Research Paper
Amir Rezaei; Siros Izadpanah; Ali Shahnavaz
Abstract
Matching the expectations of teachers and students is vital for successful learning. Few studies have investigated the effects of corrective feedback on Iranian EFL students. The sample of this research were 180 male and female teachers that teach language courses in an English Language Teaching program ...
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Matching the expectations of teachers and students is vital for successful learning. Few studies have investigated the effects of corrective feedback on Iranian EFL students. The sample of this research were 180 male and female teachers that teach language courses in an English Language Teaching program in language institutes in Zanjan and 350 students who were chosen through stratified random sampling. Two standard instruments were used in this study. PET Test, Fukuda (2004). The findings suggest that they believed that corrective feedback had a significant effect on their writing but the teachers did not think so. It is concluded that most of the feedback given by teachers were concentrated on grammatical errors and that the teachers’ view of feedback is based on the context, which might origin from absence of sufficient teacher training. With this in mind, giving feedback, or rather the right kind of feedback should perhaps play a better role in teacher education. Anyway, the fact that feedback is based on each context may be positive, because all students are different, even so teacher trainees might still take advantage from studying the provision of feedback.
Abbas Ali Zarei; Rajab Esfandiari; Azam Akbari
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, Pages 34-21
Abstract
The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between self-regulated learning strategies and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The participants of the study were 119 Iranian B.A. and M.A. students majoring in English at Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin and ...
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The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between self-regulated learning strategies and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The participants of the study were 119 Iranian B.A. and M.A. students majoring in English at Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin and Islamshahr Azad University. The Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency was given to the participants to determine their language proficiency and reading comprehension. Then, the participants were asked to respond to the Self-Regulation Trait Questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed using a stepwise multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that from among the six components of self-regulated learning strategies, only planning and effort components were significant predictors of reading comprehension. The results of the present study may be helpful for teachers, learners, and materials developers.
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.
Ashraf Haji Maibodi
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, Pages 80-57
Abstract
This study investigated the effect of individual differences (IDs) like language proficiency, gender and age on careful, unpressured online planning on the production of speech act of apology in institutional discourse. For this purpose, one hundred and eighty-seven Persian EFL university students at ...
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This study investigated the effect of individual differences (IDs) like language proficiency, gender and age on careful, unpressured online planning on the production of speech act of apology in institutional discourse. For this purpose, one hundred and eighty-seven Persian EFL university students at three academic levels (undergraduates, postgraduates and PhD students) participated and cross-sectional data were collected to compare and analyze the apologies produced by learners at different proficiency levels. A three way between subject analyses (ANOVA) showed quantitative differences among the three groups according to individual differences. Further, in-depth qualitative analyses of test items and retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) taken from the participants revealed developmental information about the series of processes, language states and patterns followed by learners when making an apology in a second language. Sociocultural, socio-psychological and socio-affective aspects of the discourse situations influenced not only students’ pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic choices but also their negotiation of lexical and grammatical choices in planning the speech act of apology. Apparently, the degree of sociocultural accommodation to the L2 pragmatic norms may be a matter of choice as of ability. One major pedagogical implication of this study is that any account of the development of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) should take into consideration the interaction of ID variables that are likely to intervene between the stages of noticing and target like production.
Naser Rashidi; Mohamad Rahimi; Farzaneh Dehghan
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, Pages 96-81
Abstract
Writing academic texts is a challenging endeavour for novice L2 writers, which causes them to rely heavily on the original texts. Some studies have differentiated intentional acts of fraud (like plagiarism) from patchwriting which they claim is unintentional source text reliance. However, others have ...
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Writing academic texts is a challenging endeavour for novice L2 writers, which causes them to rely heavily on the original texts. Some studies have differentiated intentional acts of fraud (like plagiarism) from patchwriting which they claim is unintentional source text reliance. However, others have a negative view toward it. The present study explores L2 graduate student writers and their professors' perspectives about these different writing practices and how they may work for or against developing professional writing expertise in a discipline. Survey questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. The results were analysed through calculating frequencies and percentages as well as inductive data analysis for transcribed interviews. The results showed that many graduate students used patchwriting in their attempts to write academic texts unintentionally and intuitively. The reasons identified for patchwriting were students' lack of confidence to write independently, inability to paraphrase or fear of not expressing the writer's message thoroughly, and, in some cases, the writers' intention to get around plagiarism detection softwares. However, both students and their instructors had negative views about patchwriting. They believed that writing strategies like patchwriting could not lead to professional writing practices in a discipline. More importantly, the students seemed to continue this practice all through their studies, which may be a sign of not receiving enough instruction and feedback in this regard. The role of explicit teaching is emphasized in making students familiar with the differences between paraphrasing and patchwriting.
Ali Akbar Khomeijani Farahani; Fatemeh Faryabi
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, Pages 116-97
Abstract
Despite the growing body of research documented on pre-task planning in oral and written domain, the results of pre-task planning studies are still inconsistent in second language writing research (e.g. Ellis & Yuan, 2004; Johnson, Mercedo, & Acevedo, 2012; Johnson & Nicodemus 2016; Ong & ...
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Despite the growing body of research documented on pre-task planning in oral and written domain, the results of pre-task planning studies are still inconsistent in second language writing research (e.g. Ellis & Yuan, 2004; Johnson, Mercedo, & Acevedo, 2012; Johnson & Nicodemus 2016; Ong & Zhang, 2010). The current study set out to investigate the effects of two planning conditions (pre-task planning and no planning) on the argumentative writing task performance of Iranian EFL undergraduates in terms of multiple measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). To this end, 44 Iranian EFL undergraduates majoring in English literature at the University of Tehran were recruited based on convenience sampling to participate in this study. Employing a counterbalanced ‘within participants’ design, the participants were required to perform an argumentative writing task under both pre-task planning and no planning conditions. In the pre-task planning condition, in addition to 17 minutes for performing the task, the participants were provided with 10 minutes to plan prior to the task, whereas in the no planning condition, they were not provided with any time to plan. The results of paired sample t-test failed to reveal any significant difference between writing task performance in terms of measures of CAF under pre-task planning and no planning conditions. Thus, it was shown that pre-task planning did not benefit any of the measures (CAF) of argumentative writing task. Possible explanations for the results of this study and pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.
