THE EFFECTS OF INTERACTION ON THE ACQUISITION OF THE PASSIVE ENGLISH STRUCTURE BY IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS

In recent years, scholars have used different ways to approach second language acquisition. Many researchers have developed the line of the research which focuses on the interactional structure of conversation. This study was conducted to examine the effect of interaction on the acquisition of English passive voice on Iranian foreign language learners. The participants were as many as sixty students from two classes who were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Both groups were given the same tasks (that is editing tasks) in eight sessions. The experimental group edited the text by the help of the peers and the teacher (+interaction). On the other hand, the control group did the tasks individually (-interaction). Before the commencement of the treatment, a grammar pretest was assigned to establish the subjects' knowledge of the passive. After the treatments, all groups sat for post-tests. The findings did not reveal that the interaction among the learners during an editing task in the experimental group helped learners to learn better and retain the structure more than the control group students. However, the researcher states that the treatment helped learners in experimental group notice to the wrong parts of the text. Therefore, treatment proved to have an impact on the acquisition of English passive voice though minimal in production.