Arab EFL Learners’ Perspectives on L1 Influence: Factors and Constraints

This paper aims at examining the factors that cause L1 influence from the perspectives of adultnative-Arabic speaking learners of English. It also reports on the possible constraints on L1influence and further delves into the role of Psychotypology. Despite the recognition of theimportance of L2 learners’ perspectives regarding the influence of their L1 and the factorscontribute to such influence; this topic is an understudied area in the context of native-Arabicspeaking learners of English. A semi-structured interview and a rewrite test were conductedwith 40 undergraduate students at a public university, Jordan, where they were classified intotwo groups of 20 students each: beginner group and advanced group. The findings indicatethat there are various causes of L1 influence including the peculiarity and complexity of someL2 structures/features as well as L1 –L2 structural differences. Learners’ psychotypologicalassessment of what is a similar, different, marked and unmarked structure across L1 and L2 isone of the restrictions on L1 influence. Moreover, Learners’ psychotypological assessment alsovaries depending on the learners’ L2 proficiency levels. The findings of this study can provideimportant insights into the research that considers various factors of the overall process of secondlanguage acquisition.