The Effect of L1 Negative Transfer on EFL Saudi Students’ Use of Grammar in Writing

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of the L1 negative transfer on the writing of EFL Saudi students. It examined the common grammatical errors that Saudi students made while writing in English and analyzed the sources of their errors. The samples consisted of English essays written by 74 freshmen female students enrolled at Majmaah University in Saudi Arabia. The samples were analyzed and the errors classified according to grammatical sub-categories including tenses, singular/plural markers, prepositions, articles and pronouns. This study found that 81% of the students' errors can be accounted for in terms of L1 transfer. Grammatical errors were the most frequent ones, recording 67% of the total rate of errors. More specifically, preposition (40%) and tense (32%) errors constituted the most frequent subcategories of the grammatical errors. It was concluded that learning basic linguistic differences between Saudi students' L1 and English language is a necessary condition for helping the learners to overcome the problem of first language interference in their writing.