Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur; Zahra Parsaeian
Abstract
The upsurge of interest in the employment of instructional technologies in learning English has coincided with a growing interest in Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Considering the under-explored area of speaking skill, the present study investigated the participants’ microgenetic development ...
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The upsurge of interest in the employment of instructional technologies in learning English has coincided with a growing interest in Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Considering the under-explored area of speaking skill, the present study investigated the participants’ microgenetic development of speaking ability in terms of accuracy and fluency through informal participation in online activities. Through a stratified purposive sample selection, three adult male and female intermediate-level participants were selected and agreed to engage in some online informal activities such as emailing, watching online videos like TED Talks, participating in webinars, reading online news, etc. The participants’ microgenetic development were tested throughout the study in two-week-time intervals. The results of the audio recorded data highlighted the positive impact of the OILE activities on the development of the spoken accuracy and fluency. The results also suggested that each individual participant was on his/her own unique developmental trajectory and that accuracy and fluency development was not a linear process, and there was a trade-off between accuracy and fluency. The overall findings of the study suggested that learners’ speaking ability, particularly fluency and accuracy, can be enriched by interacting with online informal contexts. This study also confirmed that each learner is on his/ her own developmental trajectory. Learners’ developmental trends are various due to differing categorizations and entrenchments in their lives considering Usage-Based (UB) approach.
Karim Shabani; Mona Hosseinzadeh
Abstract
The underlying goal of this study was to assess the effects of metatalk at elaborate and limited levels of engagement on Iranian L2 learners’ grammatical accuracy in writing. Thirty-four male and female students were recruited following the administration of the Quick Oxford Placement Test (QOPT) ...
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The underlying goal of this study was to assess the effects of metatalk at elaborate and limited levels of engagement on Iranian L2 learners’ grammatical accuracy in writing. Thirty-four male and female students were recruited following the administration of the Quick Oxford Placement Test (QOPT) and then randomly divided into an experimental group with elaborate engagement (n=16) and a comparison one with limited engagement (n=18). Ten narrative tasks were used during the treatment sessions and both groups were asked to write the stories. The initial drafts were reformulated by the teacher. They were then asked to compare the two versions. The experimental group was asked to discuss the reasons for the applied changes while the comparison group only noted the differences. The learners’ sheets were scored and their accuracy was measured drawing on Ellis and Yuan's (2004) accuracy scales. The results revealed that both groups’ grammatical accuracy in writing was enhanced. However, the experimental group outperformed the comparison one since their posttest scores were statistically different. The learners’ language-related episodes were also analyzed, and the qualitative scrutiny brought to surface four patterns of interaction including collaborative, expert-novice, dominant-dominant and dominant-passive. Finally, the current study discusses implications for L2 instructional settings and the use of metatalk as a means to enhance noticing the target forms and expedite their grammatical accuracy and learning processes.
Anahita Sheikhipour; Mahmood Hashemian; Ali Roohani
Abstract
The flipped teaching has nowadays become a new movement in teaching and is getting pervasive in the educational system. The goal of this study was to explore if there was any significant difference between L2 learners’ oral complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in flipped and traditional classes. ...
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The flipped teaching has nowadays become a new movement in teaching and is getting pervasive in the educational system. The goal of this study was to explore if there was any significant difference between L2 learners’ oral complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in flipped and traditional classes. To do so, both traditional and filpped classes were resorted to in order to see which class matched the students’ needs. Moreover, this study was done to find out if it had any significant effect on the learners’ motivation, self-efficacy, engagement, self-confidence, and autonomy. Via an OPT, 40 homogenous, lower-intermediate students were chosen from a language school in Isfahan, Iran. Then, they were randomly assigned to experimental 1 and 1 control groups. Initially, all the students attended an interview session and their responses were audio-recorded; then, 2 teachers scored their responses to make certain the interviews enjoyed reliability. Afterward, the students took a pretest with 2 questions relevant to their actual life and the grammar they would acquire in the course of the treatment. After taking 4 treatment sessions, the students received a posttest to see how much they had progressed during the 4 treatment sessions. Also, a questionnaire was adapted from another study to figure out the students’ satisfaction regarding this type of teaching. The results revealed that the flipped class increased the students’ motivation, self-efficacy, engagement, self-confidence, and autonomy. However, no significant difference was seen between the learners in the flipped class and those in the traditional class, as far as oral CAF was concerend. Based on the students’ answers to the questionnaire, most were satisfied with the flipped model. To conclude, materials developers and syllabus designers should modify instructional materials and books taught in language schools and add some parts to them in line witth technology to satisfy digital natives.
Mobina Rahnama; Alireza Ahmadi; Seyyed Ayatollah Razmjoo; Omid Mazandarani
Abstract
The debate continues on what features of oral performance are influenced by oral feedback. The present study tries to provide an answer to this question in an EFL context. To this end the effect of six different modes of oral feedback on the features of oral complexity and accuracy was investigated using ...
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The debate continues on what features of oral performance are influenced by oral feedback. The present study tries to provide an answer to this question in an EFL context. To this end the effect of six different modes of oral feedback on the features of oral complexity and accuracy was investigated using data from 66 Iranian EFL learners who were selected conveniently from the Iran Language Institute. The participants were divided into experimental and control groups at two different levels of elementary and pre-intermediate. The experimental groups were presented with six different types of oral feedback modes (recasts, clarification requests, metalinguistic, praising, elicitation, and repetition) and at the end of the research they were tested by an in-class oral test to measure their complexity and accuracy (CA). To compare the participants’ oral features, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and a Mann-Whitney U Test were run. The results indicated that complexity and accuracy significantly improved among the groups, moreover; there were significant differences in the post-tests between both elementary and pre-intermediate levels regarding CA. The results further indicated that Iranian learners of English would have fewer errors and would be more accurate when receiving oral feedback modes. The study highlights the complex relationship that exists between features of oral performance. The findings of the present study can have theoretical and practical implications for syllabus designers, teacher trainers, and testing researchers.
Saeed Shamsini; Ali Akbar Farahani Khomeijani
Abstract
This study attempted to look into the effect of increasing task complexity and the provision of recast in separate experiments on the EFL learners’ oral language production and their fluency and accuracy. For both experiments, oral narrative tasks were used (Heaton, 1975), adjusted in terms of ...
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This study attempted to look into the effect of increasing task complexity and the provision of recast in separate experiments on the EFL learners’ oral language production and their fluency and accuracy. For both experiments, oral narrative tasks were used (Heaton, 1975), adjusted in terms of complexity according to Robinson’s Triadic Framework along the +/- reasoning and the +/- few elements dimensions. For the effect of recasts, learners were provided with recasts when performing their oral narrative tasks. The obtained data were subject to repeated measures ANOVA and one-way ANOVA to provide answers to the research questions. Increasing the complexity of the oral narrative tasks led to high accuracy but low fluency, supporting Robinson’s (2011) prediction of the opposite resulting effects of raising task complexity on fluency in L2 production. The provision of recasts, on the other hand, influenced learners’ accuracy and fluency in their oral productions positively by implicitly focusing their attention on the form of their communication. And, comparatively, recasts and task complexity did not differ in terms of their contribution to oral accuracy and fluency, approving their special benefits for each dimension of oral production in isolation. Results are discussed in light of Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis.Keywords: task complexity; corrective feedback; recast; oral production; accuracy; fluency
Leila Ahmadpour; Mohammad Hossein Yousefi
Abstract
The present study was an attempt to investigate the effectiveness of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) in comparison to lack of it in improving learners’ writing accuracy, fluency, and complexity. To this end, a total of 39 English as a foreign language learners took part in the study. In ...
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The present study was an attempt to investigate the effectiveness of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) in comparison to lack of it in improving learners’ writing accuracy, fluency, and complexity. To this end, a total of 39 English as a foreign language learners took part in the study. In the experimental group, learners were exposed to technologically enhanced writing practices through the Telegram application, where they were engaged in a collaborative writing task accomplished through interaction by the peers and the teacher as group members. The control group learners, on the contrary, wrote about the same topics on the paper without any collaboration from others. The results of statistical analysis revealed that although the writing fluency and complexity of experimental learners flourished in comparison to their control peers, the accuracy dimension followed a reverse pattern. In other words, control group learners were the ones who could improve their writing accuracy.The results are discussed in light of the assumption that synchronous interaction provides learners with more opportunities to write using a syntactically complex and fluent language which are in a trade-off relation with accuracy.
