چکیده:
Pienemann (1998, 2015) put forward Processability Theory to enlighten why language learners follow definite developmental paths. The aim of the present study was to run a comparative investigation into the difficulty order of different grammatical structures for male and female Iranian EFL learners predicted by Processability Theory. 185 Iranian university students took part in this study. They received a Demographic Questionnaire and a Validated Researcher-Made Grammar Test designed based on the stages of Processability Theory. Item Response Theory (IRT) Rasch Modeling was used to analyze the collected data. Results pertained to the research questions revealed that the stages predicted by Processability Theory do not account for the Iranian male/female EFL learners. Another major finding emerged from the data was that the difficulty level of different grammatical structures presented by Pienneman in PT doesn’t match the difficulty order obtained in this study by male/female EFL respondents. All things considered, results of the study provided a reliable counterevidence for the assumptions of the theory.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The aim of the present study was to run a comparative investigation into the difficulty order of different grammatical structures for male and female Iranian EFL learners predicted by Processability Theory.
, 2001; Pienemann & Hakansson, 1999), Swedish (Pienemann & Håkansson, 1999), Italian (Di Biase & Kawaguchi, 2002), Japanese (Di Biase & Kawaguchi, 2002; Kawaguchi, 2005a and 2005b; Iwasaki, 2003; Itani-Adams, 2003), Chinese (Zhang, 2001 & 2008; Gao, 2005; Wang, 2011), Arabic (Mansouri, 1997 & 2002, Alhawary 1999 & 2009), Spanish (Taylor, 2004), and Turkish, German, English (Pienemann, 2005; Özdemir, 2004), although there exist some researches concentrating on aspects of the fundamental assumptions of PT such as investigating the independent nature of each stage (Jansen, 2008), exploring the role of first language (L1) transfer in PT (Bohnacker, 2006; Hakansson, Pienemann & Sayehli, 2002; Pienemann & Hakansson, 2007) and typological plausibility of Processability Theory (PT) (Bonilla, 2012), receptive and productive L2 grammar processing (Buyl & Housen , 2015).
However regarding exploring the role of first language (L1) transfer in PT (Dao, 2007; Charter, Dao & Jansen, 2011), questioning whether the syntax and morphology develop jointly or separately (Dyson, 2009; Fetter, 1996, Yamaguchi, 2013), difficulty order of PT grammar structures (Nishitani, 2012), applicability of PT to Japanese adolescent EFL learners (Eguchi & Sugiura, 2015), variation in ESL longitudinal development of syntax and morphology (Dyson, 2016) provided reliable counter evidences in response to PT.
Comparing Male and Female Groups’ Results {مراجعه شود به فایل جدول الحاقی} The second research question of the study aimed at investigating whether there was any significant difference between male/female EFL learners in learning English syntax based on the stages predicted by Processability Theory.