The Use of English Back-formation Process by Babylon University Learners: Errors Analysis

The present study is an attempt to identify the errors made by Iraqi EFL learners in the Department of English / College of Basic Education, University of Babylon in using backformation. This study aims at :(1)Presenting a brief and relevant background of back-formation, (2) Identifying and classifying the errors made by the fourth year students in the English Department, College of Basic Education/ University of Babylon during the academic year (2015-2016), and (3) Locating the areas of difficulty that Iraqi EFL learners encountered in learning categories of backformation. To achieve the goals mentioned above, the study hypothesizes :( 1) Iraqi EFL learners are unable to identify properly back-formation. This is due to the nature of English system which is different from Arabic system, (2) Such learners are unable to use back-formation properly in communication. Errors have been pointed and results have been analyzed statistically. The analysis gives the following results: (1)Iraqi EFL university learners at the fourth year face difficulty in mastering back-formation .This is indicated by their low performance in the main test as the rate of their correct responses (775,38.75%) is lower significantly than that of their in correct ones (1225,61.25)(2)The subjects performance in the test has also revealed that EFL university learners encounter more difficulties in using back-formation at the production level that at the recognition one . This is due to the face that the total number and the percentage of the correct response at the production level (337,33,7%) are lower than those of correct responses at the recognition level (438,43.8%).