FACTORS INFLUEN CING THE CHOICE OF STRUCTURES OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to explore objectively the problems which Sudanese University students at Al-Neelain University encounter in choosing correct English structures; more precisely, problems in the choice of verbs, tense parallelism, verb-noun confusion, prepositions, nouns and pronouns. It is argued that the intralingual factors and mother-tongue (Sudanese Arabic) interference and the overgeneralization are the basic issues for the occurrence of errors. A test which was employed, was ofaready-made materials nature, to get primary data from answers to one essay of the examinations given to the fourth-year students in the English Department in the 2001/2002 academic year at Al-Neelain University, Khartoum, Sudan. The subjects of the study were 100 male and female students, chosen randomly from a total of 180 students. The findings of this thesis were very surprising although Ll interference is the main factor that caused errors, the number of intralinugal errors is relatively high. The study consists of five chapters. Chapter (1) is a representation of a general background, namely the statement of the problem, the hypothesis, the research questions, the significance of the study, the objectives of the study, the method of collecting data, and research outline. Chapter (2) gives the literature review and theory in the domain of the study. Chapter (3) manifests the methodology that was setup in the study. Chapter (4) comprises the data analysis and the results that were drawn from the discussions of the results, and chapter (5) provides the consequences and recommendations.