An analysis of the errors of subject–predicate agreement made by Arabic language students at the universities of Tehran

Improving the process of learning Arabic in Iran necessitates paying careful attention to Applied linguistics including error analysis and contrastive analysis theories. In line with this, the present study attempted to analyze the subject–predicate agreement errors made by Arabic language students at the universities of Tehran based on the descriptive analytical approach. The study population consisted of Arabic language and literature students at Tehran State University among whom, 20 were randomly selected as the sample who were junior BA students. Their average age was about 22 years and they were of intermediate level of proficiency. Two tests (essay and Translation) were used as the instruments of the study in two steps. After classifying the errors according to the Corder table, overall, 49 errors (duplicate and non-duplicate) were identified. After classification of the errors, based on occurrence origin, most errors were related to intralingual (61/22 cent) and interlingual (24/48 cent) sources, respectively. The most common errors in the index structure were matching the predicate to the reference in terms of gender followed by errors related to number agreement.