صدیقه وحدت

Despite extensive studies concerning written error correction, it is imperative that more research be conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of error correction on improving L2 writing. Driven by this gap, this study aimed to examine whether unfocused direct and indirect types of written corrective feedback had any impact on the writing accuracy of the Iranian English language learners’ new compositions. Through the random matching technique, ninety Iranian English language learners from seven foreign language centers in southwestern Iran were split into two groups for treatment and one group for control. As part of the evaluation, a writing test was utilized to determine whether the learners had improved their writing accuracy due to the treatment. The results showed that the participants in both treatment groups improved their writing accuracy, though the learning gains from both treatment were not significantly different. This study concludes with some implications for teachers regarding their use of appropriate types of written error correction. 

Listening taking over half of the learners’ time and effort (Nunan, 1998), forms a basis for acquiring much of a language. There are factors affecting listening comprehension and its perception, such as the speech rate, phonological properties of the text, the quality of the recording, the learners’ anxiety, and listening comprehension strategies (Goh, 2000; Hamouda, 2013). At the Iran Language Institute in Dezful, S.W. Iran, some teachers attributed some learners’ perception of partially unsuccessful comprehension of the recorded material to factors such as rate of speech, T-unit length, and pauses between T-units or inside T-units. This study aimed at the probable association between learners' and teachers' perceptions of these variables and compare them to the real qualities of the recordings they listen to. Thus, in an analytic single-shot design, a researcher-made questionnaire was developed and was answered by 504 (229 male and 275 female) participants together with their teachers in 21 classrooms across the six levels of proficiency at the Iran Language Institute. The results, not normally distributed, were juxtaposed with Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho correlation coefficients to ensure maximum agreement between the statistical analyses. The results indicated a strong or moderate correlation between the audio tracks' characteristics with neither learners' perceptions nor teachers' perceptions. Teachers' and learners' perceptions showed a moderate correlation between the perceived rate of speech and a weak correlation between their perceptions of between-T-unit pauses.

Drawing on Walsh's (2012) idea that boosting learners' contribution and interaction can play a key role in their foreign language learning, this mixed-methods study tried to cast some light on the ways by which teachers, via their choice and use of language, create or block learners' contribution in direct interactions in the classroom. A total of 800-minute recordings of 10 teachers' talks and their learners' in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes were studied utilizing a Conversation Analysis methodology. The interaction patterns identified in the recordings suggest that teachers could manipulate their talk either to facilitate or obstruct learners' involvement by the inserted turns they take. The findings of the study indicate that the teachers need to minimize their interventions while the learners taking their turns, and instead pave the way for a more interactive discourse. In addition, a 'listening culture' in the classrooms should be encouraged in order to create opportunities for more classroom interactive talk. A number of implications for teachers and teacher trainers are also given.

Pienemann (1998, 2015) put forward Processability Theory to enlighten why language learners follow definite developmental paths. The aim of the present study was to run a comparative investigation into the difficulty order of different grammatical structures for male and female Iranian EFL learners predicted by Processability Theory. 185 Iranian university students took part in this study. They received a Demographic Questionnaire and a Validated Researcher-Made Grammar Test designed based on the stages of Processability Theory. Item Response Theory (IRT) Rasch Modeling was used to analyze the collected data. Results pertained to the research questions revealed that the stages predicted by Processability Theory do not account for the Iranian male/female EFL learners. Another major finding emerged from the data was that the difficulty level of different grammatical structures presented by Pienneman in PT doesn’t match the difficulty order obtained in this study by male/female EFL respondents. All things considered, results of the study provided a reliable counterevidence for the assumptions of the theory.

This study compared the effects of teacher-provided written corrective feedback and manipulation of resource-directing dimensions of task cognitive-complexity along +/- Here and Now condition on the grammatical accuracy of Iranian EFL learners’ writing products. There were 45 participants in the study who were randomly assigned to three experimental groups. All the participants were first given a prompt for the pre-test of writing, and then each group received its own intervention (direct written corrective feedback, indirect written corrective feedback, and task manipulation) for four sessions during four weeks. Subsequently, all the groups took the pre-test prompt of writing for their post-test performance after which the data were collected for the statistical analyses and fed into SPSS. The findings of the study confirmed the significant effects of direct written corrective feedback on increasing the grammatical accuracy of learners’ writings. There were implications, then, based on the results, highlighting the role of meaningful context of task application in the classroom.

The present study examines the role of gender in reading comprehension of short stories taught through awareness-raising among Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, twelve male and eighteen female learners with lower intermediate English proficiency were selected as the research sample. Next, they were randomly divided into two fifteen-member groups (i.e., a control group and an experimental group). The control group followed the conventional methods and the experimental group was taught the same short stories using awareness-raising activities. Consequently, an independent sample t-test was run. The obtained results indicate the experimental group demonstrates a better performance than the control one. According to the means, the female learners in both groups outperformed the male ones. 

In this study two modes of reading (CAR and Print reading mode) were compared with regard to their effectiveness for L2 reading comprehension. A group of 120 English major students were divided into three classes: CAR، Print reading، and Control. Based on the English proficiency scores each class was divided into two groups (high and low levels of proficiency). Three classes were taught by the same teacher and covered the same materials in their weekly four-hour reading lesson over one semester. From the three classes only CAR and Print reading groups received reading strategies instruction. This study also investigated the effect of gender and the role of teacher in CAR class. The data came from English proficiency test، reading comprehension test (pre-test)، questionnaire، reading comprehension test (posttest)، observation، and students’ emails. The results indicated that strategy instruction had an impact on reading comprehension. In other words، CAR and Print reading mode evoked better reading comprehension than the control group and CAR resulted in better performance when compared to the Print reading mode. Interestingly، EFL students with a higher proficiency level showed a significantly higher level of reading comprehension of the text when compared with those students with a lower proficiency level. Regarding the gender the findings indicated that gender played no significant role in CAR class. Finally، based on the observation and students’ emails the researcher concluded that the nature of the EFL teacher’s role changed in CAR class when compared with the print reading and traditional classes.