Research findings show that studying the acquisition of a second language in natural situations not only provides information about second language learning but also helps ESL teachers adopt themselves to the learners' needs and find out what kind of linguistic input they are ready for. This in turn will help the teachers set more realistic goals for particular learning situations. / To explore more fully the language acquisition process by close longitudinal observation, this study was designed to examine child second language acquisition at a fairly advance level by analyzing an adequate sample of oral English produced by two Iranian children who had been learning English as a second language in the United States for $2{1\over2}$ years at the data collecting time. In the data collected by three different techniques in a period of six months the most problematic structures for the Iranian ESL learners were investigated. The objective was to study the development of the English grammar and the effect of the first language on the subjects' second language acquisition process. / The subjects achieved the same level of maturity in syntactic development as their native peers in $2{1\over2}$ years. This faster rate of development implies that syntax and embedding ability might be transferred to the second language as soon as the basic second language rules are internalized. / In three different activities, the growth rate was the same but the average T-unit length differed. Sixty-five percent of total errors were developmental errors but the remaining thirty-five percent transfer errors were more persistent in spite of the fact that some of them were very simple grammatically. This means that although both types of errors decrease with the advance of the second language development, the percentage of transfer errors to total errors will increase in more advanced levels. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-03, Section: A, page: 0450. / Major Professor: T. Grant Brown. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76244 |
| Contributors | Nowruzi Khiabani, Mehdi., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 167 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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