Maylie Kunz

Mrs. Burr

English 2010

22 May 2017

Notebook #8

The article Harnessing The Barriers That Impact on Students Learning English

Language Learning demonstrates how students from around the world and specifically, Arabic

societies struggle with learning English. Through case studies and interviews, Hussain Ahmed

Liton portrays in a creative and intriguing way how native language differences can create

unsuspecting barriers in culture and language.

With the explanation of religious standard and other reasons why many students from the

Middle East have no desire to learn English, Liton draws on Pathos to forge an understanding

bond between the reader and the people from this region. For example there are those who do not

believe that they should learn English because people who are native English speakers do not

have to learn their own language. The question of how some languages receive so much attention

and have become so universal is common. Non-English speakers do not want to learn English

because in some places it is viewed as the non-muslim language and is connected to the belief

that it can contaminate a religion, or that practices can lose their authenticity when the believer

does not only speak Arabic. The way that Liton writes about the cultural differences opens eyes

and creates a more considerate viewpoint of things around the world.

Liton includes a lot of information that is surprising for example there are people who

natively speak Arabic who do not learn other languages because certain sounds do not exist in
their language. For example: There is no P or a sound that mimics that letter. Therefore, when

learning words that have the letter P in them, they do not pronounce them correctly and they

struggle to spell them. The closest sound to P that the Arabic language has is B which

becomes the sound they use for both letters. Arabs often will use this letter when spelling out

English words. Instead of saying please they will spell and say blease. There are other

parallels with different letters, sounds, and languages- making English extremely difficult to

learn when parts of the language do not exist in other cultures.

The information in this article is extremely credible because it was filled with case

studies and research. There are also interviews with individuals who have experience or an

interesting insight to the topic at hand. A lot of this information did not seem particularly

relevant upon first reading it but came together in a creative way that made the essence of the

paper more powerful.

In Harnessing The Barriers That Impact on Students Learning English Language

Learning, Liton did a wonderful job at organizing the article. There are many bolded titles and

topic headings that conveniently group together the information. He also had throughout the

paper some simplified and well organized sections of Findings. This made the paper simple to

navigate and easy to understand. They were basically a summary of all the information that

precedes them. Conveniently Liton has part of his article in English and part in Turkish so that

people native to the region he was describing can read it as well.

Liton brought up many points and examples that I would have never thought of and has

shown me in clarity some of the cultural and language differences between the English with its

individual cultural ties and other languages with their cultures. By reading this article one will
gain a deeper understanding of some of the barriers and differences with language and how

closely language and culture are connected.

Liton, Hussain Ahmed. "Harnessing the Barriers That Impact on Students' English Language
Learning (ELL)." International Journal of Instruction, vol. 9, no. 2, 01 July 2016, pp.
91-106. EBSCOhost. Web.