vowel sound.
e.g. Seek, book, note, pen, college.
[Objective: The students were able to identify the vowels. Again, they learn to represent the vowel sounds as vowel letter].
b) Post – remedial test
After the 2 weeks of remedial work, highlighting the importance of vowels in English words, another 10 word exercise, as shown in Table 4, was given to the subjects.
Post-remedial Target Words and their Erroneous Spellings.
The target words for the post-remedial test were drawn from the passive vocabulary of the participants. Words from the registers of education and travel were chosen. As they are pursuing academic courses, participants would normally have these words at the back of their minds. Since the university is close to an international airport, some words related to travel could have possibly entered their minds, as the participants were likely to see these words on signboards on their way to and from the university. Proper nouns were omitted.
The rationale was to see if the participants were able to handle English vowels in various combinations, post remedial - work. In words like ‘building’ and ‘computer’ it was intended to see if the participants entered the right vowels at three different locations. Some words like ‘building’ and ‘teacher’, were included to test whether the participants were able to incorporate a sequence of two vowel letters. Words with ‘-tion’, which have two vowel letters but have no one to one sound- spelling correspondence, also found a place. Words like ‘student’, ‘travel’ and ‘flight’ were listed to see if they faltered at word initial ‘CC’ consonant cluster. The word ‘flight’ was also intended to test if the participants could replace the diphthong sound / ai / by a single vowel letter ‘i’. Finally a set of polysyllabic words like ‘examination’, ‘international’, and ‘university’ were there to test if the participants did not lose sight of the vowel letters while having to provide four, five or even six of them in these words.
Table 4 above indicates the number of erroneous spellings produced for each word.
Data Representation
Table 5 below presents detailed information on the effect of remedial instruction on their performance, presenting errors committed by the participants classified along vowel and consonant divisions. It also presents the percentage of errors in each category. It will be noticed that (a) there was one error in consonants, in the word ‘flight’, (b) there were two instances of error involving vowels in bisyllabic words – ‘building’ and ‘travel’, (c) an instance of an error in the vowel of the word ‘flight’ and (d) there was a high incidence of errors involving vowels in polysyllabic words.
Post-remedial Errors Committed by the Subjects.
Findings
Reinforcement and consolidation may be required in cases where the spelling of the word included 2 vowel letters, but the word was pronounced with a monophthong, as in the case of the word ‘building’ – pronounced as / bɪldɪŋ /. The Arab learner of English could tend to supply a single vowel in such cases.
The incidence of 1(one) learner who misspelt the word ‘travel’ could have been caused due to ‘over anxiety’, and may be ignored as an one-off error.
The error in the vowel in the word ‘flight’ could be a reverse process to point 1 above. Here is a case of a single vowel letter which is pronounced with a diphthong – ‘flight’ - / flaɪt /. The learner probably heard the first vowel phoneme / a / in the diphthong and ignored the second of the two phonemes.
Polysyllabic words were still a cause of concern. The high incidence of errors in polysyllabic words – ‘university, ‘international’ and ‘examination’ could be attributed, at best, to ‘over anxiety’ in the presence of several vowels occurring in the same word, resulting in misapplication.
Conclusion
Based on the recordings, analyses, and the findings projected by a short class room test, after 2 weeks of remedial exercises, it could be observed from the English writings of Arab learners of English, that:
It is possible to help Arab learners concentrate on the need to provide all vowel letters in English words.
This ‘vowel blindness’ is only temporary. It is akin to the ‘temporary blindness’ that is curable.
This interference of the mother tongue, may be overcome by proper instruction, remedial work, reinforcement and constant exposure to print and audio / video media.
Data Representation
The following Table 6 presents a comparison between the percentages of error caused due to the phenomenon of ‘vowel blindness’ at the pre-remedial stage as against the absence of such a phenomenon after effective remedial – instructional work.
Comparison of Errors.
Results
If the figures in Table 3 were to be considered as the base, then the following inferences may be made.
There are only 6 erroneous spellings in vowels in Table 5, compared to the 34 in Table 3, resulting in a substantial reduction by 82% in erroneous spellings.
There are only 13 instances of error in vowels in Table 5, compared to the 161 in Table 3, resulting in a substantial reduction of 88% in instances of error.
Through such remedial work, it could be established that, Arab learners of English could be trained to eliminate errors caused due to the phenomenon of ‘vowel blindness’, and be trained successfully to incorporate the correct vowel letters corresponding to English vowel letters/sounds in their English writings.
Implications of the Study
When a native Arabic speaker learning English as L2 writes *lsn as the spelling for the English word ‘listen’, and *tow, for ‘two’, we notice a classic example of L1 interference at work. The Arabic speaker has used the following Arabic orthographic rules which are subconsciously ingrained in him /her.
As Arabic orthography generally requires only the consonant letters and long vowels to be rendered in the written form, the speaker has spelt only the consonants in the proper order.
While reading the printed word *lsn, the native Arab speaker knows that it is obligatory to supply a vowel between each consonant in the string, because it is how Arabic is read.
In the Arabic language, every consonant that is written and every vowel, indicated or not indicated by a diacritic, has to be pronounced. The Arabic speaker is yet to master the concept of the presence of silent letters in English spellings, as the letter ‘t’ in the word ‘listen’. So this letter does not find a place in the string *lsn, although ‘t’ has a corresponding consonant letter/phoneme in Arabic.
One of the oft misspelt English words in the Arabic world is the word ‘two’. Unless a native Arabic speaker has had at least some initiation in English, the Arabic speaker would spell the word as *tow. This is probably because each consonant (in this case ‘t’) has to be followed by a vowel in Arabic.
Hence it may be fair to conclude that the Arab native speaker learning English as L2, is in fact ever conscious of the importance of vowels in words. He/she would not only supply, but would also supply the right vowel sound/letter, while speaking Arabic. Since the Arabs know the importance of vowels in writing in English, systematic training will surely help them be cured of ‘vowel blindness’.
Scope for Further Research
Based on the outcome of this research project, as well as the researcher’s personal experience teaching English as L2 to native Arabic speakers, the following may be considered potential areas that could have substance for further research, in the area of Arabs being taught to write in English.
In Arabic there is no upper/lower case letters. This is probably the reason why Arabic learners of English tend to write long English sentences with absolutely no upper case letters for proper nouns, or sentence beginning words.
As the diacritic (.) is a consonant pointing diacritic in Arabic, but a sentence ending punctuation mark in English, there is a lot of confusion among Arab learners.
For the same reason as in (2) above, the Arabs use the punctuation mark ‘comma’ (,) to indicate fractions. For instance 24.5 in English would read 24,5 in Arabic. A person, uninitiated into this aspect of the Arabic language, who reads this may read it as – 24 comma 5.
The right to left direction of writing in Arabic throws up several problems for learners of English. In the main, many Arab students tend to write English letters from right to left. For instance, when a learner writes the letter ‘m’, in both the upper/lower case, he/she tends to begin from the right most extreme and proceed leftwards to complete the letter. This is likely to impede his/her speed in writing English.
The implications of the right to left direction of writing as shown in (4) above, is likely to have disastrous consequences if the English numerals are not taught sufficiently well to Arab learners of English. For instance, in Arabic, the numeral 24 is rendered with the unit first and the tens thereafter – as if to state 4 and 20, (Arabic – ‘arbah ashroon’ - ‘arbah’ – 4 and ‘ashroon’ – 20 ), whereas in English the tens are stated first followed by the units – as 20 and 4 (English – twenty four – ‘twenty’ – 20 and ‘four’ – 4 ) So, in a test of dictation in English numerals, an Arab learner is likely to write 42 when he/she hears the word 24. This could lead to disastrous implications in the banking industry.
Although there is a vowel between every two consonants, there are words with a maximum of two consonants in a consonant cluster in Arabic. So an English word like ‘nomenclature’ with a ‘CCC’ consonant cluster of three consonants ‘ncl’ in the middle is likely to be challenging for Arabic speakers. They may tend to insert an additional vowel in their spelling/speech of this word, to read/ say *nomeneclature, *nomencalature, etc.
Arabic words ending with a ‘tanwin’ (‘nunation’ – indicated by a doubling of the diacritics of short vowels) or a word ending with a ‘sukun’ (a circle shaped diacritic placed above a letter) indicate that they are words ending with the nasal consonant / n /. These letters can never be followed by a vowel either in speech or in spelling. Hence, Arab learners are likely to omit writing the silent vowel letter ‘e’, resulting in the spelling of the word ‘fine’, wrong. They would tend to write *fin, instead. Another instance is *don for ‘done’.
The Arabic language has no equivalent for the English voiceless bilabial stop phoneme / p /. The Arabic speakers invariably replace / p / with its voiced counterpart / b /.
Arabic L1 interference is an area of potential research given the fact that Arabia has, in the past several decades, opened itself up to the world. The field of education has grown manifold and there is a great rush for Arabs to learn English. Similarly, nationals of other countries are in constant communication with the Arabs for various reasons. Hence, well-established techniques to help native Arab learners overcome interference from their L1 habits is certainly a laudable objective in the field of teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language.
Footnotes
Appendix
Acknowledgements
The Researcher/Teacher acknowledges with thanks, the invaluable contribution made by his former colleague Dr. G. Joseph Panneerselvam, Professor and Head of the Department of English (Retd), NMSSVN College, Nagamalai, Madurai, India, and by the researcher’s wife Gulnar Raheem Khan. Without their technical and critical contribution, this paper would not have been possible. The section ‘Remedial Work’ was arrived at in consultation with Dr. Panneerselvam.
Declaration of conflicting interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
This project was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, under grant no. [1431/857/456]. The Researcher, therefore, acknowledges with thanks, the DSR Technical and Financial support.