Effects of Cognates and Non-Cognates on Students Performances in Language Production and Comprehension

This study grounded in cognate words and commonalities between L1 and the language that students are trying to learn, sought to see effects and roles of cognate words in terms of learning development. We prepared a cognate-based unit including English-Persian cognate words and a parallel non-cognate unit. We used the cognate word unit for the experimental group (N=48), and the non-cognate unit was for the control group (N=48). Finally, the performances of both groups in terms of listening and out loud reading, and language use were completely assessed. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of reading, listening and language use performances. The findings suggested that cognates could be helpful in terms of learning for Persian learners of L2 English but findings suggested that cognates are not useful in terms of pronunciation and speaking because of changes they have undergone during the time. Also it was found that cognates because of an image that have in native speakers’ mind when they face new and correct pronunciations of those words (cognates) in L2 a fossilized effect which is not generally positive cause a longer time for adaptation to the right pronunciations. What we mainly sought to find out was to see if this, hinders learning pronunciations or not; that the answer was decidedly yes. Three topics were mainly investigated: 1: The role of cognates in L2 speaking; 2: The role of cognates in out loud reading skill; 3: Cognates and their inhibiting factors as blocks to adaptation to the right pronunciations of vocabularies