Volume 7-6 October 2011.

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Title
A Contrastive Analysis of English and Persian Sentence Structure

Author
Asghar Bastami Bandpay (Ph.D. candidate)
Islamic Azad University, Tonekabon Branch, Iran

Biodata
Asghar Bastami Bandpay is a candidate of English at the Baku State University, Baku, Azerbaijan Republic. He has an M.A. in TEFL awarded by the Islamic Azad University at Tonekabon, Iran in august 2011. 18 years of teaching experience at different non-governmental schools and especially at different SEI (Shokouh's English institute) braches in Mazandaran and Gilan, Iran (all levels teaching experience). He is now the President, Founder and Instructor of SEI Rudsar's Branch in Gilan. He is going to be the faculty member of the Islamic Azad University and to teach English in different branches of the Islamic Azad University in Gilan and Mazandaran. His main research interests are contrastive analysis, motivation, discourse analysis, psychology of language learning and teaching (Applied Linguistic). His two articles are being published in international journals and presented three papers in Sanandaj and Tabriz international conferences.

Abstract

This study is an attempt to provide insights into the extents of why some Persian learners have problems in learning certain structures of English language. The question this study tries to answer is whether there is a relationship between learning a foreign language (English) and Persian by using contrastive analysis or not. To answer this question, a set of certain structures, words, expression, etc. (14 utterances) predicted to be problematic parts of learning, were selected to be translated by a group consisting of 100 female and male students of the same level (second grade of high-school) into English. 42 out of these 100 participants had experienced going to an English institute to promote their English skills. By administrating and analyzing the learners' performance based on contrastive analysis separately. It was indicated that the predicted problems existed. The findings showed that through the contrastive analysis of (L1 and L2) some of those problematic structures in learning L2 can be predicted. As a result, by using contrastive analysis, procedures or techniques that is, description, selection, contrast, and finally prediction based on the third above procedure and focusing the learner's attention to the problematic English structures, the learning can probably be promoted. It was also found out that the teacher who considered those procedures would probably be far successful in his/her teaching and would have more successful students.

Keywords: Contrastive analysis, Persian utterances, Translation, Prediction of errors, Certain structures, Problematic structures