This study was conducted with the purpose of examining Persian speakers’ article acquisition and use with reference to Ionin, Ko and Wexler’s (2004) model, which is based on the prediction of Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) that EFL learners of [-article] languages, like Persian, make erroneous article use in [+definite, -specific] and [-definite, +specific] contexts. From among the students of an Iranian university, 90 participants were randomly selected and divided into three groups based on their proficiency levels (elementary, intermediate and advanced). They completed a forced-choice elicitation task, consisting of 20 dialogues, similar to Ionin et al.’s (2004) questionnaire. It was hypothesized that as proficiency level increases, the accuracy level increases, while article misuse and omission decrease. The overall results suggested that the performance of the participants of the study, even the advanced group, was below the ceiling level (90% accuracy observed in native and near-native speakers). Moreover, as the level of proficiency increased, the accuracy level of article use increased and omission error decreased, but article misuse showed no significant decrease. It was concluded that low performance of Persian speakers is due to the lack of correspondence between Persian and English determiner phrase (DP) structures and lack of adequate input. Manuscript profile

The present study aims at investigating the effect of translation students' metapragmatic awareness at the level of theory on the quality of their humor translations. For this purpose, an experimental study was designed with 50 junior students majoring in English translation during their oral translation course. They were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received instruction mainly on the implication of Grice’s conversational maxims within the incongruity-resolution theory of humor framework. They learned how violating the maxims might lead to incongruity in the jokes and that such an incongruity must be felt in their translations. The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) was also briefly explained to increase their sensitivity towards the outcome of their translation. The control group, on the other hand, continued their usual course of oral translation. Both groups participated in pre-and post-tests of humor translation. Statistical analysis of the results using independent samples t-test for both pre-and post-tests revealed significant improvement in the quality of the experimental group's translations, yet the results also indicated their partial success in recognizing the violated maxims. The findings suggested the usefulness of explicit theoretical knowledge in the quality of the translation students' task and had the practical implication that since higher quality translation can result from the instruction on metapragmatics, it can be included in the translation students' syllabus. Manuscript profile