Arabic cultural/educational and linguistic background as factors affecting EFL writing performance
Effective communication in a foreign language depends on more than knowing the rules of its lexicon, grammar, and phonology. It involves the processing of cultural as well as linguistic knowledge. Any form of communication (and language is one form of communication) has its own strategies. The strategies of language communication vary systematically across languages and cultures. The differences in the general ethos of one community as compared to another lead to differences in the strategies of communication, as certain aspects of the communicative properties of languages might be culture- and language-specific. As a result, foreign language learners might fail to communicate effectively in the foreign language. This failure seems to be greatly due to a transferance of the native-language communicative strategies to the foreign language. The most appropriate way to solve this problem as suggested in this thesis, alongside many other foreign language teachers and applied linguists, is contrastive language work through translation. Such approach makes possible the juxtaposition of the native language and the foreign language, thus allowing the students to see practically and for themselves the culturo-linguistic
Labidi, A.
P Philology. Linguistics ; PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania ; Memory, Text and Place
Arabic cultural/educational and linguistic background as factors affecting EFL writing performance. Effective communication in a foreign language depends on more than knowing the rules of its lexicon, grammar, and phonology. It involves the processing of cultural as well as linguistic knowledge. Any form of communication (and language is one form of communication) has its own strategies. The strategies of language communication vary systematically across languages and cultures. The differences in the general ethos of one community as compared to another lead to differences in the strategies of communication, as certain aspects of the communicative properties of languages might be culture- and language-specific. As a result, foreign language learners might fail to communicate effectively in the foreign language. This failure seems to be greatly due to a transferance of the native-language communicative strategies to the foreign language. The most appropriate way to solve this problem as suggested in this thesis, alongside many other foreign language teachers and applied linguists, is contrastive language work through translation. Such approach makes possible the juxtaposition of the native language and the foreign language, thus allowing the students to see practically and for themselves the culturo-linguistic
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