چکیده:
Although uninterpretable features are claimed to be an area of difficulty for EFL learners, they are still one of the less explored areas of research in the field of L2 pedagogy. The present study sought to investigate the impacts of two techniques, namely contrastive analysis and dictogloss on EFL learners’ mastery of resumptive pronouns, an uninterpretable feature absent in English relative clauses but present in most Persian ones. To this end, 77 elementary EFL learners with similar background in English were selected and assigned to three groups: one control and two experimental. Before and after the instruction the participants were administered a 50-item Grammaticality Judgment test and a 20-item translation test which had been developed and validated for use in this study. The results showed that all three groups had significant progression after the treatments, but the comparison among the groups indicated no statistically significant difference. This may suggest that L2 exposure had a more important role in the participants’ performance than the instruction type (contrastive analysis and dictogloss). The findings seem to support the importance of exposure to such L2 structures over time and that instruction cannot always accelerate acquisition.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The present study sought to investigate the impacts of two techniques, namely contrastive analysis and dictogloss on EFL learners’ mastery of resumptive pronouns, an uninterpretable feature absent in English relative clauses but present in most Persian ones.
All in all, while contrastive analysis and the dictogloss are not new concepts in L2 pedagogy, and there are several studies investigating the effects of each on different target language features, their effectiveness in promoting Persian speaking elementary L2 English learners’ awareness of the ungrammaticality of RPs in English and in helping them avoid using such structures in their L2 productions have not yet been documented in the related literature.
Instrumentation The grammaticality judgment test (GJT) To assess the participants' sensitivity to the ungrammaticality of RPs in relative clauses in English and to gain insight into the state of the learners' competence before and after the instructional treatment, a 50-item GJT was developed and used in the present study.
Moreover, regarding differences among the groups’ performances on each of the RP types, the one-way ANOVA results revealed that there were no statistically significant differences among the three groups of participants as concerned with the performance on each RP type in English RCs. As for the ungrammatical items in the post-GJT, Table 3 presents the results.
Discussion This study of instructing Iranian EFL learners in the uninterpretable feature of resumptive pronouns through contrastive analysis and dictogloss has shown that exposure to L2 target structures has a more constructive role in the learners’ recognitions (GJT results) of the ungrammaticality of RPs in English RCs than the type of instruction they receive.