English Translation Equivalence experienced

English Translation Equivalence experienced by Sudanese Students at University Level Omer Elsheikh Hago Open University of Sudan كما هو معلوم، إن الأخطاء، التي يقع فيها الحادبون على تعلم اللغات الأجنبية، ظلت لوقت ليس بالقصير مثار اهتمام كثير من المعلمين والباحثين وعلماء اللغة. يؤيد هذا القول الزعمَ القائل إن الدراسة المنتظة للبنيات اللغوية في شكلها التحريري قد يؤدي إلى ترقية مستويات تعلم اللغات الأجنبية وتحسينها، كما يسهم في رفع نسب وعي الفرد بأنواع الأخطاء وأسبابها، التي قد يقع فيها الحادبون على تعلم اللغات. تعتبر مهارة الترجمة أحد أنواع السلوك التواصلي بين مؤلف النص الأصلي وقاريء النص المستهدف، وذلك بوساطة المترجم. ومن هذا المنطلق، ارتكز تقويم نوعية ناتج الترجمة على دراسة المقابل الترجمي بين نصَّي الأصل والهدف، باعتباره نتاجاً حقيقياً. وذلك عوضاً عن التركيز على مدى تفهم القارئ لمعنى النص. ومن الناحية النظرية، فقد انتهجت عملية التقويم منحى تقليدياً في محاولة المقارنة بين معاني الجمل. ويرى الباحث أن عملية تعلم اللغة الأجنبية تمر بمراحل متعددة، بدءًا باستكشاف اللغة الهدف ووصولاً إلى مرحلة إتقان اللغة المعنية بصورة جيدة على أقل تقدير. إن السودانيين الحادبين على تعلم اللغة الإنجليزية، باعتبارها لغة ثانية، يواجهون كثيراً من المشكلات عندما يريدون التعبير عن أنفسهم باستخدام اللغة الإنجليزية عند الكتابة. ولهذا يقعون في كثير من الأخطاء، فيكون الناتج نصـًّا رديئـًا. تعتبر تلك الأخطاء دليلاً على معاناتهم الواضحة من مشكلات تعليمية شائكة تعوق إتقانهم اللغة الإنجليزية. لذلك كان هذا البحث الذي قصد به دراسة المقابل في ترجمة السياق، والذي يتعرض له الطلاب السودانيون الذين هم على أعتاب نيل درجة البكالوريوس في اللغة الإنجليزية. يتناول هذا البحث دراسة النصوص من الناحية اللغوية مع التركيز على مفهوم المقابل في الترجمة. إن الأخطاء التي وردت في النصوص والتي ترجمها الطلاب هي مادة البحث. تقتصر هذه الدراسة على تعريف وشرح ومناقشة لبعض الأخطاء التي وقع فيها أفراد العينة العشوائية التي جمعت. تتناول الورقة بالشرح الأخطاء في الترجمة والمترادفات والإعراب والترابط، إضافة إلى مناقشة الأسباب التي يعزى لها ارتكاب مثل هذه الأخطاء. توصل الباحث إلى نتائج ذات جدوى للمهتمين بتعلم اللغات وتعليمها، وتضمنت اقتراحات وإرشادات في هذا المجال، تهم الطلاب والمعلمين ومصممي المناهج. 0. Overview Language is a vital means of communication and it is considered to be one of the main characteristics that differentiate human beings from other living creatures. Through language, one is exposed to others. The possibility of ensuring an adequate mastery of a language to guarantee a good level of written structures is examined by many educationalists through error analysis. Errors made by learners of a foreign language have, for a long time, attracted the attention of many teachers, researchers and linguists. This attraction straightens the belief that a systematic study of written structures may lead to improve teaching methods and increase the awareness of the nature and causes of second language (L2) learner’s errors. It is thought that one of the effective tools where learners’ performance of translation can be examined and analyzed is the written structures. This is why it is strongly believed, in this study, to examine the learners’ translation through error analysis approach. 1. Statement of the Problem Performance of Arab learners of English, as noted by many Arab teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), is reflected in the presence of many errors when writing in English. The misuse of English structures leads to the confusion of the meanings. The causes of such errors are too many, where the most effective one is the ‘mother tongue interference’. Sudanese EFL learners face many problems in expressing themselves in written English, so they make poor English texts by committing certain errors. These errors are considered to be indications of severe learning difficulties that hinder good performance of the English language. This problem has been experienced by the researcher at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Neelain University. Therefore, he, seriously, thinks of studying this phenomenon. 2. Objectives of the Study This study is aimed at: 2.1 Investigating, identifying and classifying the English translation equivalence made by Sudanese students at university level when translating from Arabic into English. 2.2 Establishing a translation-based approach to EFL learners at Sudanese universities. 3. Research Questions In investigating the research problem, the researcher will try to find answers to the following questions: 3.1 How competent are Sudanese learners in handling English translation equivalence? 3.2 What are the problems that these learners encounter in practicing translation? 3.3 How can such problems be overcome? 4. Hypothesis of the Study It is expected that students are incompetent of handling English translation equivalence when translating from Arabic into English. These students commit different types of errors, such as spelling, lexical errors, errors of synonymity, syntactic errors, and finally, the cohesion errors. The committed errors are due to linguistic and non-linguistic factors. 5. Implications It is hoped that the present study will be of value to Sudanese learners of English in general in explaining, and diagnosing learners’ written performance when translating from Arabic into English and vice-versa. It is also hoped that the findings of this study will be useful to teachers of English and to curriculum designers to know exactly where to expect areas of difficulty and, thus plan a curriculum and its lessons in such a way as to help their students avoid making errors. 6. Subjects Concerning the homogenous selection of subjects, there are two aspects of homogeneity. The first is namely a linguistic aspect, that the selected subjects should speak the same mother tongue (MT). This was done in view of the assumption that different linguistic backgrounds might cause different problems in the process of learning a foreign language (FL). The second one is that students should share a satisfactory knowledge of the new language. So, 150 students were randomly chosen from the Fourth Year, Department of English at the Faculty of Arts at Neelain University to represent the original subjects in this study. The students’ ages range between 20 and 25 years. They have had an average of ten years of formal instruction in English as a FL at school and university. So the selected group is homogeneous with respect to age, educational level, and linguistic backgrounds. Out of 150 students, 30 students were randomly chosen as subjects for the pilot study. They were excluded from taking the main test. This left 120 males and females to constitute the main strata in the sample in this study. 7. Data Gathering Techniques Once the textual analysis is necessary to study how contextual translation equivalent is expressed by the Sudanese learners, the researcher should ask the subjects to translate certain topics into English, for translation is the useful tool in such studies. Arabic written texts were distributed to the subjects. Then the subjects were asked to translate these texts into English. The process of translation took place in a fairly separate room. Every subject was given an identification number. 8. Procedures After careful administration of the pilot study, the following procedures for identification and classification of samples were used to achieve the results of the study: 1. each paper was given a number to facilitate back reference, 2. errors of each paper were signaled out in a separate numbered paper, and 3. errors were classified into categories. Also within each category sub-classifications were made; for example, sub-classifications within the syntactic errors such as: article errors, tenses errors, preposition errors…etc. The percentage of each category was calculated to show their relative frequency. 8.1 Sample Selection The present work is in progress performing textual analysis. In this study the researcher distributed the Arabic-written sample texts to the subjects in their classroom. Then, they were asked to translate individually into English. 8.2 Administration To start achieving the arranged steps of this study, the researcher prepared a fairly furnished room. The subjects were, asked to keep away from each other while translating. Each subject was given an identification number for use at any analogous step. After having finished the translation, the researcher numbered these sheets, and packed them tightly. 9. Analytical Tests Finally, the analytical tests will be run out on the limited study performed on 150 normal subjects to determine the answers that are expected to the following research questions in investigating the research problem: 1. How competent are Sudanese learners in handling English translation equivalence? 2. What are the problems that these learners encounter in practicing translation? 3. How can such problems be overcome? 10. Test Descriptions However, a translation theory or model is not workable if it is confined to the treatment of separate sentences. A translation model should consider the overall textual components, how sentences are interlinked and how they depend on one another in a stretch of text to convey the intended meaning. The meaning of a sentence is determined by the different ways, in which the sentence is semantically related to other sentences in the text. Consequently, for two sentences of different languages to be exact translations of each other they must be semantically related to other sentences of their respective languages in text in exactly the same way. (Keenan 1973). 11. Scoring Scheme A scoring scheme is defined by Richards (1985:251), as: “A procedure used for giving numerical values or scores to the responses in a test”. This means that the scoring is made by allotting specific scores to the tested items or responses. Here, the error-count method by Oller (1979:385-391), can be used. In this method, students are required to translate certain given topic from which errors are deducted. The scorer is guided by a predetermined list of equivalent types. On the other hand, the error-count method seems to be promising and satisfying. The error-count appears to promise a fairly high degree of reliability. Reference to the list of error types will maximize marker objectively. Only one careful reading by one marker should be necessary. As for the scoring of translations in the present study each student’s task was scored independently by two scorers in addition to the researcher. 12. Statistical Analysis After having collected and summarized the raw data, the researcher found that it was often useful to distribute the data into classes or categories and to determine the number of individuals belonging to each class, (the class frequency). Then the data are to be tabulated as such: categories are tabulated together with the corresponding categories frequencies, called ‘frequency distribution’ or ‘frequency table’. The term used in this study is frequency of occurrence. The relative frequency of the class is the frequency of the class divided by the total frequency of all classes. It is generally expressed as a percentage (Spiegel 1961:29). 13. Approach to the Discussion of Results The approach used for gathering data in the study is the test paper. Then, results obtained in the test paper will be analyzed using statistical methods; that is quantitatively when analyzing the data on the grounds of scores obtained (Bryman 1996), and qualitatively according to Bryman (op. cit.), by studying, describing and analyzing the behavior and culture of a group of people from their own perspective. 14. Analysis, Results & Discussion 14.1. Translation Errors When learners have difficulties in finding the Target Language (TL) lexical, which may convey the intended meaning, they resort to the translation of the equivalent item from their MT and use it in the TL context. If the rules governing the item in the MT and TL are different, the use of the translated item will result in either a clear cut error or in an expression which sounds odd to native speakers, though fulfilling the purpose of communication. 14.2. Errors of paraphrasing (circumlocution) Tarone et al. (1983:10), define the strategy of paraphrasing as “The rewording of the message in an alternative acceptable construction in order to avoid a more difficult form or construction”. The term ‘circumlocution’ is also used by Tarone et al. (loc. cit.) and Varadi (1983:84), to refer to ‘paraphrase’. Here, a learner normally gives a description of the intended lexical item or a definition of it in other words when he fails to produce the proper lexical item to use in a certain context as in the following examples from the present study: a. He will stay for several days.(many) b. to communicate food to the citizens of those areas. (to supply, to provide, to send) c.…. Across the history.(through) d. He is concerned with human rights. (affairs) The above sentences may be understood by the native speaker; however, the paraphrase in each of them is not acceptable English usage. In this case, learners had recourse to elaborate descriptive paraphrasing where the speakers of the TL would prefer a single lexical item to capture the meaning of a high level word. A characteristic feature of such a paraphrase is the introduction of separate words to specify some semantic features of the defined word. Learners sometimes tend to incorporate long, big words into their writings to make their performance impressive and literary-like. Consequently archaic, strictly formal and less familiar words are used instead of more appropriate current ones. Moreover, learners, literally, transfer words from their mother tongue into their English writings which sometimes distort the message. 14.3. Errors Resulting from False Analogy Analogy is used by learners from different backgrounds. The learner coins new verbs, nouns, adjectives and other parts of speech along the lines of existing TL rules. According to Tarone et al. (1983:82), “the learner resorts to analogy in situations where the intended lexical item is known. It is the learner's desire to communicate a certain concept that presses him to adopt his strategy. ” However, the use of terms in analogy to others shows the active involvement of the learner in the process of learning the language. Also, it can be a good indication of the creative use of language. In this respect, students made errors like the following: a. U.N agent arrive in the Sudan.(envoy) b. the most significance function of this heart is to help….(important). c. A united nation responsipol man arrive to the country.(envoy) d. He will discuss [Ф] or conversation with the responses of united nation with the response of country and organ. In the last example, the learner creates his/her own coinage. The symbol [Ф] indicates that the learner omits the subject of the verb ‘discuss’. The noun ‘conversation’ is used instead of a verb. It is worth mentioning that, the rest of the sentence is completely misused, and could not be easily understood by the native learner. Such errors are referred to by Richards (1994:174) as “developmental errors” which “illustrate that the learner is attempting to build up hypotheses about the English language from his limited experience in the classroom or the textbook.” This definition indicates that the learners’ problems are the result of the limitation in exposure to TL. Errors could be attributed to wrong selection of words, when the students tend to communicate the intended meaning. This process of selection is a result of direct translation from MT. It becomes clearer if one views the equivalents of the examples mentioned. Sometimes, literal translation brings wrong collocations. The wrong collocation can be attributed to the lack of extensive reading in English, where students may acquire and build up competence to use the lexicon of the language. 14.4. Errors of Synonymy English is said to be very rich in synonyms because of the French, Latin, and Greek influences on the language and also due to the extensive number of loan words from other languages. However, it has been generally argued in semantics that there are no real synonyms in a language. A synonym, as defined by Richards (1985:28), is “a word which has the same, or nearly the same meaning as another word.” For example, in English ‘hid’ and ‘concealed’ in: a. Ali hid the money under the bed. b. Ali concealed the money under the bed. But the point to be emphasized is that there are no real synonyms. Here, it is important from the FL learning point of view to know whether TL learners maintain the differences that do exist between synonyms. The difference in meaning among synonyms may be a difference in style, geographic distribution, formality, attitude of speaker, connotation, collocation and possibly some other ways. In an immense number of cases these differences can be specified in terms of features which tend to be more language specific than universal; as a FL learner might assume. If one takes the words “provide”, “bring”, “supply”, “submit”, “reach”, “arrive”, “communicate” for example, these might have different meanings to the native language speaker. On the other hand, these words are used by learners in a study as though they have one and the same meaning as in: a. … which led food to reach to the people who are living in those areas. b. … and how to supply the citizens of those areas with food. c. He will discuss the arrangements to provide those areas with food. d. it is necessary to bring food to those areas. e. …above all the necessity of arrangement to arrive food to citizens in those areas. f. … to communicate food to the citizens of those regions. g. He will discuss the way to submit food to the people in those areas. In Arabic most of these words (provide, bring, supply, submit, reach, arrive, communicate) words can be used at the same places. So, learners are confused, as regards which one to use. FL learner tends to assume that a number of related words are synonyms to the extent that they can be used interchangeably. This view is confirmed by Hornby (1965:104), who states that “There are few real synonyms in English. So, circular definitions are dangerous, especially in a dictionary intended for users to whom the language is foreign”. He adds that a monolingual dictionary is unsatisfactory. This tendency is reinforced by the fact that in a greater number of words the difference in meaning is fine and subtle, or such differentiation in not made in the MT. This becomes a serious problem in the case of words which Palmer (1976:62), calls “loose sense of synonymy.” The practical difficulties, that may arise in translation, can be seen when considering further examples quoted from Arabic texts. The translator should be able to identify the degrees of similarity between SL synonymous items. If it is very high, it is advisable to render them by one item in the TL. However, if the items of the source language (SL) are only near-synonyms, the translator might translate them separately in order to preserve the function of such repetition, e.g., Arabic as-silmu wa-l-amnu (peace and security). There are typical differences between most synonymous couplets, which the translator should convey in the TL. As a common fact, it has been distinguished between nine relational possibilities, viz. 1. one term is more general than the other: refuse – reject; 2. one term is more intense than the other: repudiate – refuse; 3. one term is more emotive than the other: reject - decline; 4. one term may imply moral approbation or censure where an other is neutral: thrifty- economical; 5. one term is more professional than the other: decease – death; 6. one term is more literary than the other: passing – death; 7. one term is more colloquial than the other: turndown - refuse; 8.one term is more local or dialectal than the other: Scots flesher – butcher, and 9. one of the synonyms belongs to child-talk: daddy – father. Looking at the topic number two of the test, we will discover that there are certain Arabic words that nearly of the same meaning; such as: ‘abq and ‘itr, ihsas, infi‘al, and ‘aatifah, farah and bahjah, dahshah and I‘jab, shumokh, kibriya, izzah, and min‘ah, and motuasilah and mostamirrah. Such words cause a problematic area to the subjects when translating from Arabic into English, as a result of using bilingual dictionaries. From all the above discussion it can be said that no true synonyms exist in a language and most of the criteria and tests of real synonyms are the same among different linguists. Palmer (1981:91) thinks that true synonyms are mutually interchangeable in all their environments, or they are the same opposites. One can say, few words are completely synonymous in the sense of being interchangeable in any context without the slightest alteration in objective meaning, feeling tone, or emotive. Finally, it can be said that virtually no true or real synonymy exists in a language, and if it is there, it is very rare. The errors in most cases can be attributed to the use of bilingual dictionaries where FL learners tend to assume that there is a number of related words. This view is confirmed by Hornby (1965:104), who states that: “There are very few real synonyms in English, so circular definitions are dangerous, especially in a dictionary intended for users to whom the language is foreign.” 14.5. Syntactic Errors This section is devoted to identifying, describing, and explaining syntactic errors made by learners in this study. According to English syntax, these errors are categorized into six categories; namely, article errors, tenses and verb errors, preposition errors, concord errors, pronominal errors, and other errors. Table 1, below, shows the frequency of occurrence of 496, syntactic errors in the data under investigation. The typology was constructed according to linguistic usages. Errors Category Cases Percentage % 1- Article errors 90 18.145 2 – Tenses & Verbs 304 61.2903 3 – Prepositions 10 2.016 4 – Concord 64 12.90 5 – Pronominal 22 4.435 6 – Other Errors 6 1.29 Total 496 Aprox. 100% Table 1:Frequency of Occurrence of Syntactic Errors 14.5.1. Types of Article Errors Article errors have been classified under three main headings; namely, omission of article, redundancy of article, and wrong choice of article as shown in Table 2, below. Types Cases Percentage Article omission 16 17.8 Redundant article 54 60 Wrong choice of article 20 22.2 Total 90 100% Table 2. Types of Article Errors. The possible explanation for omission of articles’ errors is MT interference as in the following examples: a. They use (…)heart transplantation for patients who… b. -to send food for(…) people who live there., c. This method is used for (…) patient., d. (…) united nations’ delegate is invited by (…) Sudanese government, and so on. Figure 1: Types of Article Errors. However, in Arabic, as no form of indefinite article exists, indefiniteness is expressed by the absence of the definite article ‘?al’ meaning ‘the’ and the use of zero morpheme instead. So, students transfer this Arabic rule to English and, in effect, make mistakes. Another possible explanation of this is the irregularity of the English article system which hinders the formulation of a generalized rule. In many English language teaching situations, three typical areas: article, prepositions, and the tense system; the major difficulty about them is that they don’t submit themselves to any easy generalization or overgeneralization based on some consistent regularity. This means that, if we regard the generalization rule which says that the indefinite article is used with singular countable nouns, and should not be used with uncountable nouns, it is found that a number of non-confirming examples as: a. As painter, he is not well known. b. It is a pleasure to see you. Where the singular countable noun ‘painter’, in example (a), lacks the indefinite article and the uncountable noun ‘pleasure’ in (b), takes the indefinite article. In examples (a) and (b), above, learners adopted the strategy of simplification, deleting the indefinite article to reduce the linguistic burden of the TL, because they had not as yet arrived at firm generalizations in the use of indefinite article. Carelessness may also contribute to the occurrence of indefinite article omissions. This claim can be justified by the fact that the occurrence of such errors is inconsistent. Concerning redundant articles, one can say this type of errors could be attributed to MT interference on the one hand and to ignorance of the rule restrictions of the TL itself on the other hand. English does not use the definite article with mass/uncountable nouns with generic reference. Arabic, on the other hand, selects the definite article as such usages. For example: a- ?lma’u muhimon lil hayati. *The water in necessary for the life. It should be Water is necessary for life. Redundant use is also observed with geographical names as in the example below: b- Alkhartoum University. *the Khartoum university It should be Khartoum University. Finally, errors committed by the wrong choice of articles resulted mainly from the interchange of the definite and indefinite articles. Here, students replace the definite article ‘the’ by the indefinite article ‘a/an’ in places which require the definite article. So the students ignore the rule that if a noun is preceded by a modifier and an indefinite article ‘a/an’, the article comes before the modifier only not after it. So, this error is due to ignorance of rule restrictions. 14.5.2. Tense & Verb Errors Tense and Verb errors have been classified according to usage into wrong choices of tenses, wrong formation of tenses, verb ‘( to ) BE’ errors as shown in Table 3, below. For wrong choice of tense, one gives the two following examples: a. the last week was a beautiful. It is distinctive, and considerable week., Sub-Category Cases Percentage% Wrong Choice of Tenses 42 13.8 Wrong Formation of Tenses 180 59.2 BE Errors 92 30.2 Wrong Formation of Passive 10 3.2 Total 304 106.4 Table 3. Frequency of Occurrence of Tense & Verb Errors. Figure 2. Frequency of occurrence of Tense & Verb Errors. b. Some model were done to last for some weeks while other last for many years. The other applied way used with patient who are not response to treatment. Wrong choice of tense could be due to the fact that students were probably incapable of selecting the appropriate tense form for the appropriate context. They wrongly broke the sequence of tenses, by shifting the tense from past to present, while the proper sequence of tenses has to be used in both English and Arabic. The omission of the past marker -ed could be attributed to the learning strategy of simplification stemming from the learner’s tendency to reduce certain grammatical performatives such as the past tense forms. It could also be explained as Richards (1974:175), maintains: “The -ed marker in narrative or in other past contexts, often appears to carry no meaning, since pastness usually can be expressed equally well in the present.” He argues that this kind of errors is ‘developmental’; i.e., it is made by anyone learning English and it is not derived from transfer. This type of errors could be attributed to poor training of students with regard to proper selection of tenses so as to suit proper contextual situations. Also the ignorance of the rules of conjugation of verbs plays a great role, when students fail to produce the right form of the verb. Students try to extend the use of the verb by over-generalizing the general rule of conjugation (-ed addition to the base form), of English regular verbs to the irregular ones as well. This claim is supported by Selinker (1974:40), who says that “the past tense form morpheme –ed is extended to an environment in which to the learner, it could logically apply, but just does not (sic).” Other reasons that play a great role in this area can be maintained as: overgeneralization, carelessness, learning chunks or teaching strategies. The last ones increase the frequency of over-generalization structures; e.g. He talks to the responsible people. This example is over-generalized to: *He is talks to the responsible people. Concerning the verb “(to) be” errors, it is obviously found that MT interference plays a great role in this area. This is because the verb ‘be’ when used in the present has no corresponding verbal form in Arabic; e.g. the Arabic equivalent of the English sentence: ?abi shafoqun djiddan. My father---kind very. However, in Arabic when the context implies a past event, the insertion of ‘be’, is possible, e.g. Alhakomatu mashgholaton. The government was busy. Burt and Kiparsky (1972:15), state that omission of ( to )be “seems to be typical errors to many EFL learners with different language backgrounds.” It is not detected to be a strategy of simplification on the part of the learner, but as stated by Cohen (1998:55), “it seems to be an instance of language interference from the MT form languages is no copula element.” On the other hand, linguistic simplification is clearly applied by learners in the omission of ‘be’ as an auxiliary. As for the justification of the omission of ‘be’ as an auxiliary, it could be due to a strategy of simplification whereby the learner reduces his/her linguistic burden. According to Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982:155), “Learners try to eliminate those semantically redundant items.” For these areas on most of the grammatical morphemes such as auxiliary verbs, articles, prepositions and most of nouns and adverb inflections are subject to omission. This type of ‘be’ is termed by Ellis (1985:179), as “linguistic simplification.” Once there is an omission of the verb ‘be’, there should be redundant use of verb be. This redundant could be attributed to faulty comprehension of distinctions in the TL; such as in the following example: He is talks with the government. 14.5.3. Analysis of Preposition Errors The percentage of preposition errors in this study was 2.16% of all errors in the data. These errors revealed that students made mistakes in choosing the correct prepositions as shown in e.g.: *In the previous week is very beautiful and distinguished and considered with perfume thousand sense thousand reaction thousand feverish emotion with joy and jubilation over wheld with surprise dressed…. The reason of such errors could be lack of practice on the part of students which is initially attributed to ignorance of the rule restrictions concerning the use of prepositions. 14.5.4. Concord Errors The analysis of concord errors constitutes 12.90% of the errors handled in this study. They have been dealt with under one heading; viz. subject-verb agreement since it is the only type of error revealed in the data. Students made errors of subject-verb agreement, particularly the omission of the 3rd person singular. Data also showed that many errors were made by the students in the omission of the plural -s marker. This type of error could also be attributed to MT interference, where English requires an -s, with present simple verbs, when the subject is one of the 3rd persons. On the contrary, Arabic requires no -s marker in equivalent English constructions e.g.: a. abee ya’malu mu’aliman. b. father my work teacher c. My father works as a teacher. The errors could be attributed to the carelessness of students and their lack of practice. 14.5.5. Pronominal Errors It is a commonplace knowledge that English shows concord in number, gender and person between a pronoun and its antecedent. English distinguishes several types of pronouns: personal pronouns, relative pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, possessive pronouns, and reflexive pronouns. Pronominal errors in this study constitute 4.435% of the errors. They were treated under the following sub-categories: wrong choice of pronouns 5.2% of the pronominal errors, and redundant pronouns. These errors of wrong selections could be attributed to the differences between the English pronouns and Arabic language ones. In English, six of its pronouns show differences in form for certain syntactic positions. In English correlation of the pronouns with the different kinds of noun words referring to humans and non-humans, and animate and inanimate things, is not always easy to make because both humans and non-humans (such as: child, enemy, dog, etc.), may have the following correlation forms: ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’. Noun words, such as group, nation, family, class… etc., may have correlation forms; namely, they or it. The FLs of English have difficulty in choosing the correct correlation form. 14.5.6. Other Errors This type of error is due to students’ ignorance of the functions of adverbs and adjectives because they lack practice of these parts of speech. They ignore that adjectives describe nouns and that adverbs describe verbs. Therefore, they are unable to differentiate between them. Arabic and English are different in their constructions. Comparison of an Arabic text with its English counterpart would be the accurate process in order to produce a readable English text; the learner may have to change the structure of nearly all sentences. For example, Arabic verbal sentences have the basic word-order of verb-subject-adverbial. The main Arabic word-order is V(erb), S(ubject) and O(bject), whereas the English one is S.V.O. The learner (when translating) may overlook this rule and, consequently, the Arabic rendering of some English sentences would look like the following: Example 1. 1. a. the boy went to the garden. 1. b. elwaladu thahaba ila elhadiqati. 1. c. thahaba elwaladu ila elhadiqati. The structure (1.b) looks odd whereas (1.c) looks normal. Arabic favours co-ordination, whereas English tends to use complex sentences using subordination as in Example 2, following. Example 2 2.a. Because he had felt angry after he had seen the envious man, he thought he had better stay away from the club. 2.b. li-‘annahu sha‘ra bil-ghadhabi ba‘da an ra’a el-rajul el-hasid, ‘azama ‘ala ’an yabqa ba‘idan min el-nadi. This rendering has conveyed the grammatical structure but at the cost of naturalness, abandoning the fact that Arabic favours linking through coordination and usually forwarding the main clause rather than the subordinate clause. Thus the translation (2.c) below may be more appropriate: 2.c. ‘azama ‘ala ‘an yabqa ba‘idan min el-nadi ba‘da an ra’a el-rajula el-hasida. Further, in English one can say, 3. In his speech, the president said… In Arabic the cataphoric usage is ruled out: that is, one cannot mention the adjectival pronoun (epithet) before mentioning the noun to which it refers. For instance, it is only possible to say: 3.a. qala a-syyidu l-ra’isu fi xitabin la-hu. In English, when a series of modifiers precede a noun, the modifiers must be placed in a special order; e.g. ‘Mary’s three new large brown house doors.’ In Arabic, however, there are no such restrictions in the arrangement of a series of adjectives in a sentence. Moreover, English epithets precede nouns, whereas in Arabic they follow them. In Arabic, the mubtada (Subject), should precede the xabar (Predicate); e.g. Allah maujudon (God Exists; lit. is Existent ). In brief, in Arabic the translator has to use an entirely different approach and completely different construction in dealing with syntactic problems. 14.6. Cohesion Errors Cohesion is the glue that holds a piece of writing together. In other words, if a paper is cohesive, it sticks together from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph. Cohesive devices certainly include transitional words and phrases, such as therefore, furthermore, or for instance, that clarify for readers the relationships among ideas in a piece of writing. However, transitions are not enough to make writing cohesive. Repetition of key words and use of reference words are also needed for cohesion. Type of cohesion error No. Percentage % Reference errors 349 56.3% Conjunction errors 271 43.7% Total 620 100% Table 4. Frequency of occurrence of Cohesion Errors. Type of cohesion error No. Percentage % Reference errors 349 56.3% Conjunction errors 271 43.7% Total 620 100% Figure 3. Frequency of occurrence of Cohesion Errors. 14.6.1. Repetition of Key Words Sentences or paragraphs can be tied together by repeating certain key-words from one sentence, or paragraph, to the next. This repetition of key-words also helps to emphasize the main idea of a piece of writing. For example, in the following paragraph, from James Michener’s, The Covenant. One is to note how many times the words owned and ownership are repeated: “Nobody owned any part of the land. Sotopo's father owned many cattle, and if the cows continued to produce calves, he might as well become the next chief. Old Grandmother owned the beautifully tanned animal skins she used as coverlets in winter. And Sotopo owned his polished hard-wood assegais. But the land belonged to the spirits who governed life; it existed forever, for everyone, and was apportioned temporarily according to the dictates of the tribal chief and senior headman. Sotopo's father occupied the hillside for the time being, and when he died the older son could inherit the loan -- land, but no person or family every acquired ownership”. By repeating the words owned and ownership throughout the paragraph, the writer has tied each sentence to each other and has clearly indicated what the main idea of the paragraph was. In this case, the main idea is ownership of something. And what exactly is being (or not being) owned? By repeating the word land, the author shows that the entire main idea is ownership of land. The learners in this study tend to be weak when they want to tie sentences and paragraph to indicate what the main idea of the paragraph is. This weakness is clearly observed in Table 4, in the occurrence of cohesion, where the percentage of each type of cohesion errors is as such: Reference error is 56.3%, and conjunction error is 43.7%. It can be said that the reference error represents the most problematic area among the cohesion error. 14.6.2 Use of Reference Words Another way of tying sentences and paragraphs together involves using reference words that point back to an idea mentioned previously. Among the many reference words that can be used to tie one sentence to another or one paragraph to another are words like this, these, those, such, and that. These reference words should not be used by themselves, but should be combined with important words and phrases from previous sentences or paragraphs. In the following paragraphs, we can see how reference words are used not only to tie sentences and paragraphs together, but also to emphasize the main idea in a paragraph. Writing about a topic is often difficult. On the other hand, it can be rewarding. First, I do not always know what to write about, so I often need to research, talk to people, and think about what I know before I come up with a strong topic. In addition, the writing process itself takes time and energy. Time is needed to select and narrow a topic, to generate information and structure ideas, to knock out draft after draft, and to edit for my usual typos and mechanical errors. Besides the time involved, energy (and lots of food to produce it) is needed so that I may produce my best work. Although writing is sometimes difficult, it can be very rewarding. Somebody may enjoy seeing words which say exactly what he/she wants them to. He/she also feels proud when everything "clicks." Finally, knowing that he/she has done his/her best work and earned a good grade, too, are strong personal rewards. It can be said that reference (Table 4, Figure 2), is a problematic cohesive device for students as seen in the following students’ excerpts: a. Today he is going to arrive in the Sudan. To visit the country(…) spend some days. This (…) invited from (…)government. He will discuss the responsible of united nation researchers with official in country and authority in control take of humanity position. Above all the necessity of arrangement to arrive food to citizen in this areas. b. A team of scientist discovered [an] alternative method for heart transport which is called V.I.A. It is an artificial heart which put in the chest of the patient by using an operation. The most important function for it [is] to help the heart to pump a large mount of blood that have a lot of oxygen to pass for the other parts [of what?]. It also help the heart to pump the blood to the lungs to gain more oxygen. They [who are they?] design some samples [of what?] to be used [by who?] for few weeks and others for to be used for years [why?]. c. In the previous week is very beautiful and distinguished and considered with perfume thousand sense thousand reaction thousand feverish emotion with joy and jubilation over wheld with surprise dressed…. d. Upon an invitation of the Sudan’s, [Sudan’s what?]. e. The aim of this visit is to make the preparations so as to supply people who live there, [where?]with food. f. bring the food to these area.[‘these’ should refer to plural nouns ] g. And the arrangements which are necessary to communicate food aids to the citizens in the concerned regions.[These regions are not mentioned before.] h. *This method has been used with patient who they, [who are they?], waiting for cardioplantation cergers and they don’t [who are they?], respond for treatment. ‘don’t’& ‘they’ do not refer to 3rd person singular, ‘patient’. i. *And it designed some sample to stay a few week, and few of it stay about years they use this way with the patient who waiting the heart transport and they will never respond to it. Lack of cohesion in writing is a problem that plagues many ESOL students. How to help students overcome the problem has long been a challenge to ESOL teachers and researchers alike. Yet in dealing with this complex task, many teachers continue to focus mostly on teaching the use of functional connectives, such as conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs, overlooking another important element responsible for basic text cohesion; namely, content lexical ties. Many studies have shown that these ties, which involve the use of repetition, synonymy/antonym, and superordinates/hyponymy among other tools, are an essential cohesive device in native speakers’ speeches and writing. However, studies seem to have failed to produce much impact on ESOL writing instruction on cohesion. The author’s search has yielded no direct studies on the teaching and use of content lexical ties in ESOL, and most ESOL writing textbooks have either totally neglected the subject or merely mentioned it in passing. Reid (1988), while rendering a four-page detailed discussion on connectives, offered only a sketch of less than one page on repetition and synonyms as cohesive devices. Similarly, Ruetten had merely a short unit on using repetitions for cohesion, while presenting in almost every chapter a unit on using functional connectives. More importantly, neither Reid nor Ruetten mentioned superordinates/ hyponymys as viable cohesive devices. Only included such units as “Class relationship: Classification” and “Class relationship: Definition” on how to use superordinates/ hyponyms in writing. No authors seem to have touched on the use of content text-structuring words—a term to be explained later—for cohesion. This absence of content lexical ties in ESOL writing textbooks might partially explain the failure of classroom teachers to address cohesion issue from this important perspective. 14.6.3 Types of content lexical ties Before further discussing the significance of teaching content lexical ties in ESOL writing, a brief review of lexical cohesion is needed. Lexical cohesion refers to the coherence of a text formed by the use of repetition, synonyms, antonyms, superordinates/hyponyms, related words, and/or text-structuring words (Carter and McCarthy op. cit:206–210 ). Since repetition, synonyms, and antonyms are well-known terms, their uses for forming text cohesion should be easy to understand. However, superordinates/ hyponyms, related words, and text-structuring words are much less familiar nomenclatures. Superordinates are general words that refer to a ‘class’, whereas hyponyms are specific members of the class. Animal, for example, is a superordinate whose hyponyms include words like dog, cat, and chicken. Depending on the context, a writer may go from a superordinate to its hyponyms, or vice versa, to create text coherence as shown in the example below. Related words refer to those that are normally not considered synonyms or antonyms but that form a synonymic, antonymic, or superordinate/hyponym relationship in the context (Carter and McCarthy, op. cit.. They are situational or textual synonyms or antonyms. Concerning the vocabulary choice, it can be said that the extreme optimism of today’s youth will exemplify both concepts. Wild optimism is youth’s prerogative, but older women should shudder slightly at the giddy expectations of today’s high school and college students. At times their hope borders on hubris with its assumption that the secrets that eluded their predecessors will be revealed to them. In the 1950s women were family-oriented. In the ’70s they were career-oriented. In the ’90s we want to balance. I think I can do both.” The word ‘youth’ and the phrase ‘high school and college students’ form a superordinate/ hyponym relationship in which ‘youth’ is a superordinate to ‘high school and college students’. As, for related words, there are many in this short passage. ‘Youth’ versus ‘older’, and ‘family-oriented’ versus ‘career-oriented’ are obvious examples that may be considered either antonyms or situational antonyms. ‘Wild optimism’, ‘giddy expectations’, ‘hope’, and ‘hubris’ refer basically to the same thing. They are not usually considered synonyms, but are situational synonyms. The words eluded and revealed would not normally be considered related. Yet in the sentence, they form a contrasting relationship. Text-structuring words, also known as halfway-house words, are those that fall somewhere between what have been traditionally called content and functional words (Carter and McCarthy, op. cit. ). Words such as ‘agenda’, ‘(dis)advantage’, ‘problem’, ‘reason’, and ‘feasible’ may seem to be classifiable as content words in the traditional sense because they are nouns, adjectives, or verbs. However, when one encounters these words in reading, often, and as Carter and McCarthy spoke of themselves: “we need to do something similar to what we do when we encounter words like it, he and do in texts: we either refer to the bank of knowledge built up with the author, look back in the text to find a suitable referent, or [look] forward, anticipating that the writer will supply the missing content”. The following sentence is an example; namely, “Despite its many good features, this car has a shortcoming.” Both the words ‘features’ and ‘shortcoming’ fall into the category of text-structuring words because the reader has to go back to the previous sentences to understand what the ‘good features’ mean, and wait for an explanation about the shortcoming before learning what it is. That is, both words have to be lexicalized before they can make full sense. Studies have demonstrated that content lexical ties are an important cohesive device in writing and that insufficient use of lexical cohesive ties by ESOL students contribute to the lack of cohesion in their writings. Yet so far, ESOL educators seem to have overlooked the issue. More attention should be paid to this topic in research and classroom teaching. Many more teaching and learning activities in this area need to be developed to help students write more cohesively. 14.6.4. Conjunction Errors The type of Conjunction errors represents 43.7% of the total of cohesion errors, Table 4. The following are some examples: a. And it designed some sample to stay a few week, and few of it stay about years they use this way with the patient who waiting the heart transport and they will never respond to it. It is clear that this sentence does not need to start with the additive coordinator ‘and’, for it is the first sentence of a paragraph. Furthermore, the same coordinator is repeated twice more in the same sentence. This concurs with the conclusion that Arab EFL learners’ overuse of English ‘and’ seems to play a central role in the formulation of the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis. It is commonly known that the Arabic language is characterized by a series of parallel constructions which are connected by coordination. Generally, argumented that parallel construction forms the core of paragraphs in some Arabic writings as well. b. The general delegate Tom frasline of the united nation of humanity affairs will arrive to day in Sudan as a visit which will take some days because the government invited him. The responsible of the united nation will hold speeches with some of responsible people in the authority. c. Which handle the humanity position in some areas in the west, and upper nlie and bahr elrazal (sic!) and arrange all the needs to deliver food for citizens in these areas. Looking at example b, one will discover that it is a form of a three sentences paragraph. It can be said that, the three sentences are loose and not logically joint. Sentences (a), and (b) are of the same beginning using the article ‘the’, whereas sentence (c) starts with ‘which’, which is completely wrong. It is also observed that the first sentence contains three linking words (as, which, because). A sentence may contain more than one idea. If these ideas are considered by the writer to be equal in rank, they are ‘coordinates’, and the independent clauses embodying their ideas are ‘coordinate clauses’. In such cases several connectives are used; including coordinating conjunctions. The connective used depends on the relationship that obtained between the two (or more) ideas/clauses. Kharma & Hajaj (1997:115), state that “Arab grammarians do not make a special distinction between coordination and subordination as this is dealt with in English. This may constitute a source of difficulty for Arab students when having to deal with subordinate clauses in particular.” It is only natural for students at university level, with an advanced stage of intellectual maturity, to deal with sophisticated ideas when they are required to write on various serious topics. The most important components of such writing are the relationships among the sub-ideas that constitute a main theme. So it is advisable that students should take care of the relationship among sub-ideas. As students and some teachers view the problem, the most significant and complicated steps are the stages of "superficial awareness" and "deep awareness of the original." Failure to clear these stages successfully may be due to the students' poor or insufficient knowledge of a foreign vocabulary; possible lack of information on rare words and/or stylistic labels in the dictionaries consulted (the latter circumstance generally leading to the translator's inability to distinguish the stylistic specificity of the original, i.e. Source Text); the presence, in the Source Text, of complicated, non-standard syntactical constructions ignored or poorly reported by grammar textbooks. All these create the general mood of "fear" of the Source Text on the part of the poor translator. Another reason for neglect of the "result" is the translator's a priori persuasion that every structure he/she makes in the native language is always grammatically (and/or stylistically) correct in FL language; as seen in the following example, * A united nation responsipol (sic!) man arrive to the country It should also be noted that the above "result" is obviously conditioned by the source text in its content. But, actually, it does not exhibit any formal linguistic ties with the latter thus being absolutely independent. Hence it is assessed, among other important criteria, from the standpoint of its conformity to the accepted standards of the native language. The typical characteristics of such a "result" might be as follows: 1. Undesirable imitation of the foreign word organization (word-order), as in a. Arrive responsible of united nation country; 2. Rendering of certain foreign grammar forms by the seemingly analogous structures of the mother tongue, as in b. Tom, general secretary of the united nation for humanitarian affairs will arrives the country today, as a visitor and he will stay for many days, and this invitation from the government. and c. Arrive responsible of united nation country; 3. Excessive and/or unjustified use of international language forms, as in d. U.N. agent arrives in the Sudan; e. United nation official arrives the country; f. The general secretary’s envoy for humanitarian affairs; The above-said drawbacks originating from the "translator's dependence" on the linguistic peculiarities of the source text, can seldom be qualified as "discrepancy of senses," but should rather be attributed to violation of formal standards of the native language which hampers the perception of the translation result as a text showing ultimate agreement with the original utterance. Thus, this violation cannot but notably lower the quality of the result. As an immediate example, one would take one English sentence found almost at random in a text dedicated to the system of U.N. This sentence, which has every chance of being offered for translation by Arabic-language students of various knowledge levels, runs as follows: "مبعوث الأمين العام للأمم المتحدة للشئون الإنسانية." The possible variant of translation in English is: “U.N. Secretary General’s envoy for human affairs.” Obviously enough, variants reveal the poorest knowledge of the structural specificity of the source language. The difficulties of the original which remained un-mastered during the first studying stage resulted in misunderstanding the meaning of the source utterance and, consequently, in the semantic distortion of the result. This distortion itself is so bad that it even overshadows the wrong syntax of the English translation, as seen in the following examples: a. U.N. agent arrives in the Sudan; b. A united nation responsipol (sic!) man arrive to the country; c. United nation official arrives the country; d. The general security of united nation humanitarian he will arrivals for several days for invitation for Sudanese government; e. A responsible of united nation arrives to Sudan; f. The united nation manager come to country; g. The united nation delegate council. Generally speaking, variants may be recognized as semantically equal to the original. However they contain an evident violation of the Arabic language standards leading to an ambiguity which is absolutely absent in the original. The translation variants may serve as typical examples of the translator's underestimation of the final stage of the process of translation. Apart from the fact that the above faulty translations exhibit errors pertaining to different linguistic domains, they also indicate different levels of practical knowledge of the Source Language and acquaintance with its lexical and grammatical specificity. 15. Conclusion Studying the results of the investigation, it was found that there were certain areas that were problematic to Sudanese students. These areas were lexical errors, errors of synonymity, syntactic errors and, finally, cohesion errors. It can be said that lexical errors in this study were confidential into: literal translation from Arabic, paraphrasing, false analogy and synonymy. It was found from the analysis undertaken, that MT interference was a major variable in the choice of lexical items. It was also found that overgeneralization of TL rules predominates. Tense errors were results of students’ incapability of selecting the right tense as well as the learning strategy of simplification and the false analogy, while MT interference was a main source of error apparent in the wrong formation of tenses. Concerning preposition errors, these were due to MT interference where students literally translated Arabic prepositions into English, lack of practice, and ignorance of rule restrictions. Concord errors could be attributed to overgeneralization of TL rules and MT interference. Students made pronominal errors in the wrong choice, redundant use and omission of pronouns as a result of differences between English and Arabic pronouns on the one hand, and MT interference, on the other hand. Students also made other errors such as the positioning of adjectives and adverbs. The MT was the main source of adjective errors. Generally, most of the errors revealed could be attributed to two major sources: inter-lingual (MT interference), and inter-lingual (i.e. overgeneralization of TL rules, simplification, false analogy, ignorance of rule restorations and incomplete application of rules.). In addition, they could be also attributed to such other non-linguistic sources, as methods of teaching, lack of training teachers, and ineffective curricula. Thinking of answering the three above-mentioned questions will lead to the evaluation of learners’ competence in handling English translation equivalence, the problems that these learners encountered in practicing translation, and how such problems can be overcome. The evaluation of the study showed that when learners had difficulty in ruling the TL lexical, which may convey the intended meaning, they resorted to the translation of the equivalent item from their MT and used it in the TL context. If the rules governing the item in the MT and TL were different, the use of the translated item would result in either a clear-cut error or in an expression, which sounded odd to native speakers, but nonetheless, fulfilled the purpose of communication. Tarone et al. (1983:10), define the strategy of paraphrasing as being: “The rewording of the message in an alternative acceptable construction in order to avoid a more difficult form or construction.” The term ‘circumlocution’ is also used by Tarone et al. (op. cit.:10), and Varadi (1983:84), to refer to paraphrasing. According to Tarone et al. (op. cit.:82): “the learner resorts to analogy in situations where the intended lexical item is known. It is his desire to communicate a certain concept that presses him to adapt his strategy.” These errors are referred to by Richards (1984:174), as being “developmental errors” which “illustrate that the learner is attempting to build up an hypothesis about the English language from his limited experience of it in the classroom or the textbook.” Furthermore, the area of synonymy should be taken into account. It is defined by Richards (1985:28) as being “a word which has the same, or nearly the same meaning as another word.” Errors in most cases can be attributed to the use of bilingual dictionaries where the FL learners tend to assume the existence of a number of related words. This view is confirmed by Hornby (1965:104), who states that: “There are very few real synonyms in English, so circular definitions are dangerous, especially in a dictionary intended for users to whom the language is foreign.” Then, syntactic errors according to English syntax, in this study, were categorized into six categories; namely, errors with regard to articles, tense and verb, preposition, concord, pronouns, and others. Table 1 shows the frequency of occurrence (496) of syntactic errors in the data under investigation. The typology was constructed according to linguistic usages. Other types of errors were also noted. They were those due to students’ ignorance of the functions of adverbs and adjectives because they lacked practice of these parts of speech. They ignored that adjectives describe nouns, while adverbs describe verbs. Therefore, they were unable to differentiate between them. Learners in this study tended to be weak when they wanted to interweave sentences and paragraph to indicate what the main idea of a paragraph was. This weakness was clearly noticed from the occurrence of cohesion errors in Table 4, where the percentages of the types of such cohesion errors were; namely, 56.3% for reference errors and 43.7%. for conjunction errors. It can be said that reference errors represented the most problematic area among cohesion errors. At the end, findings showed that learners made errors because of their lack of appreciation of the various ways of word application. They should know the applicability and usage of words and structures in a language. For such knowledge no fixed rules are available, due to continuous change in languages. Moreover, it can be said that the practice of continuous translation is indispensable, since it is the only best way for one to become a good practitioner. Practice should be combined with love of the profession of translation and dedication to it; efficient translators are those who love their profession. Learners should be exposed to translate texts in both the SL and TL. They should read these texts carefully with a decisive eye, and adopt the best of them as models to imitate. 16. Recommendations of the Study The following recommendations are made in a hope that they will be taken into consideration for at least reducing the occurrence of errors as well as creating better circumstances in the field of language learning, translation, teaching methodology, course-books preparation, teacher training, and testing. In accordance with our observations, the following measures could be recommended to teachers and curricula compilers as an attempt to avoid potential mistakes in translation: 1. As the students make step-by-step advance in mastering the linguistic specificity of the target language and move slowly from the initial to the final stage of the studying process, focus should be gradually shifted from the first translation stage to the last one, i.e. to the translation result. This should of course be done primarily in class, to form a habit of viewing the result as a self-sufficient and self-valuable utterance in the native language, of which linguistic specificity should not copy the source language. A fine support here is perhaps an increase (or at least a "non-decrease") of the time devoted to written translation from a foreign language into a native one, as compared to oral translation. 2. Adding, within the curriculum of the undergraduate students, one more, final, phase to the above-shown three-stage translation scheme, which may be named "result editing," i.e. bringing the native-language utterance into complete accord with the standards of the vernacular. 3. As an essential basis of what was said in the previous item, greater attention should be given to, and focus be made on, the professional study of the native language within the general curriculum of those students who study foreign languages. 4. Teaching English vocabulary to improve the learners’ vocabulary. It will help the learners to learn not only the meanings of words but also how these words are used. Learners ought to know that a word may have different meanings in different contexts. Immediate development of strategies for adequate expansion of vocabulary at the intermediate and advanced stages of language learning is most strongly recommended. Vocabulary should be recognized as a crucial element in language teaching/learning process from the beginning stages. 5. Teaching grammar does not have to be boring for students or teachers. Little creativity and productive lessons that teach grammar inductively can cheer up the process for both teachers and learners. 6. Writing should be given its own status in the ELT course. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that linguists have become interested in studying the characteristics of written as well as spoken language. It is now sufficiently clear that writing is not simply a poor relative of speaking, or that speaking is merely a sloppy version of writing. Another reason is that teachers of English have become increasingly concerned with the need to teach writing to students whose proficiency with the spoken language may be secondary or even irrelevant. Finally, coinciding with the increased interest in the written language by both linguists and ELT teachers has been a considerable growth in the study of language beyond the sentence; that is, in discourse. 7. Learners should always know that good translators do not only share worthwhile ideas with their readers but they also express those ideas in the source text in the best possible way. 8. Any course-book should be carefully planned to introduce students to all of the main elements of the taught subject in a simple, step-by-step fashion. Students begin by being made to discover the value and fascination of studying the subject, and move on. The course-book should also meet the needs of those who genuinely wish to teach themselves. 9. Learners should be aware of the differences between English and Arabic in terms of structures and their intended meanings. 10. Models of language, text and translation to provide the background for empirical studies are now more needed than ever. It is recommended to formulate key requirements on a translation model as a text type. Such a model must be able to (a) relate (translated) texts to situations of production and reception, (b) provide an account of texture which goes beyond traditional grammatical categories, (c) provide a motivated notion of text type, and (d) provide a motivated relationship of these types to lexico-grammatical realization, so as to be amenable to empirical and corpus-based work. 11. Studying translation at university level is no longer useful for producing competent translators. It is better to concentrate on having a good proficiency with both Arabic and English at such a level. Afterwards, learners can be introduced to translation studies. References and suggested Readings Bryman, A. 1996 Quantity and Quality in Social Research. New York: Routledge. Burt, M and C. Kiparsky 1972 The gooficon: A repair manual for English. Rowley, MA: Newberry House. Carter, R. A. (ed.) 1982 Language and Literature. London: George Allen and Unwin. 2 editions. Cohen, A.D. 1998 Strategies in Learning and Using a Second Language. Harlow: Addison Wesley. Corder S. P. 1967a Introduction of the Concept 'Error Analysis' 1967b The significance of learners' errors. Reprinted in Richards, J.C. (ed.) (1974, 1984) Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. London: Longman: 19 - 27 (Originally in International Review of Applied Linguistics 5/4 ). 1971. "Idiosyncratic dialects and error analysis”, IRAL 9:115-23. 1975 "Error analysis, interlanguage and second language acquisition”, Language Teaching and Linguistics: Abstracts 8:201-18. 1981 Error Analysis and Interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dulay, H. and M. Burt 1974 "Natural Sequences in Child Second Language Acquisition", Language Learning 24:37-53. 1975 "A New Approach to Discovering Universal Strategies of Child Second Language Acquisition", in Dato D. ( ed. ) Developmental Psycholinguistics: Theory and Application:209-233. 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