Contrastive Analysis: Difficulties Arabic Learners Face in ‎Using English Language Tenses ‎

Afnan Ahmad Aljohani

Abstract


The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of different verb tenses in Arabic and English which caused errors by Arabic learners. The researcher provided a contrastive analysis of two different groups of tenses of English and Arabic: shared tenses and aspects as well as language specific tenses to determine if learners make errors based on different tense systems. The participants of this research were 35 freshmen students of Management Science at Yanbu University College (Female Campus). This research was a quantitative research and it used two grammar tests one examined the similar tenses and another examined the different tenses. The findings showed that shared tenses between English and Arabic received 91% correct answers while different tenses received only 27% correct answers. On the other hand, the wrong answers that shared similarities received 9% and differences received 73%. To sum up, the results showed that the differences in Arabic tenses were the main reason that affected learners' usage of English tenses. 


Keywords


tenses, aspects, contrastive analysis, errors‎

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References


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