جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « grammatical errors » در نشریات گروه « ادبیات و زبان ها »

This study deals with spotting the grammatical errors committed by the Iranian students majoring in English translation while translating the Persian sentences into English and investigating the effect of two teaching methods, including Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) and Communicative Language Teaching Method (CLT), on minimizing these errors. For this purpose, the grammatical errors in the translation of thirty students were identified. These errors were analyzed and classified according to Keshavarz’s model of error analysis.  The students were divided into two groups; the first group received the learning materials based on GTM, and in the second group CLT was applied. Afterward, a test which included English sentences extracted from Modern English 1 and 2 was designed based on the errors taken from the corpus compiled by the students’ translations. Then the frequency of the errors in both groups were analyzed by SPSS software to determine the significance of using these methods on minimizing the grammatical errors made by the students in their translations into English. To determine the level of significance, the probability value was calculated for raw errors, GTM and CLT errors. The analysis of Pearson correlation showed that both methods had their significance; however, the communicative method proved to be slightly more effective than the other. Undoubtedly, this does not mean to underestimate the efficacy of grammar translation method since it seems that it plays a complementary role in teaching environment, and achieving better pedagogical results cannot be prescribed on a single method.

Corrective feedback (CF) as a multifaceted practice needs to be explored from different perspectives. Achieving relative consensus among language teachers and experts in a particular context on the most effective CF strategy for monolingual and bilingual language learners appears to be understudied. As such, a fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) model was applied to accommodate varied and conflicting opinions in ranking the effect of three corrective feedback strategies including mid-focused oral metalinguistic CF, written metalinguistic CF, and oral/written metalinguistic CF. To this end, 79 monolingual Persians and 79 bilingual Turkmens aged between 13 and 18 from two language institutes in Golestan Province of Iran participated in the study comprising three experimental and one control group each. The experimental groups were provided with CF strategies on their most recurrent grammatical errors detected through pretests while the control groups received none. The results of the fuzzy TOPSIS approach ranked oral/written metalinguistic CF and oral metalinguistic CF as the best strategies for monolingual Persians and bilingual Turkmens respectively. The fuzzy TOPSIS approach provided experts with the opportunity to include their opinions on the weight of criteria and the impact of CF strategies towards enhancing the experts’ agreement on the issue. It was shown that a single CF strategy might not be appropriate for all EFL learners in different contexts. The approach also provided a framework for soliciting wider participation of the experts when conditions favor the application of multi-criteria decision-making methods, or speedier assessments are required.

Much uncertainty still exists about the possible role of myriads external and internal mediating variables such as language backgrounds and ethnicities in the process of corrective feedback (CF). To address the issue, 79 monolingual Persians and 79 bilingual Turkmens aged between 13 and 18 from two language institutes in Golestan Province, Iran participated in the study comprising three experimental and a control group each. Pretests revealed the learners’ grammatical errors based on which the experimental groups were provided with different strategies of metalinguistic CF, namely mid-focused oral metalinguistic CF (OMCF), written metalinguistic CF (WMCF), and oral/written metalinguistic CF (OWMCF) on their five most recurrent grammatical errors while the control groups received none. Following significant Kruskal-Wallis test results, the Conover’s pairwise comparison test was employed to exhibit differences among CF strategies. In monolingual Persians and bilingual Turkmens, all the experimental groups significantly outperformed the control groups. Mid-focused OMCF and OWMCF had significant effects on the reduction of Persians’ errors, but for Turkmens, all the CF strategies exerted a significant reduction of errors. The effectiveness rank of the CF strategies investigated through Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) selected OMCF as the best strategy for monolingual Persians while for bilingual Turkmens, WMCF ranked first. This ranking was highly stable for 10000 iterations changing the weights up to 50%. The outcomes of the research might be of help to EFL learners, EFL teachers of bilingual learners, syllabus designers, and materials developers, while opening doors to further pertinent studies.

The present study was an attempt to provide a psycholinguistic account of cognitive processes underlying responding and questioning. It also strived to identify the potential differences between responding and questioning cognitive processes in Target Language Use Situation tasks. To accomplish the objectives, 65 Iranian general IELTS applicants from two foreign language learning institutes in Shiraz, with two different language proficiency levels (intermediate and advanced), were randomly selected. They were administered a normal responding and a reverse questioning IELTS oral tasks. Two seven-point Likert scale questionnaires were also used to measure the task difficulty and mental effort that the applicants perceived while doing the tasks. Additionally, the applicants’ recorded voices in tasks were transcribed and analyzed to assess the number of grammatical errors and pause lengths. The analysis of the numerical data through descriptive statistics and paired-samples t-tests indicated that, in general, the cognitive processes underlying oral responding and questioning are significantly different in terms of mental effort, task difficulty, length of pauses, and the number of grammatical errors. More specifically, the results suggested that the applicants took more mental effort and perceived more task difficulty while constructing the questions for given responses irrespective of their proficiency levels. Both groups also paused significantly longer and committed significantly more grammatical errors when completing the questioning tasks. The paper discusses the study implications for second language teachers and assessors.

Errors are one of the enigmatic parts in the process of foreign language (L2) learning as they are extremely versatile at each and every stage of the language learning proficiency. The present study, therefore, was an attempt to reveal Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical errors in writing at two levels of proficiency, namely lower intermediate and advanced, and then to investigate whether there was a relationship between the levels of EFL learners’ proficiency and the types of grammatical errors they committed in their scripts. The study was carried out at a private language institute in Gorgan, Iran. To this end, 60 female EFL learners (30 lower intermediate and 30 advanced females) whose age ranged between 13 and 17 participated in this study and wrote 150 word writing samples on a predetermined descriptive subject. The descriptive analyses of the data based on the scoring framework of the study demonstrated the types of grammatical errors at each level of proficiency. A Chi Square test was then run in SPSS Ver. 25 on the 16 common frequent error categories between both levels of proficiency, which verified the existence of a relationship between EFL learners’ levels of proficiency and the types of written grammatical errors they committed in their writing. The findings of the study might be of interest to EFL learners, EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers.

Fossilization has become the focus of many L2 studies since its introduction in 1972 as many learners fail to achieve native-speaker competence. Researchers have tried to unravel the causes of fossilization, among which noticing has been claimed to be of great importance. This study aimed to explore the effect of noticing on fossilization. To achieve this aim, a mixed-methods approach was utilized. Sixty advanced L1 Persian learners of English studying in Iran were chosen to perform two written and three spoken tasks twice. Qualitative data included the content analysis of the participants’ performance on the written and spoken tasks while the quantitative data included percentages of noticed errors and recurrent erroneous forms. The errors observed in both performances were counted and classified. Three main categories named Grammatical Errors, Lexical Errors, and Cohesive Errors were identified. The observed errors were further classified into 36 subcategories. When learners’ ability in noticing their errors was investigated, it was found that they could notice 37.4% of the 3,796 fossilized forms they had produced. Most of the errors observed were categorized in the category of grammatical errors. Noticing affected the number of errors produced. It can be concluded that becoming aware of ones fossilized forms, one will produce fewer fossilized forms. The results of the current study have implications for English language teachers and learners. By being informed of the errors learners make while learning a language and how their noticing affects fossilization, teachers can improve their teaching practice which in turn enhances learning.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of teaching developmental grammatical errors on translator trainees’ L2 paragraph writing ability. After administration of Oxford Placement Test (OPT), 40 out of 100 undergraduate translator trainees were selected from the Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon branch. Further, the participants were divided into an experimental and a control groups. A pre-test of paragraph writing ability was administered to both groups and the participants were asked to write a paragraph about the selected topic. Then, the experimental group received 5 sessions of treatments on teaching developmental grammatical errors extracted from their previous writing performance while the control group received a placebo. After five sessions of the treatments, the post-test of paragraph writing ability was administered in which the participants in both groups were asked to write a paragraph about a selected topic. Three raters corrected the paragraphs. The scores were analyzed using the SPSS software by applying Independent sample t-test and Pearson correlation. The findings indicated that subjects in the experimental group showed significant improvement in their writing performance.

Although many studies have focused on the language learners’ beliefs and attitudes regarding error correction, less has been done to investigate whether and how student characteristics influence their preferences. The present investigation explores how socio-economic status affects the error correction views of 140 upperintermediate/ advanced students, ranging from 23 to 31, in an EFL context. The participant's social class was determined by MacArthur scale of subjective socioeconomic status. A questionnaire and a follow-up interview were employed to obtain the student's overall preferences about different aspects of oral corrective feedback (OCF). The results showed that the students unanimously favored teachers as the best provider of feedback and highly expected both local and global errors to be treated; nevertheless, whereas middle-class students would rather their errors to be corrected at the end of the class while the teacher addressed the whole class, high-class students did not mind if teachers corrected them individually as soon as they finished speaking. Besides, although predominantly the students preferred direct error correction, highclass students had a more positive view toward elicitation and self-error correction in general. The findings of this study highlight the influence of language learner's ocioeconomic status on how they expect their teachers to treat their oral errors.