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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.

Emotional words are assumed to have a processing advantage over neutral words due to their emotional content. Meanwhile, this advantage depends on other word features such as frequency and the characteristics of the processor and context of learning. Accordingly, the current study investigated the simultaneous impacts of L2 words’ emotional valence and frequency, and L2 user’s gender on word recognition time in a natural reading context. 43 intermediate EFL learners read 36 sentences in a coherent text for comprehension while their eye movements were recorded by eye-tracker. The findings revealed that participants processed the positive, negative, and neutral words identically based on eye fixation time. However, the frequency effect was attained for both valenced and neutral words. Also, no significant gender differences were approved in terms of recognition time though male participants tended to process all word types slightly faster than female ones. The lack of processing difference between valenced and neutral words is attributed to the disembodiment of L2 emotional words and learning experience of the participants as late EFL learners. These learners have been deprived of affective socialization and the affective sensory experience in their development of L2 emotional words. The absence of valence/frequency interaction is attributed to the L1/L2 relationship in terms of the target words. Although witnessed gender effect did not reach a significance level, it is suggested that the processing of emotional words be viewed in a multidimensional framework where the characteristics of the word, the processor, and the learning context are taken into account

The present research aimed to investigate gender-specific charactonyms in the Persian Translation of John Bunyan’s (1684) The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2. It also aimed to reveal whether the TL preferred equivalents for the SL gender-specific charactonyms could convey the meanings and the characteristics of the names in the Persian translation. The material was borrowed from the book Seir-o Solouk-i Za’ir, Bakhshe Dovom (‘سیر و سلوک زائر، بخش دوّم’) translated by Golnaz Hamedi in 2002 (1381), and also its French and Arabic translations. Thus, SL gender-specific charactonyms were compared with TL equivalents in Evelyn Hatch’s (1992) macro-level analysis. According to Hatch (1992), characters, as one of the main elements of a story, play a significant role and affect the macrostructure of the story. The results showed that the Persian equivalents used by Hamedi (2002) ranged from transparent to problematic ones. Hamedi (2002) less preserved the meanings of the names and sometimes replaced the female charactonyms with already-used male charactonyms that affected the novel due to the change of the characteristics and additional information the charactonyms bear in their inner forms.

Notwithstanding all of the advances in language learning strategy research, there are still some areas that strategy scholars have overlooked. The dearth of research into grammar learning strategies (GLS) may be the most egregious instance of this neglect. In order for this type of research to gain momentum, the present article reports on research that sought to identify whether there was any relationship between advanced EFL learners’ creativity and their grammar learning strategy use. It also sought to find if male and female advanced EFL learners were different in terms of grammar learning strategy use. To this end, 69 Iranian advanced EFL learners (30 males and 39 females) selected through convenience sampling participated in this study. Data were collected through Creativity and Grammar Learning Strategy Questionnaires. The Pearson product-moment correlation analysis and the independent samples -test were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that there was a significant relationship between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ creativity and their grammar learning strategy use. In addition, the findings demonstrated that female learners employed the grammar learning strategy more than male learners. Finally, pedagogical implications of the study for language teachers, learners, educational policymakers, and curriculum developers were presented.      

Medical practitioners’ ethnocentric orientations and English language skills contribute to the success or failure of intercultural communication in the context of health care. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between ethnocentrism and investment in learning English in the multicultural setting of English classrooms at an Iranian medical university. To this end, 200 Iranian medical students’ levels of ethnocentrism and investment in learning English were measured. The findings of this study revealed that the participants had relatively moderate levels of ethnocentrism and investment, and there was a strong negative relationship between the two constructs. Female medical students were found to be significantly less ethnocentric than male students, but were not significantly different from them in terms of investment. These findings were explained considering several contextual factors such as the participants’ linguistic loyalty, intercultural contact, and social comfort in English classrooms. Practical implications, direction, and limitations are discussed.

This study investigated the role of Telegram, a mobile messenger app, in mastering receptive and productive knowledge of vocabulary by Iranian EFL learners. In addition, it was intended to survey EFL learners’ attitude toward using telegram to learn English vocabulary. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative design were used. So, 57 students were selected from a language institute in Isfahan, Iran. To homogenize the participants, Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) was administered and the participants were divided into two groups accordingly, a Telegram group and a control group. At the beginning of the study a checklist of words was given to the participants. Afterward, during the study, the experimental group received the treatment (teaching words via telegram), while the control group received the target words traditionally. After 8 sessions, 20-30 minutes each, an achievement test was administered to the groups. The results of Independent Sample t-test revealed a statistically significant difference between the achievement test scores of the experimental and control group. Moreover, the participants had positive attitude about using Telegram to learn English vocabulary. The findings of this study may inspire teachers to use mobile applications and also course developers to modify and improve not only the curriculum, but also the methodology of teaching vocabulary.

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

Iran Language Institute (ILI) plays a crucial role in teaching English in Iran and offers a comprehensive Teacher Training Course (TTC) for the teachers before their being employed. Still, these teachers encounter difficulties in different areas, but there are few studies investigating the teaching challenges of EFL teachers teaching at ILI. Thus, this study investigated the teaching challenges of newly-hired and experienced teachers, teaching at different age levels. The data were gathered data through 100 classroom observation forms belonging to 18 kids’ teachers, 47 young-adults’ teachers, and 35 adults’ teachers (69 experienced and 31 newly-hired). We also interviewed with 5 kids’ teachers, 5 young-adults’ teachers, and 6 adults’ teachers. It was revealed that young-adults’ teachers faced fewer challenges than kids’ and adults’ teachers. Besides, experienced teachers encountered fewer problems than newly-hired teachers. The results of the observation forms were different from the interviews. However, time management was the only problem which was mentioned in the interviews, observation forms, and different age levels. According to the teachers, the reason behind these challenges was the intensive syllabus, old books and videos, and teachers’ having to follow a series of fixed teaching steps.

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.

This meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the effect of 22 primary studies which have been conducted to test the effect of the integrated skills approach (ISA) on language skills and components. Three questions guide this analyses: What is the overall effect of ISA on language skills and sub-skills? To what extent moderator variables such as learners level of education and proficiency modify the effect of the ISA? What is the magnitude of publication bias in this analysis? The overall effect size was found to be 1.18, which represents a large effect size based on Cohen, Manion and Morrison’ (2007) scale. The results of moderator analysis revealed that the ISA has the largest effect for advanced learners and at a tertiary level of education. The symmetrical funnel plot together with fail-safe N test shows that publication bias does not have any significant effect on the effect size reported in this study. The findings of this meta-analysis have clear implications for practitioners, policymakers, and curriculum developers.

A major part of any graduate program concerns academic writing, but most students do not have sufficient skills pertaining to it. For non-native Ph.D. students who need to write English language dissertations, this issue is particularly troublesome since it causes time-consuming extracurricular efforts, which can, at times, be frustrating. The present study was carried out in the form of an action research project to explore the impact of a process-based teaching of writing on the attitudes of 8 Iranian Ph.D. candidates of TEFL towards writing academically. The course procedure included phases requiring students to send their completed writing assignments by specified dates and receive and apply teacher guidance on the texts’ logic, content, consistency, tone, and grammar. In-person discussions about the progress were also programmed for each student. The findings indicate that the students felt that the teaching process had a constructive effect on developing their writing skills. Implications include providing space for dialogue between teachers and students to complement written feedback, keeping the sense of accountability active in student minds by assisting them to self-organize, and realizing that graduate students may need assistance in very basic writing skills and knowledge.

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of CALL on intermediate EFL learners’ vocabulary learning and comparing it with traditional teaching method. To this end, a quasi-experimental design was used in which 80 students were chosen based on their performance in an Oxford Placement Test (OPT), and were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Six reading comprehension passages consisting of 72 new words were selected from the book “504 essential words” and used as the pretest of the study. Then, the experimental group received twelve sessions of treatment which was teaching vocabulary through different tools in the computer such as related pictures, video, textual highlights, PowerPoint slides, or Narsis software while the control group received the traditional way of teaching such as providing oral pronunciation of words, explaining their parts of speech, and offering a direct translation of words in Persian. Afterward, both groups attended the post-test of vocabulary at the end of the study. The scores of learners in pretest and posttest were analyzed statistically via running independent T-test. The findings revealed that CALL instruction was more effective in enhancing learners’ vocabulary learning in comparison to the traditional vocabulary instruction. The findings indicated that the experimental group had a better performance than that of the control group, and the learners in the CALL group learned more vocabulary than the learners in the traditional group. The findings of this research have implications for teachers and learners as teachers can use CALL in EFL classes to help them be independent learners, and make vocabulary learning more attractive and enjoyable to learners. The findings can help material developers and syllabus designers to consider the importance of CALL while planning textbooks and materials.