درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Today, the use of technology in teaching foreign language has become a matter of considerable interest to language teachers in all over the world. The current study tried to investigate the suitability of data-driven learning in flipped and blended classes vs the conventional ones on students’ grammar learning. To run this study, 48 homogenized students were selected and divided into three groups, including two experimental and one control group, 16 in each. Before the treatment, a grammar pre-test was administered. The two experimental groups received 12 sessions of data-driven instruction in the flipped and blended classes but the control group received grammar instruction based on the textbook. At the end, statistical analysis showed that the participants in both flipped and blended groups had better performance in the post-test. It also was concluded that the usage of data-driven learning had significant impact on both experimental groups. The results of this study can be beneficial for teachers, learners, syllabus designers, managers in learning environments, and policy makers to use data driven learning.

Discourse Markers (DMs) are pragmatic ties representing the relationship between different concepts in a discourse. As Fraser (2009) puts it, these lexical expressions are free morphemes that signal a special message about or in addition to the basic message. Given the importance of DMs in the written discourse of English as foreign language (EFL) learners, this study investigated the effectiveness of two methods of interaction in improving Iranian EFL learners’ use of discourse markers (DMs) in writing compositions. The data were drawn from comparing the compositions of two virtual groups of EFL learners who were exposed to two types of online interactions within which different flipped instructional activities were assigned. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results showed that the learners who engaged in online discussions used higher numbers of DM in terms of both type and token. The results also showed an increase in the length of compositions in the case of those groups who embarked on online interactions and discussions of flipped content. The findings suggest that once supported by the provision of flipped content, online interactions help create authentic opportunities for learner-centered discussions, which lead to an increased authenticity level of the EFL learners’ language production. The findings might also underscore the significance of flipped content and online interactions in developing other aspects of EFL learners’ pragmatic competence.

This study was designed to highlight the potential effects of different types of Explicit Syntactic Markers (ESMs) on the sentence comprehension of EFL learners of different age-range and proficiency levels. Consequently, two hundred and forty beginners, intermediate, and advanced Iranian EFL learners were selectedfrom an initial pool of six hundred and sixty learners. They were selected based on their McMillan Placement Test (MPT) performance. Subsequently, they were categorized into two age groups teenagers and adults. An online software application (Com-Chron) was utilized to provide learners with a set of ESM and non-ESM English sentences on the screen to measure the accurate comprehension and the elapsed time needed for the perception of the presented sentences. Data analyses revealed that participants had a significantly superior performance for comprehending the ESM items (though they were longer sentences than non-ESM items). Furthermore, it was revealed that proficiency level, unlike age, caused a statistically significant difference in comprehending the ESM sentences. It was also concluded that different types of explicit syntactic markers imposed different degrees of comprehension difficulty both in terms of accuracy and the needed time for the participants’ comprehension; sentences with punctuation marks and conjunctions were the easiest for the participants, while those including determiners and link breaks were the most challenging. Results also indicated that all the ESMs (except for the link breaks) can significantly account for English sentence comprehension and can be assumed as comprehension predictors to various degrees .

In the realm of second language acquisition (SLA), task-based language teaching (TBLT) and input enhancement (IE) have been the focus of a great number of studies. However, the idea of investigating the effects of focus on form instruction through input-enhanced tasks along with pre-task planning time as one of the features of task-based language teaching has been rarely explored in the field of SLA. Therefore, the current research set out to examine the impacts of focus on form instruction via textually-enhanced reading tasks along with strategic pre-task planning on L2 learners’ grammatical development in terms of learning English passive voice. For the purpose of the study, 60 intermediate learners of English were selected and divided into two groups of thirty namely as enhanced and unenhanced. Then, each group was divided into two sub-groups of fifteen as +planning and -planning. The participants were provided with a pretest prior to the treatment, then, they were instructed via the materials chosen for the purpose of the study for ten sessions and at the end they were provided with the posttest of the study. Their performance on the pretest and posttest were analyzed to find out the possible effects of the instruction provided throughout the treatment phase. The results revealed that learners who were exposed to enhanced reading tasks along with strategic pre-task planning time outperformed the other learners. The findings of the present study can be of use for language teachers, syllabus designers, and task designers.

Teaching grammar to EFL students has always been a challenge for EFL teachers. Many studies have acknowledged the role of using mobile apps to remove this problem. Therefore, the present study was conducted to see if the use of English Grammar Ultimate Software app can enhance the use of verb tenses by Iranian intermediate students. To this end, thirty-two students participated in this study based on their performance in a Quick Oxford Placement Test. They were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Each group consisted of 16 learners. Then a test of grammar was administered to two groups as the pre-test to assess their knowledge of simple present, simple past, present continuous, past continuous, and simple future tenses and ensure their homogeneity. Learners in the control group were taught these tenses through traditional language classrooms and received no extra treatment at all. However, learners in the experimental group were taught those tenses through English Grammar Ultimate Software app. Finally, in order to measure the effect of the treatment, a posttest was given to both groups. The results of the comparison between and within groups showed that the participants who had benefited from mobile-assisted learning had a significantly better performance on the post-test than the participants in the control group. The findings of the present study can have implications for material developers and EFL language teachers teaching grammar.

In case not enough caution is exercised in the assessment of second or foreign language learners’ writing performance, one cannot trust the accuracy of decisions made accordingly. As experts or trained raters are often not available or it is not cost-effective to employ them in most educational contexts, writing assessment is often carried out by language instructors, who may not enjoy an adequate competence in teaching and assessing L2 writing. This makes the investigation of the accuracy of ratings done by language teachers a must. In so doing, 30 language teachers in three groups, each with a different background in teaching English and L2 writing, were selected, and their ratings of 30 IELTS samples were compared against those of expert raters using One-Way ANOVA tests. A statistically significant difference was found among the raters for the total writing score as well as the four components, with the L2 writing teachers demonstrating the closest performance to that of the expert rater and with language teachers with no or very little background in teaching L2 writing demonstrating the lowest accuracy. Moreover, the only significant correlations were found between the ratings done by the writing teachers and those of the expert rater, indicating that only they could interpret the scoring criteria not significantly different from the expert rater. The results demonstrate that language teachers are not generally suitable writing raters as they are affected by their own teaching background and understanding of the rating criteria.

The study aimed at examining the effects of scaffolding ESP readers, by using graphic markers and highlighting syntactic and emphatic prosody, on their Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) and fluency. A mixed-methods research design was used for a deeper understanding of the obtained data. An experimental design was planned with a control and an experimental group including 38 students of two fields, museum studies, and conservation of historic buildings in Shiraz University of Arts. Participants of the experimental group were scaffolded to develop reading fluency with different graphic markers, while members of the control group had their usual ESP classes. The participants’ FLRA and reading fluency levels were assessed prior to the study and after it ended. Statistical analysis of the results proved that scaffolding the students with graphic markers had the potential to lower their FLRA. Also, the results of fluency assessment frameworks including Words Read Correctly per Minute (WCPM), Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MDFS) and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) confirmed the effectiveness of scaffolding the readers with graphic markers. For a deeper understanding, the data were explored using qualitative data classification and analysis by the NAEP framework. The qualitative analysis of the observations showed while graphic cues can scaffold the learners to notice their shortcomings toward an optimum level of fluency, they could not be the sufficient condition for achieving the goal. It was also concluded that online decoding, sight-word reading, and sensitivity to stress and intonation are pre-requisites of fluent and prosodic reading with expression.

Given the importance of assessment in language education, this study was aimed at investigating the effects of interventionist and interactionist Dynamic Assessment (DA) on Iranian EFL learners’ perfectionism, willingness to communicate (WTC) and foreign language anxiety (FLA). The participants of the study were 166 pre-intermediate female and male learners at two public schools and one private language institute in Karaj. The participants were divided into three experimental groups and were given three separate questionnaires to measure their perfectionism, WTC, and FLA before the treatment sessions. During 14 sessions, groups A and B received instruction using interactionist DA and interventionist DA, respectively. Group C was instructed conventionally as the control group. At the end of the treatment sessions, they were given the same three questionnaires as the post test. The collected data were analysed using one-way ANCOVA. The results showed no significant differences among the two approaches of dynamic assessment and the control group in terms of their effect on learners’ perfectionism and willingness to communicate. Although there was no significant difference between the interventionist and interactionist models of DA, they were both significantly more effective than the control group on learners’ FLA. The findings suggested that dynamic assessment could reduce learners’ anxiety in language learning and lead to an effective teaching and learning process. These findings can have implications for teachers, students, and material developers.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of students' learning styles on their performance in various question types of the listening section of IELTS examination as well as their strategy selection. To this aim, 90 Iranian IELTS candidates from IELTS courses of an English language institute in Tehran, took part in the study as the sampling method was based on availability. The participants of the study comprised of 35 males and 55 females, and they mostly aged between 20 to 27 years old. The researcher first used Kolb's questionnaire to recognize the individual learning styles of candidates, which were accordingly categorized into four classes as activists, theorists, pragmatists, and reflectors. The results obtained from the one-way ANOVA showed that the dissimilarity of the style groups causes different performance in some question types of the listening test. In the note completion, multiple choice, and matching question types, the findings indicated a statistically significant difference. Therefore, it could generally be argued that in these three types of questions in the listening comprehension module of the IELTS examination, variation in different learning styles groups causes variation of performance in different question types. The results of the present study also reveal that the style preferences affect the individual differences in selecting the learning strategies