Samaneh Yadollahi; Amirsaeid Moloodi; Mohammad Rahimi
Abstract
Error-tagged learner corpora are helpful resources in language teaching, providing authentic samples of learners' errors. This longitudinal study aims to investigate accuracy development in three subsequent writing performances of Iranian EFL learners across beginner, intermediate, and advanced proficiency ...
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Error-tagged learner corpora are helpful resources in language teaching, providing authentic samples of learners' errors. This longitudinal study aims to investigate accuracy development in three subsequent writing performances of Iranian EFL learners across beginner, intermediate, and advanced proficiency levels. This investigation involved developing and annotating the first error–tagged English written learner corpus for Iranian EFL learners, followed by analyzing the errors. The current corpus includes 35747 tokens from 219 written texts, manually transcribed and annotated based on the latest version of the Louvain Error Tagging Manual. A total of 6917 errors were identified. The developmental patterns of all error categories were detected using potential occasion analysis, specifically focusing on the most frequent error types (i.e., articles, noun numbers, and personal pronoun errors). The results indicated that grammar, lexical, and word redundant/missing/order errors increase significantly as proficiency levels increase. Conversely, form, lexico-grammatical, and punctuation errors exhibited a U-shaped trend, rising from beginner to intermediate levels and declining from intermediate to advanced levels.Additionally, the accuracy of article and noun number usage improved from beginner to intermediate levels but showed little or no change from intermediate to advanced levels, suggesting that higher proficiency levels did not lead to much improvement in this area. However, there was a significant decrease in personal pronoun accuracy from beginner to intermediate levels, followed by a slight increase from intermediate to advanced levels. This study reveals error patterns across different proficiency levels, offering guidance for teachers to adapt their writing instruction methods and enhance learners’ writing accuracy.
Fatemeh Karimi; Azizeh Chalak
Abstract
AbstractPre-listening activity has a considerable role in improving listening comprehension. This research examined the effects of bottom-up and top-down pre-listening activities on Iranian EFL students’ listening comprehension. It also investigated the potential interaction effects of language ...
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AbstractPre-listening activity has a considerable role in improving listening comprehension. This research examined the effects of bottom-up and top-down pre-listening activities on Iranian EFL students’ listening comprehension. It also investigated the potential interaction effects of language proficiency and gender with the treatments. Using the TOEFL (PBT) test, 270 learners were selected and grouped into three proficiency levels of elementary, intermediate, and upper-intermediate. At each level, 90 subjects were randomly distributed to one control (CG) and two experimental groups (EGs), each consisting of 30 learners. After giving the pretest, vocabulary preparation as a bottom-up pre-listening activity and content-related support as a top-down pre-listening activity were given to the two EGs for the treatment, but the learners in the CGs were demanded to listen to the audio tracks and go straight into the listening tasks without any pre-listening activities. The research lasted for six weeks and 12 sessions. At the end of the experiment, the posttest was given to the subjects to measure the effects of the treatments. The results revealed significant differences between the learners’ pretest and posttest performance. The analyses of the data confirmed the positive impact of both types of pre-listening activities on the listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners based on their proficiency levels. Further analyses revealed the interaction effects between proficiency levels and treatments. However, there was no interaction effect between the learners’ gender and the treatments. The findings of the study could help practitioners in the field to assign more practical tasks to improve the listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners.
Mahdis Mousavi; Mansoor Ganji; Khaled Kordi Tamandani
Abstract
Textbook is an essential element of teaching and learning materials. After the teacher, textbooks are the most important factor in learning. Since textbooks act as an important material in teaching and learning, they need to be evaluated regularly. In the light of the foregoing, this study aimed to evaluate ...
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Textbook is an essential element of teaching and learning materials. After the teacher, textbooks are the most important factor in learning. Since textbooks act as an important material in teaching and learning, they need to be evaluated regularly. In the light of the foregoing, this study aimed to evaluate “Active Skills for Reading” using a researcher-made checklist and a structured interview. This book was being taught in six classes of Chabahar Maritime University as a general English coursebook. The goal of this study was to determine the suitability of the book as a general English course from the students’ and teachers’ perspectives. To this end, 150 students and 4 teachers were selected, and data were collected during two semesters in 2020. The quantitative data of the checklist were analyzed by calculating descriptive statistics using SPSS version 26, and qualitative data was analyzed through deductive content analysis. It was shown that the teachers and students believed that the appearance of the book is attractive, the content of the book is up-to-date and practical, and the goals are well defined. It was also revealed that although the textbook had some shortcomings such as lack of enough grammar sections in each unit, teachers felt the book was still appropriate for general English courses, especially for developing the reading skills. Generally, it was indicated that the textbook had met students’ needs for a general English course. The study ends with suggestions for general English teachers and materials designers.
Hossein Arabgary; Siros Izadpanah
Volume 3, Issue 3 , September 2016, , Pages 128-105
Abstract
The present study aimed at examining whether the turn-taking processes in focus on form and focus on forms teaching contexts were similar or different. Turn-taking refers to ‘how each of the interlocutors in an interaction contributes to the conversation’. Both lessons were designed to teach ...
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The present study aimed at examining whether the turn-taking processes in focus on form and focus on forms teaching contexts were similar or different. Turn-taking refers to ‘how each of the interlocutors in an interaction contributes to the conversation’. Both lessons were designed to teach some words but they also provided opportunities for incidental acquisition by exposing them to the two target structures, namely, plural s and copula be. The FonF lesson was of planned while FonFs lesson employed present-practice-product (PPP) methodology. Forty-five beginner Iranian students were non-randomly divided into three groups of fifteen, namely, FonF, FonFs and control group. They received eight repeated lessons during six weeks. Two tests for receptive knowledge of plural-s, and one test for productive knowledge of copula-be were used to measure the acquisitions of target features in terms of the differences in interactions that takes place in the two instructional approaches and consequently opportunities for noticing of target structures. The study used a quasi-experimental design through pre-tests, immediate post-tests and delayed post-tests. Then the statistical analysis was run through one-way repeated measures ANOVAS. Conversation analysis (CA) was employed by utilizing seedhouse’s ‘form and accuracy’ and ‘meaning and fluency’ framework to investigate classroom interactions. The analysis revealed that the interaction in the two groups differed in organization of turn-taking, occurrence of different kinds of repair, and the frequency and function of private speech. Overall, it was revealed that the interaction in the FonF lesson was ‘conversational’ while that in the FonFs lesson was ‘pedagogical’.
Masoomeh Estaji; Shabnam Moradi Aghdam
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, , Pages 55-35
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of learning together model of cooperative learning on Iranian EFL learners’ and high and low achievers’ critical thinking ability. To this end, a total of 52 students out of a population of 60 English language learners from Simin Language ...
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The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of learning together model of cooperative learning on Iranian EFL learners’ and high and low achievers’ critical thinking ability. To this end, a total of 52 students out of a population of 60 English language learners from Simin Language School in Karaj were selected, through a Preliminary English Test (PET), and randomly assigned into two groups of experimental and control. Prior to the treatment, a critical thinking questionnaire as a pretest was administered to the students of both groups. Then a 10- session treatment was conducted to the participants in the experimental group according to the dynamics of the learning together model of cooperative learning. Finally, a posttest of critical thinking questionnaire was provided to both groups. An independent samples t-test was run to compare the mean scores of both groups along with a two-way ANCOVA to investigate the effect of achievement level of the participants on the posttest of critical thinking. The obtained results revealed that the null hypotheses were all rejected, concluding that the learning together model of cooperative learning had a significant effect on the improvement of critical thinking skills of Iranian EFL learners. More significantly, there was a significant difference between the high and low achievers in the groups in terms of their critical thinking mean scores, meaning that in both the experimental and control group, the high proficiency achievers enjoyed higher critical thinking ability.
