منوچهر جعفری گهر

The importance of input has been a broadly documented concept in the field of second or foreign language acquisition. However, kinds of input and ways of its presentation are among the controversial issues in L2 classroom research. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the effects of three kinds of input-based instruction on intake and acquisition of the English causative structures by Iranian EFL learners. A total of 105 university students in four intact classes were randomly assigned to four different conditions: processing instruction (PI), textual input enhancement (TE), consciousness-raising (C-R), and control (CO). A pretest/posttest (immediate and delayed) design was used, where participants’ ability to interpret and produce the target structure was assessed through administering a multiple choice interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Moreover, a grammaticality judgment test was run to assess the amount of intake. Results revealed that learners in the PI group significantly outperformed learners in the other groups on both immediate/delayed production posttests. The findings also indicated that, C-R group could not retain the significant effect of instruction on delayed production posttest and TE tasks were not effective in improving the learners’ production of the target structure. Moreover, the PI group outperformed the other groups on grammaticality judgment test too. Based on these findings, we can conclude that PI which encompasses the most outstanding features of both focus on form and meaning instruction might be a more effective approach in helping EFL learners to acquire the target grammatical forms.

Teachers’ sense of efficacy belief has been introduced as a context-specific construct, but the related literature is not clear on this specificity. This study was an attempt to show how contextual factors influence efficacy beliefs among English language teachers. To this end, thirty Iranian EFL teachers working in both school and private institute contexts were chosen as the participants to respond to Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Beliefs questionnaire (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001) twice: once based on school context and once based on private institute context. Afterwards, the participants were invited to a brief interview designed to investigate further the reasons for which they had scored higher in either context. The interview findings and the results of a t-test revealed that context really made a difference. It is argued that the proper or improper functioning of efficacy building sources is the cause of the difference

هدف تحقیق حاضربررسی تاثیر سه روش متفاوت نگارش دفتر تفکرات انتقادی به صورت انفرادی، مشارکتی با همگروه و به صورت مشارکتی با معلم بر روی مهارت خودسازماندهی زبان آموزان ایرانی میباشد. در ابتدا صد و پنجاه زبان آموز ایرانی سطح فوق متوسط مونث که در یک موسسه زبان مشغول فراگیری زبان انگلیسی بودند به سوالات پرسشنامه مقیاس سنجش خودسازماندهی تحصیلی پاسخ دادند. از بین این صد و پنجاه نفر، تعداد شصت زبان آموز که نمره آنها در این آزمون در محدوده یک انحراف معیار بالاتر و یا پایین تراز میانگین بود، انتخاب و به صورت تصادفی به چهار گروه تقسیم شدند. پس از استفاده از روش نگارش دفاتر تفکرات انتقادی برای یک ترم چهل و دو ساعته از شرکت کنندگان خواسته شد مجددﺍ به سوالات پرسشنامه خودسازماندهی تحصیلی پاسخ دهند. نتایج تحلیل پراکنش آزمون مرحله دوم نشان داد که نگارش افکار و وقایع انتقادی به صورت مشارکتی با همگروه یا معلم که فرصت استفاده از بازخورد همگروه و یا معلم را فراهم می آورد می تواند مهارت خودسازماندهی زبان آموزان را به صورت به صورت معنا داری افزایش دهد. زبان آموزانی که از روش نگارش تفکرات و وقایع استفاده کردند اما از بازخورد همگروهان و یا معلم بهره نبردند نیز نسبت به زبان آموزانی که این روش را به کار نبردند نمرات بهتری کسب کردند. بنابراین، نتایج این تحقیق نشانگر نقش موثر نگارش تفکرات انتقادی به صورت انفرادی در بالابردن مهارت خودسازماندهی می باشد.

Self-regulation is the ability to regulate one’s cognition, behavior, actions, and motivation strategically and autonomously in order to achieve self-set goals including the learning of academic skills and knowledge. Accordingly, self-regulated learning involves self-generated and systematic thoughts and behaviors with the aim of attaining learning goals. With that in mind, this study aimed to examine the effect of self-regulation instruction to the intermediate EFL readers on their ability to make within-text inferences while reading. Zimmerman’s model of self-regulation with its three cyclic phases of forethought, performance and self-reflection constituted the theoretical basis of this study. Two intact intermediate classes in an English language institute were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was trained in self-regulatory processes which were directed at EFL reading comprehension for ten sessions, while the control group received the routine, traditional reading instruction involving pre-, while-, and post-reading tasks and activities. The results of parametric one-way between-group ANCOVA showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group on the post-test of EFL reading comprehension, particularly in term of within-text inferencing. This finding revealed that self-regulation instruction aimed at EFL reading comprehension significantly contributed to learners’ ability to make correct within-text inferences while reading in English as a foreign language.

Planning, monitoring, and evaluating one’s performance constitute individuals’ metacognitive strategies. Recently, metacognition has been conceptualized not only at the individual level but also at pair and group levels. The concept of socially-shared metacognition has arisen based on the idea that group members observe, control, evaluate, and regulate each other’s actions to promote the group’s problem-solving. This article investigated the impact of motivational scaffolds on a group of Iranian EFL learners’ individual and socially-shared metacognition. Two groups of 30 female intermediate learners participated in this study. In the experimental group, the participants received the teacher’s motivational scaffolds as she provided instructions and feedback throughout individual and collaborative oral and written tasks. On the other hand, the participants in the control group were asked to take part in the routine oral and written classroom activities. The participants’ think-aloud protocols in individual and pair activities were analyzed, and instances of metacognitive activities were identified. The data were analyzed through two Mann-Whitney U tests, and the results indicated that motivational scaffolds statistically significantly enhanced the use of metacognitive strategies at both inter and intra-individual levels. Implications for classrooms are discussed

Task difficulty across different macro-genres continues to remain among less attended areas in second language development studies. This study examined the correlation between task difficulty across the descriptive, narrative, argumentative, and expository macro-genres. The three components of task difficulty (i.e., code complexity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress) were also compared in the four macro-genres. The design included the administration of short reading texts with comparable length and readability indices based on the four macro-genres followed by task difficulty questionnaire. The macro-genre-based reading textsalong with the task difficulty questionnaire were administered to 50 EFL students in the University ofLorestan, Iran. Task difficulty questionnaire explored the learners’ perceptions of task difficulty in the code complexity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress domains. The results revealed that there were no significant differences among the task difficulty components in the four macro-genre-based text types. The findings also showed that there was no significant correlation between task difficulty of each macro-genre with those of the other genres except thoseofthe narrative and expository genres.The findings hold implications for the use of macro-genres with different task difficulty indices in task-oriented programs, teacher training, and testing.

Retention and learning are neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic processes. The brain electrical response to the cognitive processes that happen in the cortices is inescapable. During neuronal activities, created waves can be recorded and displayed by quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG) in a non-invasive form. Beta waves are created by thinking, learning, computations, reasoning, attention, and problem-solving activities. This study's primary goal is to objectively investigate the variables impacts of multisensory and non-multisensory methods of instruction on vocabulary retention concerning beta and beta1 waves frequency changes. To meet the purpose, some pre-school novice male and female foreign language learners (age: 5-6 years) participated in this study voluntarily and were assigned into two experimental groups: The Multisensory (three girls and four boys) and Non-multisensory (one girl and six boys) teaching groups. The analyses of the collected data on pre- and post-brain QEEG records of beta and beta1/SMR waves' variations indicated no significant difference between the two groups in the brain oscillatory changes. However, the case study analyses specified the supremacy of beta1 frequency ranges in the Multisensory post-records. The comparative findings of pre- and post-Expressive One Word-Picture-Matching Test (EWPMT) showed that the Multisensory group outperformed the Non-multisensory one; besides, a significant positive relationship was found between beta wave frequency changes on Fp1 and mean score of EWPM post-test in the Multisensory group. The study concluded that the multisensory approach could be a promising method to improve retention at the pre-school level.