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.
Samira Abbasi; Azizeh Chalak; Hossein Heidari Tabrizi
Abstract
Enhancing speaking ability is an important component of the acquirement of a language. The present study focused on improving speaking ability through online strategy-based instruction. The innovation aspect of this study is applying the Moodle course management system as an instructional platform. To ...
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Enhancing speaking ability is an important component of the acquirement of a language. The present study focused on improving speaking ability through online strategy-based instruction. The innovation aspect of this study is applying the Moodle course management system as an instructional platform. To this end, a group of 80 Iranian female and male students at the intermediate level participated in the treatment. Participants of the study were divided into four groups of 20. The subjects in experimental groups benefited from two particular instructional focuses of this study include social and affective strategies. In order to assess the effect of the treatment pre and posttests design were utilized. Consequently, the data were analyzed through One-Way ANOVAs and t-tests. The findings revealed that strategy treatment was successful in improving the participants’ speaking ability. However, there was no significant difference between the performance of male and female treatment groups. Therefore, the findings suggest that online strategy-based instruction can positively influence the speaking ability of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. This study may have pedagogical implications for material practitioners, CALL package designers and distance learning planners to include strategy instruction in English courses.Keywords: Moodle, Online learning, Social and affective strategies, Speaking ability, Strategy instruction