چکیده:
This paper examined an influence of two different narrative tasks on the
grammatical complexity and lexical diversity of an oral performance of secondlanguage
(L2) learners. The participants (N=90) were presented with two tasks
with six pictures in each. One of the tasks contained both foregrounding and
backgrounding events on it, but the second one had only the backgrounding
event. Backgrounding events language refer to the main theme of the story, and
foregrounding events refer to the supportive materials that elaborate on the side
events taking place in the task. The complexity and diversity of the language in
the oral production of the two comparable groups who were presented to
foregrounding and backgrounding events were examined in a between subject
design. The results showed that L2 performance was affected by the type of the
task. Syntactic complexity and lexical diversity were increased by the
participants who were given the task with both of the events on them. We reason
that the task with backgrounding event on it leads participants into attempting
more to talk about the events happening in the background, hence producing
more complex and at the same time more diverse
خلاصه ماشینی:
<H1><H1><H1>The Effect of Foregrounding and Backgrounding on Grammatical Complexity and Lexical Diversity of Oral Production of EFL Learners in a Foreign Language Learning</H1></H1></H1> Context Seyyed Mohammad Alavi* Associate Professor, University of Tehran <H1><H1><H1>Davood Borzabadi Farahani</H1></H1></H1> Assistant Professor, University of Tehran <H1><H1><H1>Javad Muhammadi Savadroodbari</H1></H1></H1> MA, University of Tehran Abstract This paper examined an influence of two different narrative tasks on the grammatical complexity and lexical diversity of an oral performance of second- language (L2) learners.
The complexity and diversity of the language in the oral production of the two comparable groups who were presented to foregrounding and backgrounding events were examined in a between subject design.
We reason that the task with backgrounding event on it leads participants into attempting more to talk about the events happening in the background, hence producing more complex and at the same time more diverse Keywords: task-based language teaching, narrative task, grammatical complexity, lexical diversity, foregrounding event, backgrounding event * Associate Professor, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Received on: 02/06/2013 Accepted on: 09/11/2013 Email: Smalavi@ut.
A number of studies have focused on lexical diversity and grammatical complexity being produced by language learners, only few of which have investigated the effects of foregrounding and backgrounding on the above variables (Ahmadian, 2009; Foster &amp; Tavakoli, 2009).
While, for example, residence in native-speaking country, presence of backgrounding events, and planning time may help language learners use more diverse vocabulary, grammatical complexity does not necessarily lend itself to such factors and is more likely to be affected by the structure of the task.