Promoting Grammatical Development in the Light of Positive Evidence: Introducing English Complex Wh-Questions to Persian L2 Learners

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 English Department, Faculty of Foreign languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

2 English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate whether the reported poor performance of adult second language (L2) learners on complex structures can be accounted for in terms of a “deficit” in acquiring abstract properties of the L2 that are absent in the first language (L1); or, a deficiency in the L2 input failing to trigger acquisition. To this end, the study focused on English complex wh-questions (a wh-movement language) which are generally unavailable in English as a Foreign Language materials and parametrically different from Persian (a wh-in-situ language). Forty-three intermediate Persian speakers were exposed to reading passages followed by English complex wh-questions. A comparison of the pretest and posttest results of a reading comprehension task indicated a strong positive effect for the input rather than the negative impact of the L1. Further analysis showed that learners with higher gain effects were more accurate in avoiding violations of wh-movement constraints, namely superiority and subjacency. These findings yield counter-evidence to the maturational view on the L2 syntactic development and suggest controlling the role of rich input in second language acquisition research.

Keywords

Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 22 February 2025

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