Typical Mistakes of Persian-speaking Students when Using Russian Numerals in Oral and Written Speech: Reasons and Ways to Prevent Them

Abstract

The authors argue that numerals in Russian and Persian have similarities and differences in structure and usage. One of the differences between the numerals in these languages is that Russian numerals are declined in different cases, and the words of this part of speech in Persian are not declined. Based on many years of experience in teaching Russian numerals to an Iranian audience, the article discusses typical mistakes of Persian-speaking students when using ordinal, collective, cardinal and fractional Russian numerals in speech and writing. The article classifies these typical errors into morphological, syntactic and orthographic ones. The reasons for the appearance of these errors in the speech of Persian-speaking students are revealed. The reasons for the appearance of errors can be interlingual or intralingual interference. At the end of the article, some recommendations are offered to prevent identified errors, as an exercise in analyzing a text with numerals and reading it aloud also helps to fix the correct patterns in the memory of students and thus overcome typical errors. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that for the first time the typical mistakes of Persian-speaking students studying Russian when using Russian numerals are considered. In terms of methodology, the present study is a descriptive study conducted using an integrated approach. The statistical sample of this study included male and female students of the initial stage of teaching the Russian language at the Allameh Tabatabai University. It is revealed that interlingual and intralingual interferences are the main reasons for the appearance of typical errors in the speech of Persian-speaking students.

Keywords:

Russian numerals, Persian-speaking students, teaching Russian, typical mistakes, active processes in the Russian language, interlingual interference, intralingual interference