Identification of Cross-linguistic Factors Affecting Interlanguage System Progress of Saudi Learners of EFL (Published)

This paper aims to identify EFL teachers’ perceptions of the cross-linguistic factors affecting the interlanguage system progress of Saudi learners of EFL at Najran University.  A purposive sample of twenty-six (26) English language teachers at Najran university representing the main participants in this paper.  The paper revealed that the main cross-linguistic factors affecting interlanguage system progress of Saudi learners of EFL were attributed to the status of English as a foreign language in KSA which doesn’t allow learners ample exposure to communicative language settings, besides the teaching practices that fail in providing authentic learning atmosphere assisting the progress of learners’ interlanguage system, and the interference of learners’ mother tongue that negatively affects the progress of their interlanguage system

Keywords: Cross-linguistic factors, Interlanguage system, Mother Tongue Interference, Saudi learners

A Study of Grammatical Errors of Subject Verb Agreement in Writing Made By Saudi Learners (Published)

This study investigates and classifies grammatical errors with subject-verb agreement in writing made by Saudi students in the foundation year at Taibah University. The students were enrolled in an English language course where they were studying English as a core module. The class was divided into two modules: reading and writing, and listening and speaking. The data was collected throughout the second semester, where students (intermediate-upper intermediate level), were asked to write eight different paragraphs on eight different topics taken from the reading and writing book. The grammatical errors related to subject-verb agreement in writing were identified and classified into three main categories according to their consistency. These errors are mainly categorised as: (a) subject-verb agreement errors with singular subjects (b) subject-verb agreement errors with plural subjects, and (c) subject-verb agreement errors where the main verb or auxiliary verb is compounded with or separated from the subject. The study found that subject-verb agreement errors with singular subjects appear to be more frequent and the most committed among these three categories in students’ writing.

Keywords: Saudi learners, grammatical errors, subject-verb agreement-writing skills.