A Study of EFL Learners’ Transfer from Arabic to English in the Use of the English Simple Past

Abstract

The present study aims at determining whether Algerian second year EFL learners at Mohammed Sedik Ben Yahia University rely on their mother tongue when transferring simple past tense from Arabic to English or not. Therefore, this study revolves about the basic assumptions that second year EFL learners mostly commit misformation errors, and that native language interference is the main cause of those errors. To get convincing answers to the research questions, a writing task was given to 30 second year EFL learners about a specific topic in order to uncover the main types of errors and sources that they made. The analysis of the data at the researchers’ disposal disclosed that the most frequent type of errors that second year EFL learners commit is misformation errors, and that intralingual transfer is the primary source of those errors. So that, the first research assumption was confirmed; however, the second one was rejected.