مؤسسة الشرق الأوسط للنشر العلمي
عادةً ما يتم الرد في غضون خمس دقائق
Academic writing is a critical yet challenging competency for EFL learners in the Libyan higher education context, where the transition to university-level discourse often reveals significant linguistic gaps. This study aims to diagnose the specific writing difficulties and the influence of first-language (L1) interference among the entire first-year cohort at the Faculty of Arts – Msallata, El-mergib University. Adopting a descriptive-analytical census design, the research analyzed the writing samples of all twenty enrolled freshmen (𝑁=20) using Corder’s (1967) Error Analysis framework. Data collection involved a controlled descriptive writing task and semi-structured interviews with writing instructors to triangulate findings. The analysis identified 192 errors, with grammatical inaccuracies (51%) and mechanical errors (30.2%) being the most prevalent. A critical finding was that (65.1%) of the total errors were interlingual, directly attributable to negative transfer from Arabic syntax and orthography, most notably in subject-verb agreement and the "zero-copula" structure. The study concludes that writing challenges at the Msallata campus are predominantly driven by cross-linguistic influence rather than a simple lack of vocabulary. It recommends the urgent integration of contrastive linguistics and process-oriented writing pedagogy into the department’s curriculum to prevent the fossilization of these interlanguage errors.