THE BASIC GRAMMAR PROBLEMS FACED BY ARAB (LIBYAN) STUDENTS IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION

Abstract

Abstract The present study aimed at investigating the writing problems of Libyan Arab learners of English as a foreign language, highlighting the problems, finding out the causes and providing some suggestion to overcome the problems. For attaining this purpose, three research questions were raised and the answers were provided and discussed. It is a descriptive research applying a quantitative and qualitative method to analyze the data. To find out the objectives of this study, the researcher collected the data through a questionnaire and a writing test. The participants were the Libyan postgraduate students from Diponegoro university. The sample of the study is 32 students, but only twenty students who responded the questionnaire and the test. The results of this study show that the learners encounter problems in many categories and mostly grammatical categories. The problems are mostly in grammar such as tenses, articles, singular and plural, verbs, passive and active voice, prepositions, spelling and word order. Some other difficulties like morphological problems were found out as a problem that students have in English composition. Moreover, the learners face some difficulties in the punctuation and capitalization. Most of these errors were encountered as a result of the mother tongue influence. Key words: English composition, Arab (libyan) students, grammatical problems, spelling, punctuation.