The acquisition of five English Sentential Structures by Native Speakers of Arabic

Abstract

This cross-dimensional, exploratory study attempts at investigating the acquisition order of five sentential structures by native speakers of Arabic. A natural elicitation technique, in the form of a test written in English, was given to the 1177 subjects of the study. The questions of the test were about the familiar topic of the best friend. Each of these sentences was intended to test a certain number of rules. The subjects' responses were analysed by using modified forms of Burt and Dulay (1980) techniques for scoring the subjects' responses and for calculating the group scores. It was found out that structurally simpler sentences were acquired before the more complex ones. Also the sentences that had forms similar to Arabic forms were acquired before those that did not have forms similar to any of the Arabic forms. Moreover, it was also found that the study of English literature as well as extended reading for pleasure had positive effects on the rate with which the subjects acquired these sentences.