Second language learning has received a lot of attention from various scholars. In this regard, Krashen (1979) argues that acquisition is a subconscious process whereas learning is conscious.

In case of second language learning, the knowledge of Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics of any language is a must. All these aspects of language are very important in any language learning. A text is determined legal by the syntax of language and the any disagreement with the rules of grammar leads to grammatical errors or syntax error. This can be easily detected by one's knowledge of language but the purpose of a syntactic theory is to possess the structural sentence as acceptable or not. Syntactic complexity is the ability to produce writing, which shows how ideas and large chunks of information are represented with the use of subordinate and embedded subordinate clauses which is one of the most difficult structural elements for learners learning English as a second language. As far as the learners of Arabic speakers learning English are concerned, they face difficulties in forming a syntactically proper English sentences. They lack the knowledge of putting together functional and content words resulting into a grammatical sentence. However, it is very important to use functional and content words for the formation of sentences in that language.

In order to gain this information, the learners of second language need to know the organization of these lexical and functional words in a language i.e. syntax of a language which means proper arrangement of words. It is important to study patterns of sentence formation to understand universal principles which apply to all languages in the world. Therefore, it can be said that a syntax-based interpretation is the basis of learning any language, along with the other aspects of language. The development of syntax is best viewed as the result of second language learners building subconscious mental grammars where some syntactic properties are learned before others. If a sentence is constructed according to the syntactic properties of a language then it is well formed or we can say grammatical but if a sentence is constructed in violation of those properties it is ill-formed or ungrammatical. This is the case with Saudi undergraduate students who are very poor in syntax. Any language written or spoken, which does not agree with the syntactic rules is said to have syntactic errors. That is, it does not possess the structural sentences according to the rules of syntax. One must produce his text (written or spoken) according the grammatical rules of the language (Branigan, Pickering, McLean, & Stewart, 2006)

The present paper focuses on the need of syntax based interpretation in learning English as a second language among Arabic speakers. The interpretation of syntax refers to the analysis of sentence structures and texts, written or spoken. Syntax is basically a set of rules and principles that govern the structure of sentences in a given language. The skills of syntax are very important to understand the structure of the language in a systematic and structural way. The understanding of syntactic elements of a language and their relationships makes it easy to understand the essential elements within a sentence. It is the learner's first attempt to understand creativity in language and its limits.

Numerous studies have been considered to ascertain the role of syntax-based interpretation or syntactic knowledge in comprehending the four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), while learning a second language. The learner develops the syntactic knowledge while learning a second language as it is done consciously and the learner in this case is aware of the language rules while formulating an utterance. Language specific rules need to be learned for the formation of sentences that is, the way in which words are arranged in a sentence. One needs to know the order of Subject, Verb and Object in a sentence of a particular language whether the language is SVO or SOV. According to Scott and Tucker (1974), Al-Kasimi, Topan, and Khan (1979), Kambal (1980), El-Badarin (1983), El- Sayed (1983), Arabic speaking learners of English use present simple with past simple tenses particularly with compound and complex sentences which indicates that they lack the syntactic component. To develop syntactic component, it is important to know syntactic properties to produce or construct correct sentences.

Cummins (1978), in his linguistic interdependence hypothesis states that the language abilities of a learner's first language including both knowledge and skills, can facilitate the development of similar abilities in his second language. Every speaker follows a particular strategy for the production of structures or sentences and same strategy can be employed for performing a similar function in the second language. This is called a syntactic awareness. Researchers like August and Shanahan (2008) have also argued that native speaker's knowledge of syntactic patterns can be used in comprehending the similarities and differences of structures while learning a second language.

Awareness of syntax is refered as the knowledge of syntactic structures and the ability to reflect on and manipulate the structure (Kuo & Anderson, 2008). According to them, syntactic awareness has two basic components, which have a very important role to play in learning a second language. These components include knowledge about word order and morpho-syntactic awareness. Knowledge about word order refers to the identification of differences between first and second language, while morpho-syntactic awareness refers to the ability to analyze, compare, and manipulate language forms consciously. Since morphology is used in all the languages for the specification of relations within and across the sentences, this component is therefore very important for language learning. For example, in Kashmiri the nouns are inflected for case, with an overt case marking where as in English the case marking on the nouns is covert. Syntactically well formed structures are easily formed once such features are identified in a second language.

Researchers like Slobin (1980), use studies like contrastive analysis where pairs of languages are studied for the similarities and differences of structures. They concluded that learners often apply their L1 knowledge in constructing L2 sentences which often leads to common grammatical errors such as overgeneralizations. For instance, the Kashmiri speakers learning English often omit the definite determiner 'the', since there is no definite determiner in Kashmiri. These studies are in contrast to the findings of Cummins (1978).

The term contrastive analysis was extensively used in the field of Acquisition of Second Language (SLA) in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining why some features of a second or foreign language were more difficult to learn than others. Contrastive analysis is a method which is extensively used to find out and explain why some foreign language features are difficult to acquire than others. This makes the learner to make mistakes as two languages are different and their competence is low.

According to the prevailing theories of behaviourism, language learning was a question of habit formation, and this could be reinforced by existing habits. It was suggested that the difficulty in mastering certain structures in a second language (L2) depended on the difference between the learners' native language (L1) and the language they were trying to acquire. The learners tend to make errors and the errors that occur in learning of second language cause interference refered as developmental errors, ambiguous errors and unique errors. Interference is the result of old habits of the first language, and it must be unlearned before the learning of the new habits of second language (Dualy, Burt, & Krashen, 1982). Corder (1967), introduced the concept of Error Analysis as a systematic deviation, which is consistent and characteristic to the language learner. In Robert Lado's 'Linguistics Across Cultures' the theoretical foundations of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis were formulated (Lado, 1957). He claimed that those elements which are similar to [the learner's] native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult. When learners' use elements of native language in their spoken or written performances of the target language, it results in Errors (Richards, 1971, p. 205).

People tend to draw a connection between their existing knowledge and the knowledge which they are not aware of while learning a language. Learners transfer their existing knowledge of native language to the performance of the target language (Ellis, 1997, p. 28). Stern (1983, p. 341) puts it in his own terms as, 'The native speaker's 'competence' or 'proficiency' or 'knowledge of the language'is an important point of reference for the concept of second language proficiency used in language teaching'.

Radford (2004) has traditionally sub-divided grammar into two different, but inter-related areas of study namely morphology and syntax. Morphology refers to the study of words, their formation, and their relationship to other words in the same language where as Syntax refers to the formation of words into sentences.

Errors that learners tend to make can be analyzed and can lead to make generalizations about the problems which are encountered by the learners in learning a language. Brown (2007) mentions that it is an identifiable alteration of native speaker's elements of grammar which presents the competence of a learner in target language. They are also considered as the sign of learning process and this perspective is based on Chomsky (1986, p. 23).

The major significance of the study is to form the base for Syntax among Arabic students which is possible by analyzing their syntactic errors and taking these errors as a sample for learning language. These students mostly translate their native language elements directly into English language without taking the syntactic pattern into consideration which is different between languages. The emphasis will be given to those syntactic patterns in which they tend to make errors. In fact, the English course can be planned accordingly.

• To detect syntactic errors in the speech of Arabic students learning English as a second language.
• To analyze errors on the basis of Syntactic interpretation and find their causes.
• Provide recommendations for overcoming the need of Syntax based interpretations for learning English.

A research study was conducted on the students of Level 4 to Level 7 in King Khalid University who were 18 to 24 years of age, where the Syntactic patterns including sentences and words uttered by them were studied. Both spoken and written form was collected for rigorous analysis.

The data includes the following expressions used by students while conversing with the teachers. These expressions are given below with the main focus on syntactic errors.

Miss I want talk about my project please

Doctor because in the paper without binding?

Miss please don't do 0 I will replay my project but please give me what the wrong

I tired of do my project. I will do when you give me the structer as soon as possible.

In this conversation, functional words are missing at most of the places, forms of tenses are absolutely wrong, sentence structure is not proper, words are not used at proper places. The major part of this conversation is ungrammatical.

Hello teacher. How are you?

I want ask you to something important for final exam.

In these sentences, there is omission or wrong use of prepositions.

dear prof, Good evening I hope you doing well. i am one of your student, my total low so I need your help 2 make it high. I am a graduation student and I want 2 pass this course bcz I get married and go Yanbua City which far. please miss I need your help. and i will be appreciate it. give me any extra marks or any kind of assigment. I promise u that i do it.

Hi, how are u ?

I want to ask you about the location of CLMS. We only solve Unit 6 to obtain grades or all units And when will it close? And thank you.

In the above examples, the prominent thing is the use of language which we use in informal settings like chatting on social media eg “2 instead of to, bcz instead of because, u instead of you...the use of a verb “will”, “do” is missing and important punctuation is missing.

Good evening Dr. I am sorry I can not attend tomorrow for the lecturer because I am tired and we have concluded all the lecture with and I can not keep my hate because of lecture. I hope do not count me in absence and thank with your student

In these sentences, the subject “you” is missing at most of the places and punctuation also, vocabulary (use of tired instead of sick or unwell or ill) is not proper. In addition to it, this piece of conversation is ungrammatical to a considerable degree.

In the second question reflected the cause and effect and understand the question and know the answer well because of the tension at the time of the test ..I hope you helped and understand my position .

In this case, it is observed that tenses are not proper, punctuation mistakes are there, sentence structure is wrong, use of verb is improper.

Good morning my teacher, hope you fine, we want says that l couldn't come from today's lecture for 12-1, because i have some emergency family problems, so wish you excuse her. thank you

In the above example, there are mistakes in the use of prepositions, pronouns, and punctuation.

I can't come by my class today Because the driver, his car broke down and there is no one else can bring me to the colleg. thank you for being understanding.

Hello Dr. I hope you re-open the activity because of the first time did not save the answer and in the second time cut the Internet I hope you open it again Please I have resolved all activities in the site of Cambridge please come back again please ... Thank you

In the above example, there is improper use of prepositions, incomplete sentences, and errors in punctuation marks like confusion of capital and small letters, no periods, etc. 

I'll searching of subject the phonetic .about The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Tell me it's ok or no.?

In these sentences, there are ungrammaticality and the question word are not used properly.

I was come to class but you is writing me absent twice 30/October and 6/November and every class and I am say yes but you writing present student another her same my name.. I have been present for you. You always wrong and sometimes do not says my name I've written two absences because of that I will be deprived from study material.. please please remove absence I am very sad because of that I come from a very distant place and you write I am absent.

Good evening teacher, in Monday we have exam at 9:00, please cancel the class, we should come before 15 minutes for exam, The exam very difficult, we need to study and revision together.

what about Cambridge, we stop solution, it is canceled??

sorry, I send in Email.

Hi doctor good morning, l want ask you about the code book unlock 2 reading is not working how can I do? And unlock 3 do you do the code?

Hello teacher, I want to ask you about the test.

Can you tell me when we take it, after the class or when we started the class

Good evening Dr. The excuses test on Tuesday and I had a date in the hospital and I can not come and I hope you will change it for another time.

In the above sentences, the main mistakes lie in tenses (present and past) and the order of words.

You wrote me an absent on Thursday or Tuesday I do not know, but I was present wallah all classes please you can put it by excuse because I need it thank you so much teacher.

My teacher I sent the assignment the first time before I make sure of my answers; I pressed sending unconsciously

Dr. I have not experienced the activity and you are because of the existence of other tests and lack of time and I go to your office more than once and do not exist, please specify a day to come to you

I can't come to my class today because the driver, his car broke down and there is no one else can bring me to the colleg. thank you for being understanding.

In all the above examples, the most prominent errors or mistakes we can see are the syntactic errors. They make mistakes in grammar, sentence structure, tenses, word order, and in punctuation, etc.

Being an instructor, the main cause of these errors is their least exposure to the language. They use English only when speaking to the teacher who is a foriegner not from their homeland. They prefer to speak in their mother tongue with teachers who speak Arabic. Secondly, they feel uncomfortable in speaking English because they are aware of their mistakes. They are more or less able to use content words in spoken and the written forms by using dictionaries, google translator but to represent these words in a proper shape is missing because they lack the knowledge of syntax. Next, they have linguistic competence in their native language and transfer linguistic items from their mother tongue to target language which results in negative transfer.

However, an important aspect which the teacher often misses here is that when L1 speaker acquires L2, he moves from the state of monolingualism to the state of bi/multilingualism. The language system in the bilingual's mind is not the same as in the monolingual's mind. Recent research has shown that the two language systems get interwoven at almost all linguistic levels, however hard one tries to keep them separate from one another (Obler, 1982; Locastro, 1987).

They are influenced by their mother tongue and it causes errors in any piece of conversation, and this is the reason that in processing English syntactic structures, they adopt certain strategies which are similar to those of their first-language. They are not motivated enough to speak English. They learn it as a subject not as a language. And because of this thing they don't pay attention to the syntactic components of the language. Semantic component is understood by the context because reader knows in which context the speech is uttered. But they need to form the syntax-based-interpretation for English. In Arabic, word order is SVO and VSO in classical and Colloquial Gulf Languages. And they use the same word order in English as well. They omit function words but content words are there by which the sentence can be understood.

So, what they need is the base for syntax which includes word order, tenses, sentence structure, etc. These things are basic in Syntax and the students lag behind in these things. Communication becomes easy if syntactic properties of language are used correctly. In such situation, the listener can easily understand the sentences produced by the speaker. If syntactic properties or syntactic interpretations are lacking, it leads to difficulty in comprehending and in speaking which in turn leads to miscommunication. So, it is very important to learn the syntactic properties of a language which we are learning.

Different levels of syntactic-interpretation or syntactic awareness skills can be differentiated among young children since syntactic error detection is acquired in the earlier stages of learning, although the error detection skills and their explanations are acquired in the later stages. As it is evident from the above discussion that the English syntax of Arabic speaking students is very poor. Their text becomes incomprehensible because of the lack of syntax. Syntactic component is the base. It shapes the sentence. So, it is important for them to analyze the syntactic structures along with the identification and analysis of different parts of speech and their respective roles in a sentence. Arabic grammar is quite different from English grammar and there is a room for errors of interference when Arab learners produce written or spoken English as discussed in above data. They are quite confused by the patterns of English and mix them with Arabic such as using nouns, verbs, adjectives, tenses, etc

Syntax is the way of forming phrases and sentences from the words. The way by which words are put together to form sentences. Traditional grammar describes syntax in terms of taxonomy (i.e. classificatory list) of the range of different types of syntactic structures found in the language. According to the central assumption of syntactic analysis, phrases and sentences are made up of a number of constituents (i.e. syntactic units), each of which belongs to a specific grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function. The difference between present, past and future tense, different forms of verbs, parts of speech should be understood, then only the ideas can be expressed in written form and in the spoken form as well.

Syntactic awareness can be measured using a variety of tasks which include tasks to correct and explain syntactic structures, word correction tests and cloze tests. Although, these may not always lead to accurate results but these tasks can be relied upon to a great extent as they provide an insight of the syntactic interpretation of the learner. Through these tests it is known that syntactic interpretation evolves both developmentally and with experience. There is no doubt that it takes time to get aware of the syntactic knowledge, but once you understand its rules, and apply it to a language you are learning, it will undoubtedly improve your writing and spoken form of English.

Recommendations

The more the learners are exposed to a particular language and more they are made to use it in concrete situations, the more they are expected to produce correct structures as well as analyze the errors in their own sentence production. The students learning English as a second language need an integrative motive for learning a language. The errors which they tend to make in their syntax can be reduced by taking these errors into consideration and make their base strong by designing the syllabus accordingly. Their text or any piece of conversation is made comprehensible by taking context into consideration that is, in which text a particular conversation was made, it is understood in that context. The basic part that consists of the ordering of words into sentences is missing which demands the need for syntax. So, it is recommended to improve the syntactic component of the students. Beginning with parts of speech, the instructors should make them understand each part of speech and its use in a particular situation. This is possible by teaching them how to put words together to make a simple sentence. Starting from simple sentence, they can move to complex sentences and so on and so forth. The use of tenses is very much important to convey your message in an appropriate environment. The learners should be taught the difference between their mother tongue (Arabic) and the laguge they are learning (English) in order to avoid the confusion between the two languages. They mix the elements of Arabic and English resulting in the ungrammaticality of sentences as shown in the data.

A friendly environment should be created and good teaching material should be chosen by the instructors. English must be included in the curriculum at an early stage so that the students become familiar with the sentence structure and study it for the sake of learning the language. This will make them aware of the syntactic component right from beginning and will lead to improvement in efficacy of the students in different language skills.

Acknowledgments

The author extends her appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University for funding this work through research group program under grant number R.G.P. 1/2/38.