Analyzing the Relationship between Home Culture Attachment and Accent Imitation of Persian learners

Second language culture or target language culture plays a significant role in the language development of learners. The present study examines the relationship between the two variables of dependence on one's own (home) culture and imitation of the Persian accent of students at two intermediate and advanced levels. To this purpose, the Home Culture Attachment Questionnaire (Pishghadam & Kamyabi Gol, 2009) was distributed among 42 Persian learners at teaching Persian to speakers of other languages in Mashhad. The participants were recruited using convenience sampling and the participant’s nationalities included Indian, Pakistani, Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian and Nigerian. The participants were asked to read out the passages and their voices were recorded and transcribed. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS (version 27). The results showed no correlation between home culture attachment and accent mimicry in the advanced and intermediate levels. The results revealed a significant difference in the level of accent imitation in the intermediate and the advanced levels. The results of this study can have an effect on the testing procedure of speaking skills at the end of the courses, and also, the results could assist materials developers to design educational resources which take into account intercultural differences as a facilitative tool for learning and teaching a target language.
Extended Abstract:
Introduction
 There is a considerable number of studies on the important effect of culture on language learning. Many researchers have studied the effects of second language culture and its various components on the identity of language learners (Brown, 2007; Gao, 2010; Norton, 1995; Schumann, 1990). The current research also believes in the effects of second language culture in language teaching and also considers other elements such as accent imitation, to be related to efficiently learning Persian as a second language. Considering this aim, the present research seeks to study the relationship between two variables including dependence on home culture and imitation of the native Persian accent of Persian learners at both intermediate and advanced levels studying at teaching Persian to speakers of other languages’ centers in Mashhad. Therefore, the research questions of the present research are as follow:

Is there a relationship between dependence on one's home culture and imitation of Persian accent in the intermediate level Persian learners?
Is there a relationship between dependence on one's home culture and imitation of Persian accent in the advanced level Persian learners?
Is there a significant difference in the degree of dependence on the home culture between intermediate and advanced Persian learners?
Is there a significant difference in the degree of accent imitation between intermediate and advanced Persian learners?

Methodology
The statistical population of this research included Persian learners at two teaching Persian to speakers of other languages (TPSOL) centers in Mashhad. The participants included various nationalities including Iraqi, Lebanese, Indian, Pakistani, Nigerian and Syrian. Due to visa authorization problems and the spread of Covid-19, sampling was done using the convenience method. In order to answer the research questions, two different research instruments, namely, a questionnaire and a reading text were used.
First, in order to determine the amount of dependence on the home culture, Pishqadam and Kamyabi Gol’s, (2009) Home Cultural Attachment Scale was used. It was distributed among 42 participants (21 intermediate level and 21 advanced level). Overall, 14 male and 28 females took part in this study. To measure the accent imitation variable, the participants of each level (both the Intermediate and advanced levels) read a short text from two TPSOL textbooks including "Persian Language Teaching Course from Beginner to Advanced", by Zarghamian (2002) for the intermediate level and "Reading and understanding Farsi" by Jafari and Navabi (2017) for the  advanced level. Their voices were recorded during reading. Finally, SPSS version 27 software was used to analyze the data. Pearson's product moment correlation test was used to investigate the relationship between the two main research experiments at intermediate and advanced levels.
Results
In this part, the research questions of the study will be presented in order, and their answers will be given according to the statistical methods used.
  Research question 1: Is there a relationship between the intermediate level learners’ dependence on home culture and imitation of Persian accent?
Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationship between the two variables of dependence on one's home culture and imitating the Farsi dialect of students. According to the obtained results, the correlation coefficient between the dependence on the home culture and imitation of Farsi accent of students at the intermediate level was 0/053  and the significance level was more than 0/05 (0/821).
Therefore, with 95% confidence, it can be concluded that there is no relationship between the variables of dependence on one's home culture and imitation of the Farsi accent of students at the intermediate level.
Research question 2: Is there a relationship between dependence on the advanced level learners’ home culture and imitation of Persian accent?
Regarding the relationship between the two variables of dependence on one's home culture and imitating the Farsi accent of advanced level students, since the two variables were continuous, we used the Pearson correlation test. According to the obtained results, the correlation coefficient between the variables of dependence on home culture and imitating the Farsi accent of advanced level students was equal to -0/300 and the significance level was greater than 0/050 (0/187).Therefore, it can be said with 95% certainty that there is no significant relationship between dependence on the home culture and imitation of the Farsi accent of students at the advanced level.

Is there a significant difference between the degree of dependence on the home culture of the intermediate and advanced level Persian learners?

In order to analyze this question, a normal distribution test was run and since the results revealed that the data was normally distributes, the independent samples t-test was used. The results revealed that the t-value was 1/203 and the significance level was higher than 0/05. Therefore, with 95% confidence, it can be said that there is no significant difference between the average level of dependence on the home culture of the intermediate and advanced level Persian learners.

Is there a significant difference between the degree of accent imitation of the intermediate and advanced level Persian learners?

In order to investigate this question, considering the fact that the variable of imitating the Farsi accent of Persian learners is quantitative and normal, as in the previous question, independent samples t-test was used. Based on this, the t-value corresponding to the assumption of equality of variances was equal to -4/86  and the significance level is less than 0/05  equal to (0/000). Therefore, with 95% confidence, we can say that there is a significant difference between the intermediate and advanced level Persian learners’ accent imitation. In other words, the average Persian accent imitation rate of advanced level Persian learners is higher than the intermediate level.
Conclusion
 As a result of this research, there was no correlation between the two variables of dependence on one's home culture and imitation of the Persian accent of the learners at each of the two proficiency levels namely intermediate and advanced. Also, the amount of Persian accent imitation at the advanced level was more than the intermediate level. The obtained results accord with Pishghadam & Sadeghi (2011) who found that the English language teachers were less dependent on their home culture. The results are also in line with Payande Dari Nezhad & Habibi(2021) who examined the relationship between the two variables of cultural identity and the attitude of language learners towards learning English.  Also Bagheri Masoudzade & Fatehirad (2021) who measured the effects of second language education through virtual space on the identity of language learners, in terms of the evolution of the identity of language learners.
 
 In the end, other influential factors on dependence on home culture, such as cultural intelligence or teachers' teaching methods, could also be investigated.