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The Similarities Between the Errors in the Mother Tongue of the Autistic Children and the Target Language of the Second/Foreign Language Learners

Received: 10 March 2021    Accepted: 24 March 2021    Published: 30 March 2021
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Abstract

This paper presents the first investigation of the errors in the mother tongue of the children with autism, and compare between these errors and the errors in the production of Arab learners of English as second/foreign language. Based on the previous literature, the current study noted that language delay and the impaired social skills in the children with autism are the most prominent reasons which resulted in their impaired skills of language. In addition to, primary reasons affected the production of the second /foreign language such as the delayed learning of the target language, and the lack of interaction with the native speakers in social settings. Overall, these similar reasons between the two groups led to similar errors in the productions of their native and target languages. Aims: The primary goal of the present study is to explore the similarities between the performance of the children with autism when they use their mother tongue, and the errors in the production of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language when they use the target language. Methods & Procedures: The sample of this study consisted of two Yemeni children with high functioning autism aged 7;6 and 8;3 years. The examiner used the expressive language task to elicit the morpho-syntactic structures from the two cases, and compared it to the previous literature of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language, to find out the similarities between the errors in their productions. Results: The findings of this study revealed the similarities between the errors which occur in the answers of the autistic children when they use their mother tongue, and the errors which occur in the production of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language due to their delayed learning of the native/target languages. These errors classified into omission, substitution, or deletion of grammatical structures explored in this study and included (adjectives, preposition, articles, subject-verb agreement and plurality). The children with autism and the learner of English as second/foreign language substituted the order of the adjectives at the sentence level, omitted and overused the articles, substituted the prepositions with others, replacing the feminine suffixes with masculine suffixes in the production of the autistic children, and omitting the 3rd person singular in the production of the ESL/EFL learners resulted in subject-verb disagreement, and impaired plurality by replacing the singular nouns with plural nouns in the learners of English as second/foreign language or the opposite in the children with autism.

Published in International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation (Volume 7, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12
Page(s) 21-26
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Similarities, Autistic Children, ESL/EFL Learners, Mother Tongue, Errors

References
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[3] Al Khotaba, E.& Al Karak, M. (2013). Errors in the Use of Prepositions and Adverb Particles by Arab ESL Speakers: Performance Analysis Perspective. International Journal of Linguistics, 5 (1), p: 273-282. doi: 10.5296/ijlv5i1.3310.
[4] Alhawary, M. (2011). Modern Standard Arabic Grammar. west Sussex. UK. Wiley-Blackwell.
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[6] American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder, text revision DSM IV-TR, 4th ed. Washington DC, American Psychiatric Association.
[7] Al-Qadi, M. M. (2017) English Article System Errors among Saudi Arab EFL Learners: A Case of the Preparatory Year English Program Learners of King Saud University. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 5 (1), 69-77.
[8] Bartolucci, G. & Albers, R. J. (1974). Deictic Categories in the language of autistic children, Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 4, 131-141.
[9] Bartolucci, G., Pierce, S. J., &Streiner, D. (1980). Cross-sectional studies of grammatical morphemes in autistic and mentally retarded children. Journal of autism and developmental disorder, 10, 39-49.
[10] Belkadi, A. (2006). Language Impairments in Autism: Evidence Against Mind-Blindness. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 14, 3-13.
[11] Durrleman, S. &Zufferey, S. (2009). The Nature of Syntactic Impairment in Autism. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa. 34, 57-86.
[12] Eigsti, I. - M., L, Bennetto, et al. (2007). “Beyond Pragmatics: morphosyntactic development in autism. “Journal of autism and developmental disorders 37, 107-1023.
[13] Eigsti, I.-M. and L. Bennetto (2009). Grammatically Judgments in Autism: deviance or delay. “Journal of child language 36 (5), 999-1021.
[14] Gernsbacher, M., Morson, E., Grace, E. J. (2015) Language Development in Autism. In book: Neurobiology of Language. 879-886. Doi: 10,1016/B978-0-12-407794-2.00070-5.
[15] Husni, R., Zaher, A. (2020). Working with Arabic Prepositions. London: Routledge.
[16] Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21 (1), 60-99.
[17] Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child 2, 217–250.
[18] Kika, M. (2014). Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children and Language Delays in their Parents when Children. International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education (IJHSSE), 1 (9), 18-21.
[19] Mufftah & Rafik-Galea (2013). Error Analysis of Present Simple Tense in the Interlanguage of Adult Arab English Language Learners. English Language teaching. 6 (2), 146-154.
[20] Newport, E. (1990). Maturational Constraints on Language Learning. Cognitive Science 14, 11-28.
[21] Roberts, J., Rice, M. and Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Tense Marking in Children with Autism. Applied Psycholinguistics 25, 429-448.
[22] Ryding, C. K. (2005). A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. UK, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[23] Ryding, K., and Mehall, D. (2005). Formal Spoken Arabic: Basic course. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
[24] Sabbah, S. (2015). Negative Transfer: Arabic Language Interference to Learning English. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Special Issue on Translation. 4 (2015), 269-288.
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[26] Wittke, K., Mastergeorge, AM, Ozonoff, S., Rogers. SJ., Naigles. LR. (2017). Grammatical Language Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Exploring Language Phenotypes Beyond Standardized Testing. Front Psychol. https//doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00532.
[27] Yusoff, Y., Salehuddin, K., Abdullah, I., Toran, H. (2019). English Morphosyntactic performance of a high-functioning ASD child: Implications on ELT. Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction, 16 (1), 155-179.
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  • APA Style

    Tahani Abdulrahman Al-absi. (2021). The Similarities Between the Errors in the Mother Tongue of the Autistic Children and the Target Language of the Second/Foreign Language Learners. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation, 7(1), 21-26. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12

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    Tahani Abdulrahman Al-absi. The Similarities Between the Errors in the Mother Tongue of the Autistic Children and the Target Language of the Second/Foreign Language Learners. Int. J. Appl. Linguist. Transl. 2021, 7(1), 21-26. doi: 10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12

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    AMA Style

    Tahani Abdulrahman Al-absi. The Similarities Between the Errors in the Mother Tongue of the Autistic Children and the Target Language of the Second/Foreign Language Learners. Int J Appl Linguist Transl. 2021;7(1):21-26. doi: 10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12,
      author = {Tahani Abdulrahman Al-absi},
      title = {The Similarities Between the Errors in the Mother Tongue of the Autistic Children and the Target Language of the Second/Foreign Language Learners},
      journal = {International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation},
      volume = {7},
      number = {1},
      pages = {21-26},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijalt.20210701.12},
      abstract = {This paper presents the first investigation of the errors in the mother tongue of the children with autism, and compare between these errors and the errors in the production of Arab learners of English as second/foreign language. Based on the previous literature, the current study noted that language delay and the impaired social skills in the children with autism are the most prominent reasons which resulted in their impaired skills of language. In addition to, primary reasons affected the production of the second /foreign language such as the delayed learning of the target language, and the lack of interaction with the native speakers in social settings. Overall, these similar reasons between the two groups led to similar errors in the productions of their native and target languages. Aims: The primary goal of the present study is to explore the similarities between the performance of the children with autism when they use their mother tongue, and the errors in the production of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language when they use the target language. Methods & Procedures: The sample of this study consisted of two Yemeni children with high functioning autism aged 7;6 and 8;3 years. The examiner used the expressive language task to elicit the morpho-syntactic structures from the two cases, and compared it to the previous literature of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language, to find out the similarities between the errors in their productions. Results: The findings of this study revealed the similarities between the errors which occur in the answers of the autistic children when they use their mother tongue, and the errors which occur in the production of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language due to their delayed learning of the native/target languages. These errors classified into omission, substitution, or deletion of grammatical structures explored in this study and included (adjectives, preposition, articles, subject-verb agreement and plurality). The children with autism and the learner of English as second/foreign language substituted the order of the adjectives at the sentence level, omitted and overused the articles, substituted the prepositions with others, replacing the feminine suffixes with masculine suffixes in the production of the autistic children, and omitting the 3rd person singular in the production of the ESL/EFL learners resulted in subject-verb disagreement, and impaired plurality by replacing the singular nouns with plural nouns in the learners of English as second/foreign language or the opposite in the children with autism.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - The Similarities Between the Errors in the Mother Tongue of the Autistic Children and the Target Language of the Second/Foreign Language Learners
    AU  - Tahani Abdulrahman Al-absi
    Y1  - 2021/03/30
    PY  - 2021
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12
    T2  - International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
    JF  - International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
    JO  - International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
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    EP  - 26
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2472-1271
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20210701.12
    AB  - This paper presents the first investigation of the errors in the mother tongue of the children with autism, and compare between these errors and the errors in the production of Arab learners of English as second/foreign language. Based on the previous literature, the current study noted that language delay and the impaired social skills in the children with autism are the most prominent reasons which resulted in their impaired skills of language. In addition to, primary reasons affected the production of the second /foreign language such as the delayed learning of the target language, and the lack of interaction with the native speakers in social settings. Overall, these similar reasons between the two groups led to similar errors in the productions of their native and target languages. Aims: The primary goal of the present study is to explore the similarities between the performance of the children with autism when they use their mother tongue, and the errors in the production of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language when they use the target language. Methods & Procedures: The sample of this study consisted of two Yemeni children with high functioning autism aged 7;6 and 8;3 years. The examiner used the expressive language task to elicit the morpho-syntactic structures from the two cases, and compared it to the previous literature of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language, to find out the similarities between the errors in their productions. Results: The findings of this study revealed the similarities between the errors which occur in the answers of the autistic children when they use their mother tongue, and the errors which occur in the production of Arab learners of English as second /foreign language due to their delayed learning of the native/target languages. These errors classified into omission, substitution, or deletion of grammatical structures explored in this study and included (adjectives, preposition, articles, subject-verb agreement and plurality). The children with autism and the learner of English as second/foreign language substituted the order of the adjectives at the sentence level, omitted and overused the articles, substituted the prepositions with others, replacing the feminine suffixes with masculine suffixes in the production of the autistic children, and omitting the 3rd person singular in the production of the ESL/EFL learners resulted in subject-verb disagreement, and impaired plurality by replacing the singular nouns with plural nouns in the learners of English as second/foreign language or the opposite in the children with autism.
    VL  - 7
    IS  - 1
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Department of Linguistics, School of Language Development, Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University, Hyderabad, India

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