چکیده:
The present study is an attempt to identify the errors made by Iraqi EFL learners in the
Department of English / College of Basic Education, University of Babylon in using backformation.
This study aims at :(1)Presenting a brief and relevant background of back-formation, (2)
Identifying and classifying the errors made by the fourth year students in the English Department,
College of Basic Education/ University of Babylon during the academic year (2015-2016), and (3)
Locating the areas of difficulty that Iraqi EFL learners encountered in learning categories of backformation.
To achieve the goals mentioned above, the study hypothesizes :( 1) Iraqi EFL learners are
unable to identify properly back-formation. This is due to the nature of English system which is
different from Arabic system, (2) Such learners are unable to use back-formation properly in
communication.
Errors have been pointed and results have been analyzed statistically. The analysis gives the
following results: (1)Iraqi EFL university learners at the fourth year face difficulty in mastering
back-formation .This is indicated by their low performance in the main test as the rate of their
correct responses (775,38.75%) is lower significantly than that of their in correct ones (1225,61.25)(2)The subjects performance in the test has also revealed that EFL university learners
encounter more difficulties in using back-formation at the production level that at the recognition
one . This is due to the face that the total number and the percentage of the correct response at theproduction level (337,33,7%) are lower than those of correct responses at the recognition level
(438,43.8%).