A concern for the particular needs of university-bound Arabic-speaking students has been shared by many in ESL. Out of this concern, and especially out of concern for the characteristic English writing deficiencies of many Arab ESL students, various aspects of written Arabic—from orthographical conventions to rhetorical devices—are discussed. These contrasting features have been identified as potential contributors to observed error production and weaknesses in some reading skills, but most particularly in writing skills. Ideally, a better understanding of the language background of Arab students can aid the ESL specialist in better addressing the special needs of these students through supplemental curricular objectives and appropriate exercises.

Although contrastive analysis is no longer seen as a foundation for instructional programs (Schachter 1974), it can be a useful tool in understanding characteristic language-learning weaknesses demonstrated by a particular language group. Implicit in this article is the assumption that a familiarity with some salient contrasting features of written Arabic and English may prove valuable to those in ESL concerned with addressing noted weaknesses in Arab students' English writing skills.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3586616.pdf

The Least You Should Know about Arabic: Implications for the ESL Writing Instructor.

The study presented here is an attempt to examine the role of indirect feedback in promoting junior high school students’ spelling accuracy in English. It compares the effect of direct feedback with indirect feedback on students’ written work dictated by their teacher from their textbooks. Two classes were selected from the Zanjanrood District in Iran. Forty-four male students in two groups, one from School A (the direct feedback group) and the other from School B (the indirect feedback group) were treated differently regarding their spelling errors for six weeks. The results obtained revealed that indirect feedback is a more effective tool than direct feedback in rectifying students’ spelling errors.

/pdf/the-effect-of-direct-and-indirect-corrective-feedback-on-2743t5nmvw.pdf

The Effect of Direct and Indirect Corrective Feedback on Students' Spelling Errors

Orthographic errors of Saudi students learning English

Lewis Carroll's English word game Doublets is represented as a system of networks with each node being an English word and each connectivity edge confirming that its two ending words are equal in letter length, but different by exactly one letter. We show that this system, which we call the Doublets net, constitutes a complex body of linguistic knowledge concerning English word structure that has computable multiscale features. Distributed morphological, phonological and orthographic constraints and the language's local redundancy are seen at the node level. Phonological communities are seen at the network level. And a balancing act between the language's global efficiency and redundancy is seen at the system level. We develop a new measure of intrinsic node-to-node distance and a computational algorithm, called community geometry, which reveal the implicit multiscale structure within binary networks. Because the Doublets net is a modular complex cognitive system, the community geometry and computable multi-scale structural information may provide a foundation for understanding computational learning in many systems whose network structure has yet to be fully analyzed.

/pdf/lewis-carroll-s-doublets-net-of-english-words-network-2ou9v36129.pdf

Sanford Schane

Papers

Linguistics, Spelling and Pronunciation.