Discourse―yes, Grammar―no. Influence of Arabic mother tongue on Arab students' writing in Hebrew

Abstract

Learning Hebrew among L1 Arabic speakers in East Jerusalem, Israel, has gained momentum, since being fluent in the language of the majority contributes to socioeconomic mobility and inclusion. One of the main challenges L2 learners face is writing, specifically expository and argumentative composition. Writing products of native speakers of Arabic (L1) in Hebrew (L2) reveal cross-linguistic influences, including language transfer from L1. This L1 interference is strengthened by the strong resemblance of these two Semitic languages, and is manifested in morphology, syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and rhetorical structures. In this study we examine changes in the expository-argumentative writing in Hebrew (L2) of Arabic speaking students who participated in an intensive Hebrew learning program. We used qualitative textual analysis based on 48 writing products [24 pre-, 24 post-tests]. Our research questions were: 1. What are the main characteristics of Arabic speaking students' writing in Hebrew? 2. What types of changes are evident in their writing samples after completing two years of Hebrew study? In order to characterize their writing, study participants completed pre-and post-tests. Our findings suggest: (a) a strong interference of Arabic on writing in Hebrew in different language fields; (b) a noticeable improvement in some aspects of discourse, but much less in grammar, and in the lexicon, yielding mixed results.

Persistence of interference from L1 Arabic in written Hebrew

“…Research on Hebrew interlanguage of Arabs in Israel. Written Hebrew of Arabicspeakers in Israel has been studied at middle and high school (Bassal, 2007;Henkin, 2001), in L2 Hebrew language matriculation exams (Abu Bakr, 2003;Shehadeh, 1998), in essays of college students (Abu Bakr, 2016;Dana, 1976;Haskel-Shaham et al, 2018;Henkin, 2003;2004;Manor, 2016;Margolin & Ezer, 2013-2014Shatil, 2008;Tamir et al, 2016) and in the Iṣṭaba website of teachers of Hebrew in Arab schools (Watad, 2014). Most of the earlier works tended to list errors and identify L1 influence in a contrastive error analysis approach that predominated SLA research between the 1950s and the 1970s (Hinkel, 2005).…”

“…Relatively little research has tackled discourse patterns and task-related characteristics of the Hebrew interlanguage of Arabic-speakers (Haskel-Shaham et al, 2018;Henkin, 2001Henkin, , 2003Henkin, , 2004Manor, 2016). Like SLA academic writing elsewhere (Hinkel, 2005) this SLA writing differs radically from L1 academic writing (Margolin & Ezer, 2013-2014.…”

“…Notably, this issue of vowel differentiation should not rise at all in writing, since in the unvocalized Hebrew script /u/ and /o/ share a single vowel letter (W), as do /i/ and /e/ (Y), as said above; so phonemic under-differentiation in both these cases is concealed in writing. However, many graduates of the Arabic school system do partially vocalize their Hebrew writing, even after two years at college at university level (Haskel-Shaham et al, 2018;Henkin, 2003;Tamir et al, 2016). This insistence on vocalization has been attributed, among other factors, to importance of diacritics in Arabic script, where they distinguish letters.…”

“…3 The literature on the Hebrew interlanguage of Arabic-speakers contains many lists of preposition choices under L1 influence at all levels of education, including professional teachers of Hebrew (Abu Bakr, 2005;Bassal, 2007;Shehadeh, 1998;Tamir et al, 2016;Watad, 2014). It was targeted as one of the most persistent errors over two years of Hebrew studies at college (Haskel-Shaham et al, 2018). 4shows syntactic interference from Arabic where 'help', as in English, governs a direct (accusative) object, whereas in Hebrew it governs the dative preposition l(e)-'to':…”

“…Deletion of the independent particle et in (7a) is very common in learner language, regardless of L1. Hebrew interlanguage of Arabic-speakers is no exception (Abu Bakr, 2005;Haskel-Shaham et al, 2018;Shatil 2008;Shehadeh, 1998;Tamir et al, 2016;Watad, 2014). In (7b), however, omission of the inflecting accusative allomorph otwould leave a stranded suffix -o, that cannot stand alone.…”