It has become evident to me during work on the M.Sc course, of which this dissertation is a part, that there has been a tremendous growth of interest in reading. Furthermore, this interest has developed in and concentrated to some extent on the higher levels of processing skills. Therefore, there has been a great deal of research into, for example, discourse analysis and schema theory above the word and sentence level.

However, when attempting to apply theory gained from the M.Sc. course to our present teaching situation, the KFUPM Aston group has often noted that much theoretical work is derived from studies of and is properly applicable to students with a much higher level of English proficiency than the students we are concerned with.at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). Moreover, there is evidence that the low level of English proficiency of our Arabic speaking students is by no means particular to our institution. In a study of results of the international TOEFL examination over a ten-year period, Campbell (1983) pointed out that Saudi Arabian and other Arabic speaking students consistently occupy all the lowest ranks (with the exception of the Marshall Islands) in all skills, and this deficiency is particularly noticeable in reading. When considering Arabic speaking students, it should perhaps be remembered that they have not, in many cases, reached a sufficiently high English language proficiency level to be able to take advantage of higher level processing skills. Therefore, more attention could usefully be paid to the problems of language processing at the lower levels.

The present study is an analysis of misspellings in English by Saudi Arabian students. It attempts to address problems that Arabic-speaking students may face at the word level in English and which would be a factor in their reading proficiency and whose solution may have methodological implications.