English mistakes Arabic-speaking kids make

The missing am, is, are

The most frequent mistake of all: 'He teacher.' 'She happy.' 'My mum in the kitchen.' In Arabic a present-tense sentence needs no verb: «هو معلم» (huwa muʿallim) is literally 'he teacher', and it is complete and correct. So am, is and are feel like extra words, and children drop them, especially when they speak fast and think about meaning.

The same habit gives 'My age is five' and 'My age five years', straight from «عمري خمس سنوات» ('my age five years'). English uses be for age, and for young children the cure is a chunk learned whole: 'I'm five.'

• The is-brick: one child holds a big card that says is. You say a sentence without it ('The cat… happy'), the card-holder runs in and stands in the gap, and the class reads the whole sentence. Then change the card to am and are.
• Robot clap: the class says sentences in a robot voice and claps on every am, is or are. The clap makes the smallest word the loudest thing in the room.
• How old are you? with a ball: throw, ask, and the catcher answers 'I'm six!' with six fingers up. No 'my age' allowed.

No a, and too much the

Arabic has no word for a. A noun without al- is already indefinite, so 'I have cat' and 'This is book' sound complete. Then Arabic uses al- (the) for things in general: «أحب القطط» is literally 'I love the cats', and it means cats in general. Children carry that across and say 'I like the cats' or 'The milk is good for you' when they mean all cats and all milk.

• Mystery bag: objects come out of a bag one at a time and the class chants 'It's a… ball!' The a is part of the drumroll, so it never gets dropped.
• One finger for a: whenever a single thing is named, the class holds up one finger and says a. It costs nothing and catches 'I have cat' before it is out.
• A like-it survey: 'Do you like cats? Do you like milk?' Children answer with the plural or the bare noun, no the. Keep the for things you can point at: 'Look at the cat on the wall!'

Arabic word order, English words

Three mistakes come from the way Arabic builds a phrase. The adjective follows the noun («سيارة حمراء», 'car red'), so children say 'a car red' or 'the dog big'. From eleven up, Arabic counts with a singular noun («عشرون قلمًا», 'twenty pencil'), so 'twenty pencil' feels right. And Arabic treats the plural of things and animals as feminine singular: «هذه ألعابي» uses the singular this for 'my toys'. In English that becomes 'This is my toys.'

• Colour first: a chant in which the colour always jumps in front: 'red car, blue bag, green frog'. Then say 'car red' on purpose and let the class shout the right order back at you.
• Sentence train: word cards are carriages (a / red / car), and the adjective carriage only couples in front of the noun. Build trains on the floor, then let the Sentence Factory do it on screen.
• Count and hiss: when you count more than one of anything, the class adds a long snake hiss: 'twenty pencilsss!' A big number gets a big s.
• One hand, two hands: this and that with one pointing hand, these and those with both. 'These ARE my toys', said with both arms open, is hard to get wrong.

Little words translated from Arabic

Arabic من means both from and than, so comparatives come out as 'My brother is bigger from me', and the same من gives 'I'm afraid from the dog' («خائف من الكلب»). على covers most of on, so the monkey sits 'on the tree' («على الشجرة») where English puts it in the tree. And in everyday speech across much of the Arab world a light is opened and closed («افتح النور»), so children ask you to 'open the light'.

• Taller than: two children stand back to back and the class says 'Sara is taller THAN Omar', stamping on than. New pair every round; everyone wants to be measured.
• The light switch: one child is the switch. 'Turn on the light!' and they jump up with arms wide; 'Turn off the light!' and they curl into a ball. After one round, nobody opens a light again.
• Where's the monkey? Draw a tree with leaves and branches. Children place a monkey in the tree, a bird on a branch and a ball under the tree as you call each one. Then a child takes your role and gives the orders.

Questions without do, and an extra him

An Arabic question is a question word plus an ordinary sentence: «أين تسكن؟» is 'where you live?' A yes/no question is a statement with a rising voice, or with هل in front. Nothing in Arabic does the job of do, so 'Where you live?' and 'You like pizza?' are the natural first attempts.

Older children (9–11) add a pronoun that Arabic requires and English forbids: «الولد الذي رأيته» comes out as 'the boy that I saw him', and «الكتاب الذي قرأته» as 'the book that I read it'. In Arabic the pronoun is obligatory; in English, that or who has already done its job.

• Do is the key: draw a big paper key and write do on it. A question can't open until someone holds up the key: 'Do… you like pizza?' Then the children pass the key to each other.
• Find someone who: every child gets three questions (Do you have a cat? Do you like rice?) and walks round asking. Twenty questions each, all with do, and nobody thinks it's grammar.
• Riddles with that: 'It's an animal that lives in the sea.' Children write riddles for the class to guess. A riddle with an extra it ('a fruit that you eat it') goes back to its writer before anyone guesses.

Sounds: p, v, e or i, and clusters

Arabic has no p and no v. Park becomes 'bark' (Pepsi is famously «بيبسي», 'Bebsi'), and very becomes 'fery'. Arabic has three short vowels where English has many, so pen and pin, or bed and bid, can sound like one word. And Arabic doesn't start a syllable with two consonants, so children add a vowel to break up the cluster: speakers of some dialects put it in front ('isport', 'istreet'), others in the middle ('sipring', and 'bilastic' for plastic, with the p turned into b as well).

• Paper strip for p: hold a strip of paper in front of the mouth. P blows it forward, b barely moves it. Every child wants a turn, and every turn is a drill.
• Hand on the throat for v: f is only air, v buzzes. Children feel the buzz, then play 'fan or van?' with two pictures on the board.
• Pen or pin? Two corners of the room, one picture in each. You say a word and children run to its corner. Then make it harder: ten or tin, bed or bid, set or sit.
• Snake start: for spring, street and school, children begin with a long hiss, sssss-pring, and shorten it until it sticks to the next sound. No vowel can sneak in while the snake is still hissing.

Spelling without vowels

Written Arabic spells long vowels with letters but marks short vowels above and below the line, and most texts leave the marks out. A fluent Arabic reader is used to reading from consonants and context. In English that habit produces 'bt' for bat, 'dg' for dog and 'sn' for sun, and reading by guessing from the consonants, so cat, cut and cot look like one word.

• The heart of the word: in every short word the vowel is written in red and called the heart. A word without a heart isn't alive, and children love checking each other's words for one.
• Swap the heart: build pat with letter cards, then change only the heart: pet, pit, pot. Children read each new word aloud; one small letter changes everything.
• Word Scramble with three-letter words: every letter has to be used, so the vowel always finds its place.

Correct the pattern, not the child

These mistakes come back for months, because Arabic is still running underneath, as it should: it is the child's first language. Don't stop the talk for every 'He teacher'. Echo it back correctly and carry on; once a week, gather the class's favourite mistakes into 'alien sentences' that everyone fixes together, with no names attached. And tell parents what you now know: their child isn't careless, but translating good Arabic.