THE INFLUENCE OF STANDARD ARABIC ON THE PERFORMANCE OF IRAQI LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

Abstract

It is widely held that interference from the mother tongue plays a major part in the performance of foreign language learners. This view has been validated by Duškova 1969, George 1971, and Lance, 1969.Demmergues et al. (1976) have elaborated this further and pointed out that interference is greatest in the early stages but it diminishes in advanced stages when the learner has acquired a better command of the target language, in which case other factors such as false generalizations, misapplication of rules and the like come into play. An investigation of interference from the mother tongue in the case of Iraqi Arab learners of English is not an easy task because of the great number of variables involved. Apart from the influence that the surrounding languages (i.e. Kirdish, Turkish, Persian, and Syriac) can have on the performance of the Iraqi Arab learner, the situation is further complicated by the fact that there are two forms of Arabic, i.e. Standard (SA) and Colloquial (CA). Ferguson states that a dialect «the low form»> is the real mother tongue as it is the variety learnt first, whereas «the high form»> SA is learnt at school through fromal instruction. If this view is correct, then we would expect to find most interference, if there is any, from the dialect rather than from SA. And it is the validity of this statement that we seek to investigate.

Keywords

• foreign languages
• language learners
• grammar application
• education