The acquisition of future tense properties by Iranian Persian monolingual and Kurdish-Persian Bilingual learners of English: A generative study

The present study examined the acquisition of the syntactic features of future tense by Persian monolingual speakers and Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English in light of the prediction made by several second language (L2) and third language (L3) generative theories. To this end, 36 Persian monolinguals and 36 Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English took part in the study. At first, the participants took an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) based on which they were assigned to three groups, namely, intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced with regard to their English Language Proficiency. Then, they received a grammatical judgment test (GJ) and a translation test (TT). The results revealed that the contributors of the study in both groups faced difficulties acquiring syntactic features of future tense since their former languages lack the same feature. According to the results, the inconvenience learners struggle with is much more noticeable at the early stages of English learning. As the participants got closer to advanced levels, they gradually build the ability to produce more target like productions. The findings also demonstrated that since both Kurdish and Persian speakers have a lack of specific syntactic features for expressing future tense, they face difficulties acquiring the same feature in English.