The Effect of Nouns and Verbs of the Same Word on Lexical and Structural Development in the Writings of Iraqi EFL Secondary School Students

Abstract

In the English language, like the vast majority of languages, a large number of words are utilized to occupy more than one position; these words can be used as both nouns and verbs. Such a case poses problems for EFL students aiming to learn the grammatical properties of words. Therefore, it, to a greater or lesser extent, has an effect on the lexical and structural development of the students’ written texts. This paper sheds light on the difficulties faced by Iraqi EFL secondary school students in the perception and use of words that can be both nouns and verbs. To achieve this, the study employed a writing test consisting of two parts, which was completed by 15 students. In the first part, the students were given 10 sentences and asked to form nouns and verbs out of the given underlined words, whereas the second part included 10 sentences in which the students were asked to identify whether the given bold word was a noun or a verb. The findings, based on a quantitative analysis, indicated that a majority of the participants were unable to use nouns and verbs having the same form in their writing. The findings also showed that the participants were unaware of these nouns and verbs. Most of the students could not recognize whether the given words were nouns or verbs.