British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 03 The Use of Irregular Cases by English Language and Literature Students at the University of Tabuk Mohammad Naser Department of Languages and Translation, Faculty of Arts and Education, The University of Tabuk, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia Email:drmohammad00@gmail.com Abstract The goal of this study is to investigate the use of irregular cases by English language and literature students at the University of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. This study was conducted in Saudi Arabia. The sample of the study comprised male students in their nd year. The sample of this quantitative research was selected randomly. The findings of the study showed that % of the students were unable to use irregular cases such as verbs and adjectives incorrectly. Also, the findings revealed that the errors committed by the students were the result of mother tongue interference due to overgeneralization. This study recommends students should be well-trained on how to use irregular verbs in the past tense case or changing the form of the irregular adjective. It also recommends that further future research should be conducted to investigate similar irregular case that face teachers when teaching English as a foreign language. Keywords: Incorrect, Irregular, Elementary, EFL.. Introduction English is one of the most dominant languages in the world. It is used widely in many fields such as politics, science, arts, tourism, and economics (Grami, 00). Learning English is important and people all over the world decide to study it as a second language. English is the language of science. Knowing English increases the students' chances of getting information about other cultures. In the Saudi education system, English is considered as a foreign language in both primary and secondary schools. According to Rahman (0), English is taught as a compulsory subject in Saudi Arabia, starting in sixth grade. Although English was considered a minor subject in the past, it has become one of the most important subjects recently. Furthermore, in some universities and schools, English has become the main language of instruction, especially for science and technology majors. In fact, having a good proficiency in English has become one of the most essential requirements and qualifications to get a white-collar job in Saudi Arabia (Rahman, 0). However, despite all the money that has been spent annually by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order to improve English teaching and learning, Rahman (0) claimed that even after six years of English instruction, Saudi undergraduate students failed to acquire English 9
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 0 proficiency. Also, he claimed that the results of the university entrance examinations showed that Saudi students exhibited low language proficiency in English. Moreover, Rahman added that even after graduation, Saudi students could barely produce satisfactory skills in English. That is, most Saudi students are still weak in English, particularly in their grammar skills (Al-Jarf, 00a). In this regard, English language verbs have different forms or tenses. There is the present tense, the simple past tense, and the past participle, to name a few. Most regular verbs have the simple past and the past participle spelled like the present tense except the past tenses have a (-d) or (-ed) added to the regular form. However, with irregular verbs it is a different story. Irregular verbs are common verbs in the English language that do not follow the simple system of adding (d) or (ed) to the end of the word to form the past tense forms. That means the spelling can be a little problematic. Some irregular verbs follow patterns, such as drink- drank, spring- sprang, and know- knew. But the student cannot use those patterns with predictability. Unfortunately, learning irregular verbs means memorization. In this study the researcher is going to show how some Saudi students at university level use irregular English verbs incorrectly to indicate the past state of time, knowing that an irregular verb has no predictable pattern and does not end in (-d) or (-ed). Students sometime use (-d) or (-ed) at the end of both regular and irregular verbs when it comes to indicate to the past. To conclude, in order to help Saudi students improve their language skills, particularly grammar, there has been a great need for this type of research in which students common errors were identified and addressed. This type of research will be particularly beneficial to overcome the difficulties Saudi student have while using irregular verbs in English in addition to providing them with more time to practice.. Literature Review Arab EFL learners in general and Saudi students in particular are facing a lot of difficulties when using English as a foreign or second language. Shukri (0) stated that Arab EFL learners were stereotyped as having inadequate language skills. Much research has been conducted in this field to investigate related problems. As far as discussing previous research is significant, the researcher believes it is essential to spell out some of the past literature on teaching grammar in Saudi Arabia to be more specific at university level. Sayegh (009) states that after the establishment of Ministry of Education in 93, in which General Presidency of Females Education was merged in 99, the educational scenario became vibrant in Saudi Arabia. The Higher Committee for Education Policy in Saudi Arabia, as cited in Al Shumaimeri (003), has asserted that the ultimate aim of education in Saudi Arabia is to make students understand Islam in a correct and comprehensive manner; to implant in them the Islamic creed; to imbibe in them the Islamic values, teachings and Ideal; and, above all, to spread Islam as well as to develop the society
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 0 economically, socially and culturally, and, more importantly, to prepare the individual to make meaningful contribution to the strengths of his community. English was taught as a foreign language in Saudi Arabia from class seven onwards but, now it is taught from class six as a compulsory subject. Similarly, Khan (03) examined the spelling errors made by 0 Saudi students studying at Khulais campus, which is a branch of King Abdulaziz University. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the spelling errors resulting from embedded vowels problem and then provide the appropriate remedies. The participants were given a dictation test and then they were given remedial tutorials for two weeks. At the end, they were given a post-test to assess the effect of the intervention tutorial on their spelling. The results revealed that the number of spelling errors regarding the use of vowels was more than consonants, which provides support to several studies that confirmed the existence of vowel blindness phenomena in the writing and reading of the Arabic-speaking learners of English. Khan attributed this problem to L negative transfer because unlike English, Arabic has only three short and long vowels and short vowels were omitted in the written texts. Likewise, Tahaineh (00) has stated that Arab students errors in writing mainly fall in the category of syntax and grammar and quoted Hashim s (99) findings, who reviewed and analyzed a number of studies conducted on Arab EFL learners syntactic errors and stated that Arab learners errors can be categorised in seven syntactic subcategories: prepositions, verbs, articles, conjunctions, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and sentence structure. Kharma and Hajjaj (99) is another study that reinforced the previous findings and revealed that Arab EFL learners errors in writing are syntactical and especially in prepositions. Concerning the problems of Saudi university undergraduates, Khan (0), who recently conducted a study to investigate the problems of Saudi university undergraduates, has mentioned that they face several problems in phoneme clusters, spellings, grammar, mistakes due to L interference, structure, doubling of subjects, doubling of preposition, tenses, articles, appropriate vocabulary, wrong use of prefixes & suffixes etc. Having reviewed past literature, this paper, will investigate the use of irregular cases at the University of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia produced by students in their nd year students majoring in English Language and Literature. More specifically, it will carefully look into the problematic use of (-d) and (-ed) in the simple past tense as irregular verb cases. 3. Statement of Problem English is taught in Saudi Arabia as a foreign language whereby students are expected to master all the four basic language skills i.e. reading, listening, speaking, and writing (Al-Jarf,00a ). But, most of the EFL Saudi students face difficulty when they attempt to use irregular cases in English language, particularly the use of irregular verbs in case of the past tense (Al Shumaimeri, 003). One of the major
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 0 problems is using irregular verbs correctly. Many EFL students use verbs in English incorrectly particularly when expressing themselves using the past cases. These students who have already completed two years of studying grammar at university level are still incompetent and unable to use English verbs correctly. This may be related to many reasons such as the teaching curriculum which is imposed by the department or faculty members. Requiring EFL students to follow specific traditional methods to teach grammar (Fageeh, 0).. Research Objectives The main goal of this research study is to acquire data on the use of irregular cases at the University of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia produced by students in their nd year students majoring in English Language and Literature. In relation to this issue, this study aims to achieve the following objectives. i. To survey the incorrect usage of irregular verbs by nd year students majoring in English language and literature at the University of Tabuk. ii. To look at the reasons behind the incorrect usage of irregular verbs by English language and literature students at the University of Tabuk.. Research Questions In order to achieve the objectives of this research study, the present study aims at addressing the following research questions: i. Why do nd year English language and literature students use irregular verbs incorrectly? ii. What are the reasons behind the incorrect usage of irregular verbs when it comes to indicate to the past by nd year English Language and literature students?. Methodology In order to obtain the objectives of this study, this section discuses the research methods and procedures of the study. students in their nd year majoring in English language and literature the department of languages and translation were selected randomly from population of the study which comprised 90 students. The sample of the study consisted only students making about 0% of the overall population. They are all similar in terms of their age, social background, gender, and speak Arabic as their first language. The selection of the participants was based on their marks during a test of using irregular verbs to indicate to the past and the researcher background in the field. In this research, the researcher collected the data through a test as the research instrument. The test consists of 0 questions of exercising the simple past form of some verbs and 0 questions of filling the blanks with the appropriate past simple
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 0 form of the verb in parentheses. The total number of questions given in the test is 0 questions. The participants were given minutes time to complete the test which is the normal timing of a classroom. The researcher used SPSS to analyze the data.. Findings and Discussion As for as the analysis of the study is concerned, the researcher used SPSS to calculate the percentages of data concerning the uses of (-d) and (-ed) in the past tense case by nd year students majoring in English language and literature at the department of Languages and translation at the University of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. The topic of this study was selected based on the teacher s background who experienced this issue with his students over a period of years time as a teaching experience at the department. The classification of the analysis of the data collected from the participants will be analyzed based on two main categories are (-d) and (-ed) past tense cases. Table and in the following section depict a full description of the frequencies and uses of (-d) and (-ed) by nd year students. Table. presents the number of correct and incorrect answers in the participants responses to the grammar test as well as the percentages and frequencies of their answers. Table.: The Frequencies and Percentages of the Participants Use of Irregular Verb (-d) and (-ed) by nd Year Students Majoring in English Language and Literature ( Items -0) Item Number of Correct Answers Number of Incorrect Answers Percentage of Correct Answers Percentage of Incorrect Answers 0 % % % 3% 3 3% % 3% % 3% % 0% 0% 0 9% 90% % 3% 9 % 3% 0 % 3% Table. above displays the responses of the participants on the test items. As indicated in the table, the participants were encouraged to complete a number of sentences in a grammar test with the appropriate tense, where they were requested to use the right form of the simple past whether (-d) or (-ed) depending on the sentence structure. According to the responses in the table, item () has recorded the highest percentage (90%) of incorrect answers concerning the use of irregular simple past tense form in which (9%) were recorded as correct answers. On the other hand, Table. depicts the use of irregular past forms frequencies and percentages in fill in the blank exercises.
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 0 Table.: The Frequencies and Percentages of the Participants Use of Irregular Verb (-d) and (-ed) by nd Year Students Majoring in English Language and Literature ( Item -0) Item Number of Correct Answers Number of Incorrect Answers Percentage of Correct Answers Percentage of Incorrect Answers % 3% 0 % % 3 3 9 % % 3% % 3% % 0 % % % 9% % 9% 9 % 3% 0 3% % As shown in Table. in the previous section, items and reported the highest incorrect responses and percentages in relation to the students use of irregular past tense cases including (-d) and (-ed). In conclusion, the findings of the study showed that 9% 0f nd years students majoring in English language and literature at the Department of Language and Translation pointed out that they cannot use irregular past tense (-d) and (-ed) correctly. When they were requested to provide their perceptions about the incorrect use of irregular past tense, most of them stated that they get confuse when using this type of tense. Others demonstrated that some of us overgeneralize some grammatical and syntactic rules as a result of mother tongue interferences with English as a foreign languages as displayed in Figure. below: Figure.: The Percentages of Correct and Incorrect Uses of Irregular Verb Tenses by nd Year Students Majoring in English Language and Literature at the Department of Languages and Translation
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 09 Based on the conclusion of the findings, this study recommends that nd year English language and literature students should be well-trained on how to use irregular simple past tenses so that they can overcome this type of linguistic problem.. Conclusion This research aims to look at the reasons behind the incorrect usage of irregular verbs by nd year students majoring in English Language and Literature at the Department of Languages and Translation at the University of Tabuk. In an answer to the research question, it was determined that the incorrect usage of irregular verbs by nd year students is due to overgeneralization. A high percentage of the students answered most of the items of the test by using (d) or (ed) at the end of the irregular verbs. Thus, they deal with irregular verbs as regular verbs. Center of attention was given to the students to develop their skills and knowledge to use the irregular verbs correctly by identifying these verbs, focusing on who use them to refer to the past and putting them within a table to facilitate studying them. References Al Shumaimeri, Y, A. N. (003). A Study of Class Room Exposure to Oral Pedagogic Tasks in relation to The Motivation and Performance of Saudi Secondary Learners of English in a context of Potential Curriculum reform. (Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis). University of Leeds, Leeds. Al-Jarf, Reima (00a). Teaching grammar to EFL college students online. Asian EFL Journal,,. Fageeh, A.I. (0). EFL learners use of blogging for developing writing skills and enhancing attitudes towards English learning: An exploratory study. Journal of Language and Literature, (), 3-. Grami, G.M.A. (00). The Effects of Integrating Peer Feedback into University-Level ESL Writing Curriculum: A Comparative Study in a Saudi Context. Doctoral dissertation submitted to Newcastle University, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences. Hashim, N. (99). English syntactic errors by Arabic speaking learners reviewed. Eric. Doc 30 Full Text. Kharma, N., & Hajjaj, A. (99). Errors in English among Arabic speakers. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. Khan, M. F. (03). Embedded vowels: Remedying the problems arising out of embedded vowels in the English writings of Arab learners. RELC Journal: A Journal of Language Teaching and Research in Southeast Asia, (), 33-. Sayegh and Rahman, A. (009). Development of Public Education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Current Indication and Future Dimensions. (Unpublished) Paper presented to the Workshop Held at the College of education at King Saud University.
British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 0 Rahman, M. M. (0). English language teaching (ELT) in Saudi Arabia: A study of learners' needs analysis with special reference to community college, Najran University. Language in India, (), 3-.