درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

A correlational survey research design was utilized to investigate self-regulated Learning (SRL) and teacher-student interaction factors that had been realized to have contributive roles in EFL learners' academic success. A sample of 218 EFL learners (male = 102 and female = 116) was drawn with the aid of a prior sample size calculator for the structural equation models from 645 students. They were within the age range of 18-45 and were enrolled at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. The structural equation model (SEM) hypothesis testing procedure revealed that the teacher-student interaction directly and significantly influenced learners' academic accomplishments. Likewise, the obtained results indicate that the impact of the teacher-student interaction on EFL learners' academic achievement is mediated by the effects of SRL. Correspondingly, the obtained results indicate that the theorized model fits the data. The causal contribution of psychological factors, consisting of the teacher-student interaction and SRL, to EFL learners’ academic achievement was validated. The findings of this exploratory research have certain implications for classroom practice which are elaborated in detail in this paper.

Language assessment literacy (LAL), mainly defined as knowledge and skills of language assessment, in the last two decades, has started to receive the attention it deserves. As one of the significant findings, based on a plethora of research, many second language (L2) teachers have been indicated to be professionally incompetent in terms of LAL. To investigate the status of LAL among Iranian English teachers, the present study was conducted. Three hundred and nine English teachers participated in answering a questionnaire. Besides, 24 teachers were interviewed based on a semi-structured interview. Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis and interpretation techniques were employed to find answers to the research questions which sought to investigate the features of language assessment literacy in language teachers' perceptions. The findings indicated that, overall, LAL is of concern to Iranian L2 (English) teachers. However, they also agree that their current level of both knowledge and practice in terms of LAL is not ideal. Furthermore, it was found that, as the teachers perceive it, assessment promotes learning and teaching; the nature of teacher-learner relationships affects evaluation; and, testing and assessment are seen as challenging notions due to their mathematical concepts and statistics. The findings will contribute to a more profound perception of LAL and better planning and executing the programs for L2 teachers regarding the issue.

This study explored both teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of teachers’ pedagogic strategies which may engender willingness to communicate (WTC) in an English as a foreign language class and the difference between their perceptions to detect how convergent or possibly how divergent these are. The project used a convenience sample of 300 students taking an intermediate English course and their teachers (N=60) in several English Language Institutes in Tabriz, Iran. The instruments included a Likert scale questionnaire on teachers’ pedagogic strategies and learners’ WTC completed by both teachers and learners. Based on the data collected from the questionnaires, it was revealed that the teachers and learners agreed on the role of teachers’ wait time in learners’ WTC but not on the other strategies such as motivating strategies, error correction strategies, and teachers’ congruence. The findings of the study have important implications for teachers in terms of reconsidering their pedagogic strategies to play their facilitating roles in engendering students’ WTC in the class. The results also have the implications for EFL teacher education in the new era of communication.

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n=21) were taught based on regular in-class writing instruction and the students in the experimental group (n=25) made use of blogs in addition to the traditional in-class writing instruction. The data were collected through administering a learner autonomy instrument, consisting of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective components, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the blog-mediated writing instruction contributed to enhancing learner autonomy of the participants. More specifically, the students who experienced blog-mediated writing activities showed improvement in metacognitive and cognitive components of learner autonomy. The findings offer significant implications for EFL teachers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the accords and discords between English language teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teacher interpersonal behavior in four selected secondary schools in Ethiopia. The samples of the study were 48 English language teachers and their respective 420 students. In order to collect data, questionnaires were administered to both students and teachers. To analyze and interpret the data, a two-tailed independent sample t-test was used. Accordingly, the findings revealed that teachers rated themselves considerably higher for helpful/friendly, leadership, and strict behaviors and lower for uncertain, admonishing, student freedom/ responsibility and dissatisfied behaviors as compared to their students’ rating of them. However, no significant difference was found between the two bodies for understanding interpersonal behavior. Similarly, teachers notably felt they were highly in control of classroom communications and had more affiliation/ connection with the students in the process of communications than their students’ perceptions of them. Hence, there were much discords between English language teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teacher interpersonal behavior. Following the findings, some recommendations were forwarded.

Density and distribution of Unfamiliar Lexical Items (ULIs) appear to influence learners’ Reading Comprehension Achievement (RCA). This study concerns the impact of these two variables on Iranian EFL learners’ RCA. For this, two groups of students timetabled for the experiments designed to assess learners’ RCA. To determine the participants’ levels of proficiency a Quick Proficiency Test was first given to the total population of 87 students and 60 selected as participants. They were then divided into four subgroups of 15, each of which took the pertaining text as the treatment. To do so, three short passages were administered, two for the density and one for distribution. Then, data were gathered from the questionnaires and answers analyzed by SPSS. The results revealed the participants in low density/distribution subgroups outperforming their counterparts in high density/distribution subgroups on tests devised to measure the learners’ inferencing of ULIs boldfaced in the texts. The selected method was a quasi-experimental, post-test only design and the procedures comprised short passages, multiple-choice tests, and statistics. To conclude, ULIs found detrimental to the learners’ successful RCA in the foregoing experimentation, where it can serve as a resource to the EFL development programs.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI), grounded in Socio-cultural Theory and proposed by Gal’perin, on developing Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of English tense-aspect system. To this end, two low-intermediate classes, including 24 and 21 language learners aged between 12-19, were taught the distinction between simple past and present perfect tense through STI and traditional method of grammar instruction. The learners sat for a pretest one week before the treatment and an immediate and delayed posttest, one and three weeks after the instruction, respectively. The tests included binary-choice and gap-filling items to evaluate the learners’ explicit knowledge of the target tense-aspect pairings and elicited imitation test items to check their implicit knowledge. The results obtained from a series of independent and paired-sample t-tests revealed a significant improvement for both groups in the immediate posttest both in terms of the entire test and its subcomponents suggesting that both types of instruction were effective in improving the learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge of the target forms in the short term. However, the significant outperformance of the STI group compared to the traditional group implied the superiority of this method. Moreover, the STI group generally outperformed the traditional group in the delayed posttest indicating the possibility of having a more lasting effect on developing learners’ knowledge when compared to the traditional method. These findings can have significant implications for teachers and materials developers in practicing the assumptions of more innovative approaches such as STI.

Regarding the vital role of lexical competence as an important requisite for the attainment of full mastery of the four language skills, this study tried to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ contrastive lexical competence and their use of vocabulary learning strategies. To fulfil this objective, 60 Iranian upper-intermediate male and female language learners were selected based on the results of an Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). Afterwards, the researcher administered the Contrastive Lexical Competence Test (Ziafar, 2017). After carrying out the CLC test, the participants answered the Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Strategies. The questionnaire adapted from the taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) developed by Schmitt (1997). After analyzing the data, it was revealed that determination strategies were the most frequently-used strategies of the five vocabulary learning strategies, followed by cognitive strategies. Moreover, the result indicated that the relationship between CLC and vocabulary learning strategies was a strong positive one and this relationship was of statistical significance. The implications of this study can make teachers aware of the importance of choosing an appropriate strategy of vocabulary learning for language learners to pave the way of improving lexical knowledge for them.

This study intended to determine the way validity and reliability i.e., psychometric properties were reported in the Applied Linguistics research articles. The study also focused on the measurement methods applied to determine the validity and reliability of the scores derived from the tests and questionnaires in the empirical studies. The corpus of the study included 331 empirical studies derived from 733 research articles (RAs) published between 2005 and 2018 in three prominent Applied Linguistics journals – Applied Linguistics, Modern Language Journal, and TESOL Quarterly, The selected papers used test and/or questionnaire for data collection. Our analysis indicated that 77(20.98%) of the studies did not report validity and reliability measures, 82(22.35%) reported only reliability measures, 26(7.08%) reported only validity measures, and 182(49.59%) reported both the validity and reliability measures for the instruments. It was also found that content validity assessed through the pilot study had the highest frequency among validity evidences while internal consistency, mostly identified by Cronbach's alpha, was the most frequent reliability evidence.

Learning English as a foreign language in Iran has provided a novel learning milieu for language learners, giving them the capability to create the dialogue between their home culture and the culture of the foreign language they are learning. The current study aims to investigate the level of Iranian EFL learners' cultural identity. To do so, the researchers developed a questionnaire through extensive readings of the literature on language, culture and identity at both national and international levels. To determine the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s Alpha was utilized. The reliability of all the items in the questionnaire was estimated as 0.78. To measure the validity of the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis through PCA was performed, demonstrating five underlying factors of Iranian Cultural Identity. Then, the questionnaire was administered to 494 language learners in the context of Iran. The analysis of the data revealed that nearly 68% of the Iranian language learners in the study possess a moderate level of cultural identity.

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.