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After memorizing the adverbs of time in present simple tense and the problematic words, the students
should have given more chances to practice writing. This is due to the fact that the students might easily forget
the words and the structures if they have few chances to write them. According to Madsen (1983:112-113),
dictation is considered to be one of the easiest methods for practice and testing. Thus, dictation might be a
useful writing exercise for the students. Dictation may be done during class session, either at the beginning of the
class or at the end, for both of individual words and/or of sentences in context.
Teaching “subject and verb agreement” is another area that teachers should give emphasis to. Not only
concentrating on the pronoun subjects but also subjects in other different forms such as noun phrase, noun clause,
and noun with adjective clause should also be taught as well.
Most importantly, Teachers and language instructors should also teach grammatical rules through context. After
teaching the particular rule with regard to the present simple tense, the student should apply and practice that
particular grammatical rule in a context. The teachers may follow these steps:
Teachers may start by giving their students a multiple choice exercise or a story with some deleted words
related to the error types in present simple tense such as adverb of time, subject and verb agreement. Next, the
students have to answer by either choosing the appropriate verb forms or adding the correct verbs according to
the subjects and tense.
Teacher may organize the students into small groups of approximately 4-5 students each. The students
may then be given a passage, a story or a paragraph where possible errors including omission of agreement
suffixes, misspelling errors, substitution of other tenses or verb forms, etc are underlined. The students should
learn how to work as a team. Firstly, they should read and discuss them in their groups. Secondly, they should
give explanation why the underlined words are wrong. Then, they should try to correct those errors.
In conclusion, we suggest that the first language (L1) interference in writing is problematic for adult Arab learning
English as a foreign language. The source of errors may come from lack of communicative language teaching or
lack of enough practice of present simple tense. The finding of the present study could provide useful insights to
language teachers who teach present simple tense in English grammar course at every level in the way that the
teachers could become more aware of present simple tense, especially when this tense is used for writing. English
teachers would concentrate on the problematic area of present simple tense teaching. As a result, the teachers and
the English language researchers would be able to work hand in hand in improving the present simple tense
learning which could be successful for Arab English language learners as this is one of the important elements that
could lead to successful language learning.
However, it can be said that the findings from this study may not be conclusive. After all it is hard to say that the
most serious problem for non native English speakers is the use of the present simple tense in writing because of
the low opportunity for using English in their environment. We hope that the results of this research would be
useful for English teachers a well as the Arab learners. This study may also be useful for English teachers as it
highlights the Arab English language learners’ errors in terms of simple present tense and thus providing an
additional teaching material through which they can get more information and understanding of the students’ most
problematic errors. Other researchers could also be motivated to research the same topic in the future. The findings
would also be helpful for other L2 learners who are interested in learning English to understand the problems and
difficulties especially in learning English tenses.
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