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Prior research has yielded mixed results regarding what contributes psychometrically sound multiple-choice (MC) items. The purpose of the present study was, therefore, twofold: (a) to compare 3-, 4-, and 5-option multiple-choice (MC) tests in terms of psychometric characteristics, and (b) to investigate the relationships between three MC tests and five personality traits. To that end, 150 students were asked to answer three stem equivalent MC item tests. A Big Five Inventory was used to find students’ personality traits. Moreover, an attitude questionnaire was utilized to seek students’ opinions of these three MC tests. The results of one-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed statistically significant differences for item difficulty, while no statistically significant differences were found for item discrimination and reliability across three MC tests. The results of the Pearson correlation showed no correlation between personality traits and three different versions of MC tests. The results of the attitude questionnaire indicated mixed views towards MC tests. The findings of this study suggest that test developers consider statistical, affective, and contextual factors in order to develop different formats of MC tests.

The present study examined the effect of multimedia glosses on foreign language listening comprehension. To this end, 94 male students studying at Rasa English Institute in Tehran were selected for the treatment. The participants consisted of three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one of the following treatment conditions: textual, pictorial, and textual-pictorial glossing. They were given a vocabulary pre-test before the treatment. The purpose of this test was to exclude the words which were already familiar to the participants from the posttests. Meanwhile, a listening comprehension post-test was administered at the end of the treatment period. To investigate the effect of multimedia glosses on listening comprehension, the data obtained from the listening comprehension post-test were analyzed using one-way ANOVA. The result showed that textual-pictorial glosses had a significant effect on listening comprehension. The findings of this study may have implications for language learners, teachers, researchers, and materials developers.

Interlanguage pragmatics has attracted considerable attention in recent years. One strand of interlanguage pragmatics research includes studies comparing the effectiveness of implicit versus explicit teaching on the development of pragmatics. Many studies, although inconclusively, have shown the superior effect of explicit teaching of pragmatics, but few have focused on finding ways to improve the implicit teaching of pragmatics. The present study attempted to unfold the effect of collaborative dialogue on the quality of implicit teaching of request (head act and preparator). To this end, 28 participants (19 to 33 years old, intermediate) majoring in English (freshman and junior) were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=14) had the opportunity to complete the tasks collaboratively and the control group (n=14) were not provided with any specific pragmatic instruction. The instructional procedure included four successive sessions of teaching request in situations where the sociological parameters were systematically varied. For the purpose of data collection, the classes were audio-recorded and a pretest-posttest design for discourse completion task (DCT) was adopted. For the purpose of data analysis, target request head acts and preparators were scored and also the audio recordings of classes were transcribed and the process of learning during treatment was checked in detail. The findings indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in producing target preparators and head acts. And evidence of noticing the pragmatic forms namely noticing unnoticed forms, noticing the gap, and negotiation of form was observed during the collaborative task. This study suggests that teachers may need to provide learners with the opportunities for collaborative tasks along with input enhancement tasks in order to improve the pragmatic knowledge of the learners.

Formulaic sequences (FSs) are among the most commonly discussed and well-documented effective factors in oral fluency both in L1 and L2. The present study aims to investigate the effect of teaching a set of 140 FSs on Iranian EFL learners' oral fluency. The relationship between the use of FSs and different measures of oral fluency is also studied empirically. Forty-eight intermediate EFL learners took part in the study. The participants were randomly assigned into two experimental groups and one control group. One of the experimental groups was taught the FSs with spaced retrievals. The other experimental group was also taught the FSs but with non-spaced retrievals. The control group was taught no FSs. The posttest was conducted one week after the treatment. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and other statistical procedures were used for analyzing the data. The results indicated that spaced productive retrieval of the FSs after their explicit and holistic teaching, helped the learners to have longer mean length of runs. The present findings have important implications for solving students' problems in speaking the second language. Therefore, the significance of spaced retrieval of FSs in language teaching and learning should not be neglected.

Despite appealing notion of research based language teaching, we argue that scientific way of conducting research on English language teaching (ELT) is problematic since it ignores language learners’ subjectivity, instructors’ professionalism, practitioners’ culture and learning particularity. Positivists pedagogical arguments neglect the social nature of meaning making instructional practices and emphasize objectivity and measurability criteria which lead to instrumental rationality. A critical discourse analysis of practical arguments proposed in pedagogical implications section of empiricist research articles revealed that positivists assumptions manifest themselves as the rules and regulations of carrying out scientific research. These yardsticks give power to the neoliberal tendencies to present reasons as premises of arguments to restrict and control the agency of ELT teachers as well as to deprofessionalize them. Since there is a close affinity between this paradigm world views and neoliberal policies, positivists research articles lead to the domination of neoliberalism on TEFL discourse. This indicates the ideological function of the article genre and awareness of that is crucial for the sake of democratic and fair education.

Dogme Language Teaching (Dogme ELT) is an innovative learner-centered methodology and a movement for teaching English (or any other L2) that primarily focuses on face-to-face interaction between teacher and learners and among the learners themselves (Thornbury, 2009) without using any preplanned and established instructional materials, syllabuses, or preset activities. Despite many claims by the proponents, research evidence for Dogme ELT is very limited; accordingly, this sequential explanatory mixed-method study sought to examine the effect of Dogme ELT on L2 speaking andwillingness to communicate (WTC)across different proficiency levels among Iranian EFL learners at a private language institute. Participants included 14 intermediate, 12 upper-intermediate, and 12 advanced level learners from both genders in three intact classes as the experimental groups. Three other intact classes comprising 13 intermediate, 13 upper-intermediate, and 11 advanced level learners, respectively were selected as control groups who received the mainstream communicative language teaching (CLT) for their L2 instruction. The treatments continued for two subsequent semesters including thirty 1.5-hour sessions. Quantitative data analysis using two-way ANCOVA revealed that Dogme ELT was more effective than CLT only for the advanced but not for the intermediate and upper-intermediate learners’ speaking and WTC. Qualitative data analysis revealed that most advanced and only some upper-intermediate learners had positive attitudes about Dogme ELT. The findings of the current investigation suggest that Dogme ELT should be used for advanced EFL levels and its application should be done with more caution.