Studying the Pre-Intermediate Iranian EL Learners’ Interlanguage and the Contribution of their Innate System to the Development of their Oral Communicative Proficiency

With a look at the oral communicative proficiency, the present study seeks to probe the Iranian EFL learners’ ingress to their innate system, and intends to come to an understanding of the state of their interlanguage development. While another goal is to construct an intermingled view of linguistic development in line with interlanguage development, the depiction of the fact that they are not always parallel is also intended. In order to demonstrate the learners’ interlanguage investment, features such as halts in speaking, thought processes, consciousness usage of language and etc. have been explored. For the intended goals, a case study on a group of pre-intermediate B.A. students in one of the southern universities of Iran, named Velayat, have been designed. Through successive observations, interviews and a unique questionnaire for determination of student's abstract knowledge about their development, the study provided a demographic representation of the interlanguage state of these learners, and a thick description of their innate system. Different linguistic features which were present in participants’ speech were allocated to their state of interlanguage development. Furthermore, the data revealed how the tendency to unconscious use of language will result in superior access to the innate system. Some interlanguage hypotheses have also been developed as a track for further research.