Saudi learner’s encoding and decoding of English conditional constructions

الملخص EN

A hundred Saudi Arabian EFL learners at two distinct levels of proficiency were assessed in terms of their understanding and production of English conditional sentences (CSs) and the effect that different forms had on their acquisition of conditional clauses (CCs) and main clauses (MCs).

CSs were categorized into thirteen types according to the occurrence of the tense-forms in both the main and the subordinate clauses.

Responses of the two types of elicitation techniques were varied.

Similar to the performance of the high level proficiency learners (ADV), it was found that CS type 8 (the Simple Present tense form in the CC and the Simple Future tense form in the MC) was the least difficult CS type for the intermediate level learners (INT) in both tasks of the study by a significant amount.

It was also found that while CS type 3 (the Simple Future tense form in both clauses) was the most difficult CS for the learners in the comprehension task, the CS type 4 (the Present Perfect tense form in both clauses) was the most difficult CS in the production task.

Transfer (particularly positive) was observed in the data of the production task.

The results demonstrated that the Saudi Arabian EFL learners performed better on the tense forms of the MCs than those of the CCs in the comprehension task.

The results also showed that these learners used other strategies in addition to transfer such as semantic strategy and the order of mention strategy in processing and producing the CSs