this study was set to reveal how second language learners use rhetorical relations in their written narratives in terms of rhetorical structure theory (rst) primarily proposed by mann & thompson (1987) and developed by mann, matthiessen & thompson (1992). to this end, sixty written narratives based on the picture story book ‘frog, where are you?’ were collected from efl learners and wer...

Adults are sophisticated language users, and there is much debate as to the maturational and experiential changes that occur throughout childhood to bring about these abilities. We propose that the onset of literacy may be an important event in the course of language development, as it marks a qualitative shift in the linguistic patterns to which an individual is exposed. In Experiment 1, we in...

Unlike Lexical Projections, Functional Projections (Extended Projections) are more of an ‘abstract’ in nature. Therefore, Functional Projections seem to be acquired later than Lexical Projections by the L2 learners. The present study investigates Iranian L2 learners’ acquisition of English Extended Projections taking into account their level of grammatical proficiency. Specifically, the aim is ...

this study examined the effects of task complexity on written narrative production under different task complexity conditions by efl learners at different proficiency levels. task complexity was manipulated along robinson’s (2001b) proposed task complexity dimension of here-and-now (simple) vs. there-and-then (complex) in. accordingly, three specific measures of the written narratives were targ...

This research investigated effects of task types on the acquisition of English voice onset time (VOT) by Japanese university students with a short-term but intensive exposure to academic English. The data were collected from 11 Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) receiving English-medium instruction at a university level, 11 Japanese EFL learners enrolled in regular EFL cou...

Designing a task with a reasonable level of cognitive complexity has always been important for syllabus designers, teachers, as well as researchers. This is because task manipulation may lead to different results in oral production. The present study was an attempt to explore the effect of this  manipulation  -  based  on  Robinson’s  resource-directing  model  (reasoning  demands, number of el...

This study examined the effects of aural and written prompts under two planning conditions (i.e. pre-task planning and no planning) on complexity, accuracy, and fluency of test takers' writing production. Forty learners in an English institute, who had already been classified as intermediate according to the Oxford Placement Test, were assigned to two planning conditions (i.e. no planning and p...