Algerian Arabic Varieties Speakers’ Errors in English Writings “A Contrastive Error Analysis Study”

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis aims at investigating the main causes behind the grammatical errors the Algerian students at university tend to make in their written production. Based on the contrastive error analysis procedure, the focus is made on the contrast and comparison of the two basic morpho-syntactic systems of English and Arabic to predict and explain the unnatural word combination as well as the morphological errors extracted from a selected sample of 160 essays written by students at the Economic and Management Faculty in Tiaret University. The students’ incorrect shift of various grammatical structures and word formation errors clarify clearly the evidence of Arabic interference into English as a result of the structural differences between the systems of both languages. This would stress the hypothesis that learners’ already acquired knowledge affects their performance in L2.