Cross-linguistic Study on Impact of Conscious Command of L1 Grammar on L2 Grammar Acquisition in Terms of Parts of Speech

A variety of cross-linguistic studies between Persian and English have been carried out so far, investigating different linguistic and non-linguistic matters such as pragmatics and bilingualism. The little amount of literature paid to parts of speech caused the urge to be felt for specifying cross-linguistic investigation into this area between Persian and English. The present study, first, sought to investigate the existing relationship between extent of conscious knowledge of parts of speech in Persian and English and, second, to examine the probable difficulty level of parts of speech in each language compared to each other. To this end, 142 Iranian EFL learners who had started learning English as adults participated in this study. Participants were recruited from undergraduates and graduates belonging to diverse majors except EFL majors and Persian literature. Two tests in Persian and English have been devised to measure participants’ knowledge in parts of speech. Two-tailed matched pairs T-test and Pearson product-moment correlation were employed to analyze the data. Results indicate that there is a significant difference between the means of the scores of the two tests and also a positive correlation between the obtained results.