this study explored the nature of transfer among bilingual vs. trilinguals with varying levels of competence in english and their previous languages. the hypotheses were tested in writing tasks designed for 75 high (n= 35) vs. intermediate (n=40) proficient efl learners with turkish, persian, english and persian, english linguistic backgrounds. qualitative data were also collected through some ...

Nowadays, Wordnet is used in natural language processing as one of the major linguistic resources. Having such a resource for Persian language helps researchers in computational linguistics and natural language processing fields to develop more accurate systems with higher performances. In this research, we propose a model for semi-automatic construction of Persian wordnet of verbs. Compound ve...

Recent versions of international high-stakes tests like TOEFL and IELTS have made use of integrated tasks in addition to the traditional independent tasks in a claim to provide a more realistic estimation of the test takers’ language abilities. The present study aimed to investigate how test takers’ performance may differ on such tasks. As such, the test takers’ performance was compared on IELT...

People are constrained by their culture and social life when telling stories. A second language learner then cannot be expected to tell stories in the target language without cross-cultural effects that influence the way of narration. The present study examined the role of the first language (L1) and second language (L2) in the organization of narratives by focusing on Persian speakers’ and EFL...

Grammatical error detection and automated essay scoring are two tasks in the area of automated assessment. Traditionally these tasks have been treated independently with different machine learning models and features used for each task. In this paper, we develop a multi-task neural network model that jointly optimises for both tasks, and in particular we show that neural automated essay scoring...

The current study investigated the effects of L1 and L2 glosses on L2 vocabulary retention in incidental and intentional settings. To this end, 100 intermediate Iranian female learners of English as a foreign language at Soroosh High School were given a pre-test to make sure that they do not have any prior knowledge of the target words. Reading passages with three different glossing conditions ...

This study aimed to examine cross-cultural differences in performing refusal of requests between Persian native speakers (PNSs) and English native speakers (ENSs) in terms of the frequency of the semantic formulas. Also examined in this study was whether Persian EFL learners would transfer their L1 refusal patterns into the L2, and if there would be a relation between their proficiency level an...