Abstract

The overall objective of the present study was to identify the most common difficulties facing Bedawiet speaking pupils who learn English as a third language as perceived by teachers in Sudan. To attain this general objective, two research questions were generated as follows. What difficulties facing Bedawiet speaking pupils in learning English language as a third language? The second question was: What could be done to overcome these difficulties? A questionnaire was designed in nine common errors, validated, piloted and administrated to the 36 participants who teach English in schools in Red Sea and Kassala States in 2018-2019. The collected data was subjected to descriptive statistical analysis, (means and standard deviations). The results of data analysis can be summarized in the following points. The most common difficulties were successively found to be: induced errors, substitution errors, overgeneralization, mis-ordering errors, compound errors, developmental errors, addition errors, omission errors and ambiguous errors. Teachers also highlighted other psychological and physical difficulties facing the pupils. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that educators and curriculum designers should give special attention to the Interlingual and Intralingual errors in areas where English is taught as a third language in Sudan. As the majority of the populations in Sudan are trilingual in some way, the Ministry of Education should play a key role in updating the learning outcomes and the content of the curriculum, besides, equipping the staff with skills related to teaching English language as a third language.

Keywords: Trilingual in Sudan, Third language learner's errors, Bedawiet speakers, Beja people, Beja languages