• Soodeh Sadat Hejazian Yazdi

  Author

• Mohammad Javad Rezai

  Author

Syntactic structures are of great importance in foreign language acquisition (FLA),
and throughout centuries the syntax of target language has been of great importance for the
researchers (Ionin & Montrul, 2010; Rashtchi & Jalili, 2011). The present study intends to
explore the fundamental problems EFL learners may face when trying to acquire the transitivity
constructions along with the related argument and predicate relationships. To this end, 99
participants divided into three proficiency groups of elementary, intermediate, and advanced
were selected as the participants. Eight English native speakers also participated in the study.
All the participants were given a speeded acceptability judgment. The results showed that, there
was an incremental progress across proficiency groups. Although the advanced group
outperformed the other proficiency groups, their performance was non-target like in the majority
of cases. The findings reveal certain pedagogical implications for both curriculum planners and
language instructors.

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