TRANSFER AND RELATED STRATEGIES IN THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH RELATIVE CLAUSES BY ADULT ARAB LEARNERS

The focus of this study is the role of transfer in second language acquisition. A sample of written production of English relative clauses by 102 Arab ESL learners is analyzed. The data collection included a translation test, a grammaticality judgment test, a sentence combining task, and a multiple choice test. Informal interviews were conducted after administering the tests.; The results of this study indicate that language transfer is a significant factor in second language acquisition. A distinction between inferencing and non-inferencing transfer is possible. In addition to the strategies already known in the field such as transfer, simplification, and overgeneralization, Arab ESL learners seem to employ various perceptual and production strategies.; There are both interlingual and intralingual errors in the interlanguage of Arab ESL learners. Avoidance seems to be ruled out by the syntactic similarity between Arabic and English in relativization and by the perceptual and production strategies. Transfer, perceptual, and production strategies may be a manifestation of achievement behavior as opposed to avoidance behavior.; The rentention of the resumptive pronoun may be an example of fossilization. Pidginization may not be a factor here because of basic differences between pidginization and interlanguage. Language universals seem to play a role in second language acquisition.; Several implications might be drawn about the process of second language acquisition. A useful perspective in characterizing interlanguage is adopting the learner's perspective. The learner's perceptions seem to support the definition of 'strategy' as a more or less conscious plan for solving what the learner perceives as a problem in second language communication. It might be possible to reconcile the conflicting views of behaviorists and cognitivists if our characterization of language transfer proves to be tenable and if language learning is viewed as the development of cognitive ability plus the automatization of language skills.; Finally, any unifactor approach will be insufficient. An adequate account of the process of second language acquisition has to take into account a multifactor approach in which the native language, the target language, transfer and other perceptual and production strategies, and language universals play complementary and synthesizing roles.