THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN L1 GRAMMAR AND L2 WRITING FOR IRANIAN MALE STUDENTS AT HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL

This study aimed to analyze and describe the relationship between L1 (Persian) grammar and L2 (English) writing among 60 Persian students who studied English at one of Shiraz English language institutes in Iran. This research tries to discover the mechanisms of the first language grammar that the students at Iranian schools use in their second language writing, that second language in this study is English. In addition this research tries to find out interference of grammatical factors from first language to second language. Also the research analyze the theoretical discussions about the influence of inter-language grammar. Finally, all participants were asked to write in English on different subjects; then all errors transferred negatively from L1 grammar on L2 writing were codified. At least nine errors were in learnersʹ writing including omission of prepositions, wrong use of prepositions and third person singular marker were more than other errors in the learnersʹ writings and learners had problems in subjective pronoun, countable and uncountable noun, wrong use of comparative and superlatives adjectives, word order and adjectives and misplacement of adverbs in their writings. This study indicated the relationship between Persian (L1) grammar on students’ writing in English (L2), therefore when it is necessary teachers should make students to use contrastive analysis to become familiar about similarities and differences between the two languages and also finding possible solutions for negative L1 interference in English writing from this study were suggested.