The Most Frequent Errors in Academic Writing: A Case of EFL Undergraduate Arab Students in Israel

Abstract

The current study examined the most common types of academic writing errors and the causes of such errors made by 44 tertiary EFL Arab-Israeli students. A methodological triangulation was employed in this research. Results and analyses of errors in the written samples revealed that students made a substantial number of errors in both rating scales. In the generic writing performance scale (the qualitative method), 75% of students’ written samples rated poor, and the error frequency rating scale (the quantitative method) showed that the students made 2965 errors, which is a notably large number in proportion to the essay length. The researchers have also inferred that the principal reason for such errors is the triglossic nature of Arabic in Israel. The novelty of this research is that such triglossic nature of Arab-Israelis’ language has not yet been investigated in the field. To this end, the results drawn will be utilised in future research as a platform for exploring effective teaching approaches that may enhance EFL students’ writing performance.

It's All about My Mother [Language]: The Effect of Mother Language on Spoken Errors Made by EFL Arab Students

“…A third Grammar/Syntactic error subcategory that is widely evident in our results relates to the "fluctuation" of articles (A10), as manifested by the tendency among EFL Arab speakers to misuse this noun modifier by fluctuating between "the" and "a/ an" (Jaensch and Sarko, 2009). This observation has been described by other researchers including Folse (2008), Scott and Tucker (1974) and Chaleila & Garra-Alloush (2019) and can be attributed to the contrast between the English article system and that used in Arabic. Similar errors have been discussed concerning Japanese EFL learners, apparently due to the differences between the use of articles in Japanese and English, concerning the "fluctuation" of the definite article "the" with the indefinite article "a/an" among Japanese learners.…”

“…In addition to the challenges deriving from diglossia, the existence of two languages in one community (Ferguson, 1959) that all Arabic-speaking EFL learners must contend with, those in Israel have a further encumbrance in the form of triglossia, which not only complicates their English learning generally, but renders speaking that language particularly complex and daunting due to "three-faceted interferences" (Chaleila and Garra-Alloush, 2019).…”

“…However, the most significant contribution to research English learners among Arab students in Israel, whose identity is complicated due to their Palestinian origins (although they all have the Israeli identification document as they live within the Israeli borders) relates to triglossia, the "coexistence of three languages within a speech community" (Garner, 2009(Garner, , p. 1033, which is an obstacle unique to them. Specifically, Arabs in Israel speak a variety of vernaculars in daily situations, including code-switching with Hebrew in daily interactions and academic spheres, as well as employing MSA, which is studied in schools (Chaleila & Garra-Alloush, 2019). The challenge of triglossia is compounded by how very different the Arabic and English languages are in terms of syntactical, morphological, phonological, lexical, semantic, rhetorical and orthographical properties.…”

Teaching English in multilingual Israel: Who teaches whom and how. A review of recent research 2014–2020

“…As pointed out previously, Arabic-speaking groups of English learners are often trilingual and are frequent participants in research on language teaching. Their learning challenges in the EFL classroom are studied from a variety of perspectives ranging from the educational system that might hinder their success in learning English through applied linguistic queries, such as the most frequent errors in academic writing (Chaleila & Garra-Alloush, 2019), to the content of English textbooks and their suitability for the Arabic-speaking population (Amara, 2017).…”

The Effect of Comprehensive Explicit Instruction Approach on Arab EFL Students’ Academic Writing Performance

“…Therefore, the students were provided with four academic sources. The test lasted two hours and was followed by a thorough assessment of students' writing performance and the writing errors drawn from this test were listed in accordance with their type and frequency (Chaleila & Garra-Alloush, 2019). That is, accuracy of students' writing was measured by using an error analysis.…”