Writing skill difficulties for 'beginner' learners of the Arabic Language

Abstract

Abstract

This field study on a group of non-native Arabic learners studying at the Language Center at the University of Jordan from beginner to intermediate levels, aims to highlight the main difficulties facing the students in the course of learning how to write Arabic correctly and how to distinguish between the sounds of letters and short vowels. The attempt to turn the pronounced sound into a written letter is something that occurs mostly while writing the points and vowels. If we go back to the syntactic khalilian ideas, we find that points are semi-letters and this can be achieved easily by non-speakers of Arabic. However, it’s difficult for beginners to distinguish between the long and the short points in the single word, and secondly, in the sentence. A student who did not learn the written form of the word may confuse the word "جَلَسَ"with "جالس", while others may think it to be"جالاس". Others may confuse the word"جالÙس" with"جاليس"ØŒ "جليس" or "جَلÙس".The reason why beginners make such mistakes is that during the early stages of teaching the sound of the short vowel is often accentuated. This results in students often exaggerating the short vowel point by giving it a bigger dimension and expressing it with a long vowel. When learners hear words in a fast-pronounced context; they think that the long vowels are short vowels, such as the word "كتاب" they think it "ÙƒÙتَب"and "كتابة"or as "ÙƒÙتَبَة", or may think the word"Ù‚ÙŽÙ„ÙŽÙ…ÙŒ"as"قلام"ØŒ "قلامÙÙ†"ØŒ "Ù‚ÙŽÙ„ÙŽÙ…ÙÙ†"ØŒor "قلامون"This research emphasizes on the importance of teaching writing as one of the four skills upon which the language is acquired as well as the other skills; listening, reading, and conversation. Writing is a productive skill indicates the student has learned the best representation at the level of all that is true to the language and all that is below that in the lexicon and grammar, spelling and sound levels.

Keywords: Arabic, writing, unnative speakers, difficulties