The Comparison of Native English and Persian Elementary School Students’ Performance on Lexical and Grammatical Collocations

Subject Areas : Journal of Studies in Learning and Teaching English

Linda Samadi ¹ , Maryam Bahardoust ² , Rahman Sahragard ³

1 - Department of Foreign Languages, Islamic Azad University, Sepidan Branch, Sepidan, Iran
2 - Department of Foreign Languages, Islamic Azad University, Qeshm Branch, Qeshm, Iran
3 - Department of Foreign Languages, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Received: 2015-02-12 Accepted : 2015-04-30 Published : 2015-12-01

Keywords: Lexical collocation, grammatical collocation, L1 performance on collocation,

Abstract :

The importance and howness of language learning/ acquisition has been a great concern for decades. There are many factors that play important roles in this regard. This research compared the performance of native Persian and English elementary students to see if there is any significant difference between the two groups and which type of collocation they performed better within the groups. For this purpose, 60 English and Persian students were selected from elementary schools in Kashan, Iran and New Castle, England. Two tests of collocation (lexical and grammatical) each containing thirty items were adopted. An independent t-test was run and no significant difference between the two groups in lexical collocation was found. But a significant difference was seen between the two groups regarding grammatical collocation. Based on the result of the dependent t-test, the two groups performed better on the lexical collocation test