A Comparative Study of English Result and Amoozesh-e-Novin-e-Farsi Reading Passages Based on Transitivity System

Language learning textbooks are the milestone of our language teaching and learning journey. The way material developers depict language contexts and linguistic knowledge is, in fact, a manifestation of their experiences, thought patterns, inner insight as well as their language expertise. Likewise, systemic functional grammar (SFG) is an approach through which meaning making processes can be analyzed and investigated. In particular, this study was an attempt toward the objective analysis of reading passages of English Result (written for English language learners) and Amoozesh-e-Novin-e-Farsi (written for Persian language learners) by finding the differences and similarities of these textbooks in terms of their processes based on Halliday and Mattheisen’ (2004) transitivity system. Accordingly, a corpus of 705 clauses was formed, classified, and coded. The findings revealed that both Amoozesh-e-Novin-e-Farsi and English Result books weigh down with material verbs which signal the fact that writers of these two books followed realistic approach and tried to present the Farsi and English language as tangible as possible for their readers. Comparing these two groups suggests that the writers of both Amoozesh-e-Novin-e-Farsi and English Result books rely heavily on material and relational processes which are among those of major processes. On the other hand, minor processes, including behavioral, existential, and verbal are those which received less attention.