Syntactic Transfer: Evidence from the Interlanguage of Moroccan Learners of English
Syntactic Transfer: Evidence from the Interlanguage of Moroccan Learners of English

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is to observe the development of syntactic knowledge among Moroccan learners of English. Learning the target structure often invokes a direct transfer of the mother tongue patterns. In language learning, when learners encounter difficulties in generating certain structures of the target language, they likely resort to L1 to generate sentences. This is evidence that Universal Grammar is involved in second language acquisition and that leaners’ L1 constitutes the initial state of language development. Working on this assumption, this study explores the syntactic errors among Moroccan EFL learners in writing within the framework of Error Analysis and Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. It analyzes the sources of making this type of errors. The data collection instrument is a questionnaire administered to teachers. Forty Moroccan EFL teachers participated in the study. To increase generalizability, the participants belong to different Moroccan secondary high schools. The overall findings of the study, first, reveal that there are two common types or categories of syntactic errors: word order and subject repetition. Second, one of the commonest sources of making these syntactic errors by Moroccan EFL learners is the negative transfer from Moroccan Arabic into the English language. This paper winds up with some pedagogical implications and remedies by promoting syntactic awareness in reducing learners’ syntactic errors.

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