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Tayebipour, F., Riasati, M. (2013). Grammatical Competence Development of Nursery School Children Acquiring Persian. Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice, 6(12), 142-158.
Farhad Tayebipour; Mohammad Javad Riasati. "Grammatical Competence Development of Nursery School Children Acquiring Persian". Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice, 6, 12, 2013, 142-158.
Tayebipour, F., Riasati, M. (2013). 'Grammatical Competence Development of Nursery School Children Acquiring Persian', Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice, 6(12), pp. 142-158.
Tayebipour, F., Riasati, M. Grammatical Competence Development of Nursery School Children Acquiring Persian. Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice, 2013; 6(12): 142-158.

Grammatical Competence Development of Nursery School Children Acquiring Persian

Article 9, Volume 6, Issue 12, Winter and Spring 2013, Page 142-158  XML PDF (338.97 K)
Document Type: Research Paper
Authors
Farhad Tayebipour email ; Mohammad Javad Riasati
Department of English, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
Abstract
This qualitative study is conducted to answer four questions: First, whether there is a difference between the grammatical competence development of a group of children aged 2.6 (two years and six months) and a group of children aged 3.6 (three years and six months). Second, whether there is a significant difference between the two age groups concerning their Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). Third, whether there is a relationship between the children’s MLU and that of the caretakers. Fourth, whether the normal limit proposed by Brown (1973) is observed in the acquisition of Persian. To this end, language samples of six children and their caretakers’ were recorded during a six-week period and studied afterwards. The results indicated neither an unequivocal yes nor a definitive no answer to the question of age difference and grammatical competence development, that is to say, in some cases there was a difference whereas in some other cases there was no difference at all. As for the difference between the two age groups concerning their MLU, there was a significant difference between the two. However, no significant relationship was found between the children’s MLU and their caretakers’. Finally, the limit proposed by Brown (1973) was observed in the acquisition of Persian.
Keywords
First Language; child directed speech; mean length of utterance; grammatical competence development; grammatical judgment test
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