میثم میرزایی شجاع خانلو

Corrective feedback has been evidenced to be a propitious pedagogical tool to promote second language (L2) knowledge, yet little is known about the role of interactional feedback in maximizing L2 learners’ pragmatic knowledge and their reciprocity patterns to corrective feedback in teacher-student interactions. Therefore, the current study made an attempt to bridge this gap. To do so, twenty (11 male and nine female) intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) participant with an age range of 19 to 31 were recruited and were provided with recast for their inappropriate request strategies. The participants were assigned to perform requests in various scenarios that varied in terms of power, familiarity, and social distance. To gauge their performance, a pretest and posttest Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was run. The obtained data gave evidence to the efficiency of recast in improving L2 pragmatics. Moreover, classroom interactions were recorded and transcribed to identify the emerging reciprocity patterns. The findings revealed several reciprocity patterns, including repetition of trigger, modification of trigger, acknowledgement, topic continuation, and inability to respond. The findings have implications for L2 teachers and augment our understandings of the role of recast in L2 pragmatics and reciprocity patterns of students.

This study explored the representation of the Initiation, Response, Feedback (IRF) cycle in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. Video recordings have been used to collect data from 10 classes, which were managed by 8 L2 teachers. In total, 900 minutes of video recordings with 784 triadic patterns were collected. Using Conversation Analysis (CA), the findings demonstrated that the IRFs in classroom interactions were disclosed in various ways. The coding system revealed that the teachers generally used authentic and focused questions. In the F stage, the teachers used elaboration, scaffolding, correction, and refusal strategies. The F stage was also a rich juncture for local contingencies as the teachers’ productions were contingent on the students’ responses. Likewise, uptake and scaffolding have been important elements in the IRF patterns. The analysis suggests that the third stage can create an ad-hoc co-constructive classroom interaction and provide L2 learners with various learning opportunities.

Given that students’ personality traits can have a powerful role in language learning, this study sought to investigate how well L2 leaners’ communication apprehension and request speech act can be predicted through the components of the Big Five Personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness). The study also examined which of these traits could be the best predictor of L2 learners’ communication apprehension (CA) and request speech act. One hundred and seventy-nine Iranian EFL learners at three universities in Shiraz, Iran were recruited. To single out the participants for the study, Oxford Placement Test was employed. To identify the learners’ personality traits, gauge their pragmatic competence of request speech act, and measure their communication apprehension, The Big-Five Inventory, Discourse Completion Task, and the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) were applied, respectively. Standard multiple regression was used and the results showed that the Big Five personality can predict L2 learners’ communication apprehension and request speech act ability. Moreover, the results evidenced that extraversion and neuroticism largely contributed to L2 learners’ request speech act ability and CA, respectively. The findings offer implications for EFL teachers in helping their students increase their speech act productions and managing their communication apprehension based on their personality traits.