First, Spanish sounds different from English in terms of vowel sounds, sentence stress, and timing. (Shoebottom, 2007, Spanish). In addition, Spanish speakers can confront grammar problems when learning English, "although Spanish is a much more heavily inflected language than English, there are many aspects of verb grammar that are similar. The major problem for the Spanish learner is that there is no one-to-one correspondence in the use of the tenses. So, for example, a Spanish learner might incorrectly use a simple tense instead of a progressive or a future one." (Shoebottom, 2007, Spanish). Moreover, because these issues reflect basic differences between the two languages, progressive learning in Spanish does not translate to better English ability.

In addition, the fact that English and Spanish share a common base language should make some aspects of English acquisition easier for the Spanish speaker than for the Arabic speaker. In fact, there are several...
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