Persian to English Lexical Transfer Errors in the Iranian EFL Learners’ Writings

Interference or transfer from language learners’ first language (L۱) is one of the significant variables that contributes to the complexity of SLA process and usually persists intensely at the initial stages of L۲ acquisition and development. Drawing upon Meriläinen’s (۲۰۱۰) taxonomy of lexical transfer errors, the present study intended to explore Iranian EFL learners’ lexical transfer error caused by word form, word meaning, and word use. To this aim, a corpus of ۱۸۹ compositions written by ۸۹ male and ۱۰۰ female students was investigated. The results revealed that females in general had more lexical transfer errors than males, and that a large amount of the errors stemmed from word use (۵۴%) which was followed by word form (۳۶%) and lastly word meaning (۱۰%). The findings of the study suggest that shifting the students’ attention from vocabulary size to vocabulary depth and exposing them to a large number of authentic collocations and prefabricated patterns are advisable activities that might counteract negative lexical transfer.

کلیدواژه ها:

error ، lexical error ، lexical transfer ، word form ، word meaning ، word use ، writing