Logical connectives in Arab university students' writing in English

Abstract EN

This study is designed to explore the type of logical connectives used in Arab students' writings in English at university.

It also aims at investigating the influence of the Arabic wa\ on students' writings.

Thus the main hypothesis in this study is that logical connective, wa' is sometimes transferred into English written texts produced by Arab learners of' English.

This transference affects the development as well as the organisation of texts produced by the said learners.

The results of this study have revealed that the number of misused logical connectives in the pre-Course Experiment is significantly higher than the number in the post-Course Experiment.

These findings indicate that before taking the course the students were not familiar with the various functions of logical connectives in English.

However, there were some traces of first language interference, especially in the use of the additive connective And, but these were of minor importance.