Transfer in using conditional sentences by Saudi Arabian learners of English

Abstract EN

A hundred Saudi EFL students were assessed on their understanding and using English conditional sentences (Cxs).

The subjects were divided into two ability groups-intermediate (INT) and advanced (ADV), and 50 subjects in each group - according to their performance in a proficiency test.

Two types of elicitation tasks, comprehension and production, were implemented to test subjects' performance on the types of CSs, INT group showed that hypothetical es types were more difficult than the open ones in the comprehension and production tasks.

ADV did not display that except for the combination-production risks.

CSs were divided according to the relationships between the clauses into open and hypothetical.

Responses over the predicted transfer groups of ess (positive or negative) varied: predicted negative transfer ess were more difficult for all our subjects than predicted positive transfer ess in task 3 (combination-production).

On the other hand, while INT performed better on the predicted negative transfer CSs in task 2 (completion-production) ADV showed the opposite preference.

In the comprehension task, while INT did not display any significant difference between the two types of predicted transfer CSs, predicted, positive transfer ess were more difficult for ADV than the predicted negative transfer OSs, The subjects' performance on individual ess within these two types of predicted transfer groups also varied.

The variation was mainly due to the finding that our subjects were aware of {he likelihood of transferring certain structures successfully into L2 and avoided others.

the result also revealed that our EFL learners particulary INT , in their processing of CSs, might use the semantic strategy as well as order of metion strategythat lead them to make more syntantic errors with certin types of CSs.

the results alsorevealed that our subjects adopted transfer strategy more in production task than the comprehension.