Accuracy Order of English Grammatical Morphemes of Saudi EFL Learners

Abstract

Purpose: This paper investigates the accuracy orderof grammatical morphemes followed by Saudi EFLlearners. The major aim of the research was to revealthe pattern of grammatical morpheme acquisition ofthe participants, and to compare it against theNatural Order Hypothesis (NOH) as stated byKrashen (1977). The different factors that affected thegenerated order were also discussed. ResearchMethods: The present research adopted a descriptivequantitative design. Three groups of male and femalestudents (n= 258) participated in the study. Theparticipants were selected randomly from publicschools and university colleges. They responded to agrammar elicitation task designed to test theiraccuracy of using grammatical morphemes. Pica's (1983) TLU method was used to assess the participants' performance. Findings: It wasfound that Saudi EFL learners developed the accuracy of using grammatical morphemes in asimilar sequence regardless of their educational stages. Although this sequence was fixed,there seemed to be a clear effect of the educational stage upon the quality of their usage. Thegenerated accuracy order was found to be different from the NOH. This result suggested thatthe participants' first language (L1) affected the accuracy order of grammatical morphemes.Implications for research and practice: The findings of the study suggested that course booklesson plans should be designed according to the generated order to facilitate grammaticalmorpheme acquisition. Further research that will utilize a bigger size of samples is alsorequired to confirm the generated order.