Abstract

Nonetheless, that there are distinguished, qualified, specialized and experienced teachers; in addition to good overall designing and planning; comprehensive and purposive curriculum, integrated textbooks, but the achievement is still below the expectations of all who are concerned with English language teaching in the Arab world. The current study is set out to review kinds of pitfalls encountered by EFL Arab Learners at the tertiary level in the use of the most three problematic syntactic/semantic sub-categories: prepositions, articles and discourse markers, respectively, in their written and oral discourse. The aim is twofold, by reviewing the empirical studies conducted in the last two decades, the study seeks to probe, introduce and report first: the most common kinds of pitfalls Arab undergraduates face in learning English as a foreign/second language. Second: to reveal possible sources and causes lie behind these pitfalls and what insights and pedagogical implications might be offered. Pitfalls were discussed, conclusions had been drawn, implications and future directions were provided at the end. This is followed by practical suggestions to minimize the occurrence of pitfalls in their formal English.

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