An Analysis of Spoken Grammatical Errors of Arab Learners of English as a Foreign Language at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan

Abstract

The present study has investigated and classified spoken grammatical errors committed by 40 students studying at the Department of English Literature and Translation at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan. The students were asked to speak about the importance of learning English as a foreign language. The data collected and recorded were analyzed. Errors found were grouped into errors in tenses, errors in the use of prepositions, errors in the use of articles, errors in the use of active and passive forms and morphological errors. From the results obtained, the study shows that the students made various kinds of grammatical errors: 60 errors in tenses, 110 errors in the use of prepositions,114 errors in the use of articles, 50 errors in the use of active and passive forms and 76 morphological errors. Furthermore, the analysis proves that most errors made are due to interference from the mother tongue and overgeneralization.