COMPARISON OF UNIVERSITY LEVEL EFL LEARNERS’ LINGUISTIC AND RHETORICAL PATTERNS AS REFLECTED IN THEIR L1 AND L2 WRITING

Abstract

This study focused on the linguistic and rhetorical patterns of L1 and L2 writing samples of Iranian EFL learners and aimed to determine possible quantitative differences. For this purpose, an intact EFL class including 30 Iranian EFL learners at an English department (F=21, M=9) was selected and the participants were asked to write English and Persian compositions on the same topic in an argumentative style in two separate sessions. These tasks were then holistically scored according to the ESL Composition Profile (Jacobs et. al. 1981) by two expert scorers. The number of words, number of words per sentences, number of spelling errors and number of T-units were also manually counted for both the English and the Persian tasks. The collected data were used to compare and contrast the linguistic and rhetorical patterns of the L1 and L2 writing samples. The results of the study showed that: a) there was a moderate positive correlation (r=0.47 p<0.05) between L1 and L2 writing total scores, b) texts written in L1 were significantly longer than those written in L2, c) L1 writing texts were more complex than L2 writing ones in terms of T-units, d) T-units in texts written in L1 were more than those written in L2, and e) the number of spelling errors in L2 writing samples were higher than those of L1 writing samples. These results were compared to those of similar studies comparing L1 and L2 writing. Implications arising from these findings were also explained.