Investigating the performance of Iraqi EFL university students in using attributive and predicative adjectives : an error analysis

Abstract EN

The speaker sometimes wish to ascribe a quality to the thing he is talking about or to describe the manner in which something is done ; thus, he uses an adjective and an adverb respectively.

Simply, adjectives and adverbs are used to make one's communication informative and inspiring.

It is noted that Iraqi EFL university students face difficulty in identifying attributive and predicative adjectives.

In addition, it has been observed that the recognition and production of the categories of adjectives are problematic for Iraqi EFL learners of the fourth academic year, although this grammatical phenomenon is indicated in their year of study.

Moreover, the two major areas of difficulty are: the inherent difficulty of the English syntactic system of the learners' native language on the one hand and that of the foreign language on the other hand.

According to the previous statements, it is to be assumed that Iraqi EFL university learners use different strategies in recognizing and producing attributive and predicative adjectives.

This study aims at discovering the types and causes of errors which Iraqi EFL university learners commit in the use of attributive and predicative adjectives.

This study also will present a material about attributive and predicative adjectives which can be of help to distinguish those types of adjectives.