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2009 | 7 | 75-98

Article title

Arab EFL Learners' Acquisition of Modals

Authors

Content

Title variants

Languages of publication

EN

Abstracts

EN
This paper investigates Arab EFL learners' acquisition of modal verbs. The study used a questionnaire, which comprises two versions, testing students' mastery of modals at the levels of both recognition and production. The questionnaire was distributed to 50 English major university students who had studied English for 12-14 years and who had scored 500 or more on the TOEFL. The findings of the study show that the overall performance of the subjects in the study was quite low. The study established a hierarchy of difficulty and identified the major causes of difficulty in the use of modals.

Keywords

Year

Volume

7

Pages

75-98

Physical description

Dates

published
2009-01-01
online
2009-12-23

Contributors

author
  • University of Sharjah

References

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  • Prator, C. 1967. Hierarchy of Difficulty. Unpublished classroom lecture, University of California, Los Angeles.
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  • Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum 1973. A University Grammar of English. Essex: Longman.
  • Richards, J., J. Hull and S. Proctor 1997. New Interchange: English for International Communication. Student Book 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Riggenback, H. and V. Samuda 2000. Grammar Dimensions. Form, Meaning, and Use. Australia: Heinle.
  • Saeed, A. 2003. L1 Culture Interference in L2 Learning. In TESOL Arabia Conference Proceedings 2003, Dubai, UAE.
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  • Sturtevant, J. 2000. In Contact 2 (2nd edn). NY: Longman.
  • Wallace, S. 1982. Figure and Ground: The Interrelationships of Linguistic Categories. In: P. J. Hopper (ed.), Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 201-23.

Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.hdl_11089_9559
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