Sources of Difficulties in English Grammar and Reading Comprehension among Arabic-Speaking Learners: A Contrastive Analysis

Abstract

Arabic-speaking learners of English tend to struggle with the same handful of grammatical points and the same kind of reading obstacles, semester after semester, regardless of where they study. This paper asks why, using a contrastive comparison of English and Arabic grounded in Lado's (1957) procedure and in the error-analysis and interlanguage traditions built by Corder (1967) and Selinker (1972). It compares the two languages across tense and aspect, articles, prepositions, word order, negation, and question formation, then follows the same contrasts into the reading process itself, looking at script transfer, sentence parsing, vocabulary inferencing, and cultural background knowledge. Throughout, the analysis is checked against two decades of empirical work on Arab EFL learners (Aljouhani, 2019; Abdelmohsen, 2022; Bensalah & Gueroudj, 2020; Qrqez & Ab Rashid, 2017). The central claim is a simple one: grammatical error and reading difficulty are not two separate problems in these learners but two visible symptoms of the same structural gap between Arabic and English. The paper closes with a set of classroom recommendations built directly on that claim.