Iranian Journal of Learning and Memory

Abstract The present study aimed to investigate Mazandarani-Persian Bilinguals' L3 learning of simple present tense to see whether their L1, L2, or dominant language of communication affect their L3 learning. To this end, 90 male and female students, with the mean age of 14.5 were selected from among the elementary L3 learners of English. The participants were assigned into three groups of L1 Mazandarani/L2 Persian/ L3 learners of English. The first group had Mazandarani as the dominant language of communication while the second and the third group had Persian as the dominant language of communication. The Grammaticality Judgment Task and Oral Translation Task were used to check the participants' production and comprehension of the target structure. The results of the Kruskal Wallis and the Mann Whitney U tests showed that the dominant language of communication, irrespective of its status as the first or second language, was the primary source of cross-linguistic influence in learning simple present tense at the initial stages of learning this tense.

Abstract The present study aimed to investigate the effect of learning context on the acquisition of plurality agreement in English noun phrases by Iranian L3 learners of English. To this end, 64 elementary learners of English were chosen from among the students of Arabic language and literature and Persian language and literature of Ahvaz university and Yazd university via the Oxford Quick Placement test. The participants were assigned to four groups to be compared in terms of the comprehension and production of plurality agreement via a grammaticality judgment correction task and a picture description task. The first and the second groups had Persian as their first language (L1) and Arabic as their second language (L2) but differed from each other concerning their language of contact instruction, Persian and Arabic, respectively. The third and fourth groups had Arabic as the L1 and Persian as the L2 but differed from each other concerning their language of contact instruction, Persian and Arabic, respectively. The results showed that the groups which had Arabic as their language of contact instruction outperformed the other groups in both tasks, which suggests that they transferred plurality agreement facilitatively from Arabic, which was their language of contact instruction. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that the context of learning matters in the acquisition of L3 properties since the L3 learners associate their language of contact instruction with the L3 in their mind due to the similarities in the learning context.

Abstract The present paper sought to investigate gender differences in the speech pauses made by Iranian bilingual (L1: Turkish and L2: Persian) learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). To this end, the pauses made by males and females were compared. Via an Oxford Placement test, a convenient sample of 40 bilingual advanced EFL male and female learners were selected from several English language institutes in Tehran, Iran. Three reading passages (English, Persian, and Turkish) were used to measure students’ fluency in terms of their speech pauses in the texts they read. As learners started to read the passages, their speeches were recorded. The collected data were analyzed by means of Praat Software. The data were analyzed in terms of the frequency and duration of the recorded pauses. The results indicated that that there were not any statistically significant differences between males and females regarding their pause frequency and duration across languages. Accordingly, the results represented more similarity than difference across the groups. The implications of the study results are discussed.