Analysis of Iranian and Non-Iranian Performances: A Study of Writing in Real and Virtual Environments

Abstract

The purposes of the present study were: 1) to identify the most frequent Iranian and non-Iranian learners’ errors in the virtual environment of social networking websites 2) to compare Iranian performances in the traditional and virtual environments, and 3) to compare Iranian and Malaysian performances in the virtual environment. With respect to the requirements of the research questions this study had three phases of data collection. For the first and the third phase, the researcher selected 30 Iranians and 30 Malaysians, female and male, aged 18 to 21 from one of the social networking websites and collected two separate 3200 word corpuses from among their comments, wall posts and statuses. They were students of Computer Engineering and IT. For the second phase of the study another 3200 word corpus were collected from 30 Iranians, male and female, aged 18 to 21 who were studying Computer Engineering and IT at Sheikhbahaee University who were asked to write an essay on an assigned topic. The analysis of the results revealed that three most frequent Iranian participants’ errors were verb forms, dictions, prepositions, and Malaysian participants’ errors were verb forms, diction, and plural ‘s’ in the virtual environment. Based on the results of the t-test, Mann-Whitney, and Chi-square tests interesting similarities and differences were observed within and between error groups in each corpus.