Methods of Teaching English

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Browsing Methods of Teaching English by Author "Ahmed A. Mahmoud"

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    The Errors that Arabic-Speaking Palestinians Make in Forming the English Relative Clause
    (1997) Ahmed A. Mahmoud; Dr. Rami Hamdallah; Dr. Suzan Arafat
    The purpose of this study is to investigate the errors that Arab Palestinian learners make in formation of the relative clauses, especially in written English . To achieve this , the researcher gathered all kinds of errors made by the pupils through the free different compositions (narrative , analytical and descriptive) . The free compositions were given to 400 pupils (males and females) in the 11th grade in Jenin District schools . The researcher chose 10 schools randomly from the whole district The researcher divided the sample into two groups (controlled and experimental). The two groups were given the same free compositions. Besides, the researcher gave the same instructions and time for the two groups. The researcher explained the basic features of English and Arabic relative clauses and supplied these features to the learners of the expert- mental group . The other learners of the controlled group were taught traditionally, according to the school textbooks and instructions. The researcher did so in order to find out how the native language of the learners can influence their output of English. This does not mean that the researcher neglected other important causes which could be ascribed to positive transfer and other strategies that the Arab learners follow when dealing with the English relative clauses and which will surely affect their output of English . The next step was classification of errors into types according to their frequency.After thorough examination of errors, the researcher found out that Arab Palestinian learners in the 11th grade make a lot of errors when forming the English relative clauses . Transfer (negative transfer from Arabic and positive transfer who is related to English itself) forms the biggest source of errors whereas other sources of errors are less frequent. Hamdallah (1990), Tushyeh (1988) , Kharma (1987) and Mukattash (1986) dealt with errors that are due to transfer as a strategy which affects the Arab learners' output of English . What is new in this study is that it is limited to a lower level of schooling ( basic and secondary) .The researcher found out a new source of errors which up to his knowledge , was not mentioned by other researchers . The 11th-grade learners showed positive and negative transfer in their output of English in the same examples. Although this type of errors is not frequent , it is worth giving further attention and research . Another important phenomenon which the researcher noticed, and which as far as the researcher knows , was not dealt with by other scholars , is the wrong substitution of 'where' and 'when'. Although this type of errors is not frequent, it deserves further research. In addition to negative transfer, there are other minor sources of errors which deserve further study and attention by everyone concerned with teaching English relative clause to Arab learners. Among these less frequent errors are: Pupils in the 11th grade misunderstand the use of restrictive and non -restrictive relative clauses , the use of prepositions with clauses that contain 'when' and 'where' , the use of 'who' , 'when' and 'which' to replace 'whose' and the use of 'all what' to replace 'all that' . The causes of these errors could be attributed to lack of knowledge in the target language on the pupils' part; besides, the school textbooks do not concentrate on these topics. Moreover, over generalization and simplification strategies were less frequent than both negative and positive transfer strategies.