first language

This study aimed at providing learners with an opportunity not only to bring together their core and disciplinary knowledge to acquire major skills of learning English as a foreign language (EFL), and the intellectual challenge of these issues at the interface of media, language and religion, but also help the materials generators to produce suitable types of content to be delivered through the medium of mobile technology. Therefore, it sought to examine the new way of teaching EFL in the form of correspondence with respect to Iranian learners' native culture and language. For the purposes of this study, English was the target language for 680 Iranian students with pre-intermediate level of language proficiency whose native languages were Persian, Arabic, Georgian, and Turkish. This study took as its point of departure the existence of important differences between the two learning materials (off the shelf vs. Islamic culture) types; thus, applying the Qur'ānic criteria of intelligence, knowledge and virtue parallel with the digital representation of common textbook materials, materials delivery was adapted to the cellphone screen to be accessed by learners' in 18 virtual sessions. Learners took part in two summative and 18 formative components included in the assessment design of this study. Also, they all answered a questionnaire which yielded information concerning their attitude towards the target language, and learning through the wireless technology. Learners' short texting correspondence as well as their performance in battery and their answers to items of questionnaires formed the reference for analyzing the results. The gains from English Islamic materials were outweighed by the effects of obtaining materials which involved more categorized cases.

Code-switching (CS), an alternation between two or more languages or language varieties, has long been researched in language education. A great number of studies by applied linguists have explored the reasons for, and the potential usages of code-switching in foreign language education over the past years. This study explores the perceptions of English language learners across various proficiency levels concerning teachers’ use of CS, in this case Farsi in English classrooms. It also examines the roles and functions of CS in the classroom. Fifty teachers and 105 language learners from University of Tehran Language Center (UTLC) in Tehran, Iran were involved in this study. The necessary data were obtained through questionnaires. The results suggested that the Elementary (EL) learners seem to benefit from the teachers' use of first language in class, whereas English-only classroom is preferred by Intermediate (IN) and Upper Intermediate (UI) ones. It was also revealed that maximum exposure of the learners to the target language seems necessary. The results suggest that, concerning the learners' levels (EL, IN and UI), teachers’ and learners’ Code Switching can work as a useful language teaching strategy. The findings of this study can have implications for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms and can be used by language teachers.

This study investigates the morphological phenomenon known as plurals-in-compounds effect by analyzing responses given by 25 Persian-speaking children. The children, ranging in age from 3.5 to 13, were divided into six groups and asked questions like what do you call someone who verb-s [ regular/irregular ] plurals? that required them to form synthetic compounds such as car-stealer . Results indicated that when the nouns in the questions addressed to the children were regular plural, the non–heads in the compounds were predominately singular. Moreover, the children’s responses to questions containing irregular nouns showed that they preferred non–compound Agent ( singular N ) over compounds containing either singular or irregular plural nouns. The findings are in line with the specifications of Kiparsky's (1982) level-ordering model which bans plural morphology inside compounds. It was also revealed that the children’s compound construction relied on both structural and semantic constraints.

The role of EFL lecturers’ first language (L1) in the EFL courses has been an ongoing debate. A monolingual approach to EFL suggests that the use of the target language solely in foreign language (FL) classroom improves learning of the target language. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the attitude of Iranian lecturers and EFL learners towards using L1 as a scaffolding tool in reading comprehension. As such, a mixed method design was employed and the data were collected from a sample of 80 Iranian EFL students and 15 lecturers. The quantitative data were collected through two questionnaires and the qualitative data were gathered using a semi-structured interview guided by the research objectives. The findings revealed that the participants perceived the use of L1 (Persian) as a scaffolding tool in their EFL classrooms and it was used to serve a number of purposes: to explain complex grammar, to translate new words, to define concepts, and to help each other in their groups. Moreover, lecturers believed that L1 helps learners’ improve EFL learners’ reading comprehension. It can be concluded that L1 can be utilized as a scaffolding strategy by learners and lecturers in facilitating their learning and it can be used as a pedagogical tool by the EFL learners to enhance their learning experiences as well as to maximize their engagement in the classroom.

Consolidating the students’ L1 permits instructors to supply clear clarifications and moderate potential challenges in comprehension. By recognizing the esteem of L1, instructors can advance more successful dialect instruction. Hence, this ponder investigated the essential variables influencing Iranian instructors’ utilization of L1 in EFL classrooms. The members of the think-about group were chosen through comfort inspection. A pairwise survey was conducted, and 32 tall school English instructors from Gorgan, Golestan, Iran, reacted to the questions. Along these lines, 20 instructors out of 32 were chosen based on their level of instruction and the consistency of their reactions. They were counseled on how the pairwise survey was answered to get more reliable reactions. After analyzing the information utilizing the Master Choice computer program and Explanatory Chain of command Handle (AHP), it was uncovered that instructors, for the most part, favored utilizing L1 to decrease negative full of feeling channels in a classroom environment, such as making less tense environment, additionally improving positive emotional channels like motivating the learners. It was also concluded that the other reasons behind the teacher's L1 utilization were for classroom administration purposes, social targets, and cognitive engagement of the understudies. The discoveries of this thinking suggest that EFL instructors and TEFL approach producers join L1 in teaching-learning and prepare more viably and intentionally.

This paper explores the ways in which the transfer of assumptions from first language (L1) writing can help the process of writing in second language (L2). In learning second language writing skills, learners have two primary sources from which they construct a second language system: knowledge and skills from first language and input from second language. To investigate the relative impact of first language literacy skills on second language writing ability, 60 EFL students from Tabriz Islamic Azad University were chosen as participants of this study, based on their language proficiency scores. The subjects were given two topics to write about: the experimental group subjects were asked to write in Persian and then translate their writing into English. The control group wrote in English. The results obtained in this study indicate that the content and vocabulary components of the compositions were mostly affected by the use of first language.

The present study aims at the description and analysis of the phonological and lexical development of a child who is acquiring Farsi as his first language. The child's language production at the holophrastic stage of language development, mainly single words, is observed and recorded longitudinally for nearly seven months since he was 16 months old until he turned 23 months. An attempt is made to see if the phonological and lexical findings of the same period found in other languages are confirmed in the case of Farsi (an Indo-European language). Issues like noun dominance in the early words, vocabulary spurt of the toddlers, and the dominant CVCV, CVC, CV syllabic structures are the focal points in this study. The significance of the study lies in the fact that the number of the studies done on the language development of monolingual Farsi speaking children is very few.

This qualitative study is conducted to answer four questions: First, whether there is a difference between the grammatical competence development of a group of children aged 2.6 (two years and six months) and a group of children aged 3.6 (three years and six months). Second, whether there is a significant difference between the two age groups concerning their Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). Third, whether there is a relationship between the children’s MLU and that of the caretakers. Fourth, whether the normal limit proposed by Brown (1973) is observed in the acquisition of Persian. To this end, language samples of six children and their caretakers’ were recorded during a six-week period and studied afterwards. The results indicated neither an unequivocal yes nor a definitive no answer to the question of age difference and grammatical competence development, that is to say, in some cases there was a difference whereas in some other cases there was no difference at all. As for the difference between the two age groups concerning their MLU, there was a significant difference between the two. However, no significant relationship was found between the children’s MLU and their caretakers’. Finally, the limit proposed by Brown (1973) was observed in the acquisition of Persian.