Common Spelling Mistakes of Hamza and Alif among Beginners

Abstract

Alif is considered one of the first Arabic alphabets, while most linguists count the Hamza from the Arabic alphabet census, and these two letters have different forms in writing. So that some scholars do not consider both letters: Hamza and Alif, as independent letters of the alphabet, and at the same time they imagine in front of beginners in a close form, in addition to the lack of attention to train in writing these two letters correctly. This research seeks to detect mistakes made by students when writing and spelling with regard to Hamz and Alif, and to present the most appropriate ways to treat these mistakes. The researcher relies on the descriptive approach. As for the research tools, the research refers to the questionnaire, which is distributed to 103 first-year students from the Department of Arabic Studies of the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, in addition to the secondary data that helps the researcher cover the first objective—knowing that the analysis of the information is done by MS Excel. The research also concluded that the students have a theoretical knowledge of the use of the Hamza and the Alif in different words and phrases, but when they come to the practical side, they misspell, and they also have a simple experience in writing the Hamza and the Alif in various patterns, in addition to the difficulty that most students face when distinguishing the difference between them in sentences.