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Paralinguistic features are indispensable and crucial aspects of communication without which any utterance would lose its identity. On the other hand, confusion in cross-cultural communication is most often assigned to paralinguistic features. Despite the significant importance of paralinguistic clues in humans’ communication, only limited studies have tackled this issue. More specifically, despite the fact that paralinguistic features are culturally different, no study has investigated the possible relationship between these features and speaking performance of Persian-speaking learners of English. Hence, with this existing gap in the literature, in this study, we tried to scrutinize the impact of paralinguistic cues upon EFL learners’ speaking fluency in the Persian setting. To this objective, we recruited 40 first-year undergraduate female students of Linguistics at the University of Gonabad, utilizing non-random sampling method. Their English proficiency level was determined as lower-intermediate via the administration of Quick Oxford Placement Test. In our pre-test post-test experimental research, we allocated a five-week span of instruction for the purpose of teaching paralinguistic clues to the experimental group to see whether it could have a significant positive impact upon their speaking performance. The instrument we utilized to evaluate speaking capability of our participants was Researcher-Made Speaking Test. The results of our study demonstrated that utilizing paralinguistic features boosted students’ speaking capability. On the light of our finding, it could be concluded that paralinguistic features could be employed for the first-year undergraduate students to enhance their communicative performance. Future studies in diverse EFL settings, could shed light on this conclusion.

This paper presents a critical evaluation of the English Test for International Communication (ETIC), a large-scale, computer-based, and criterion-referenced English language proficiency test developed by the China Language Assessment in 2016. The ETIC test battery comprises five categories: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, and Translation, with the goal of assessing test-takers’ oral and written communicative language abilities in workplace contexts. Given that a revised version of ETIC with many structural changes has been in use since 2021, and the recent growth of interest in assessing communicative language abilities, a critical review of ETIC is warranted. Drawing on Kunnan’s (2018) recent model of test fairness and justice, this review primarily evaluates the usefulness and fairness of ETIC Basic, ETIC Intermediate, and ETIC Advanced. Appraisals reveal that ETIC encompasses the philosophy of fairness, justice, and usefulness in the development, administration, and scoring procedures. There is, however, room for improvement in various areas, such as establishing a test inquiry and appeal service and keeping the channels of communication open. As reviewers, we hope this article will assist language testing researchers and practitioners, teachers and students, or even potential test-takers in better understanding the unique ETIC assessment scene in China and spark more discussions about communicative language testing worldwide.

The issues of humor and collocation are among the themes that have recently attracted the attention of researchers in language pedagogy. In line with this current trend of research, this study investigated the effect of reading humorous texts on learning collocations by Iranian EFL learners. To achieve this end, 59 Iranian EFL students majoring English Literature and English Translation were selected as the participants, and their language proficiency and knowledge of collocation were determined via Success Test and Collocation tests. They were given a pre-test (in order to determine their knowledge of specific collocations used in humor texts), five tests with five humor texts, and a post-test (in order to find the effect of reading humor texts on learning collocations). Paired sample t-tests and ANOVA were then employed to analyze the collected data. The findings of the study revealed that humor texts can bear positive impacts on collocation learning of Iranian EFL learners. The findings of the study can have implications for teaching collocations.

The present study examined the effect of the online reformulation and collaborative feedback on Iranian learners’ writing in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. To this end, three female intact classes (N = 55) at the upper-intermediate level were selected. Two of these classes were thence randomly selected as the experimental groups (1 & 2) and the other one as the control group. Experimental group 1 was provided with online writing feedback in the form of reformulation. Experimental group 2 received online feedback through reformulation followed by general online sessions with the participants for extra individual guidance, i.e., online collaborative feedback in the form of post-writing conferences. The control group experienced the same amount of online writing instruction. They were, however, provided feedback conventionally without reformulation tasks and collaborative feedback. To measure writing proficiency, IELTS task 2 was administered as the pre-treatment and the post-treatment test. One-way ANOVA and Post-hoc Tukey Test were used to compare the mean score of the composition tests between groups. The significant effect of online reformulation and collaborative feedback on writing was confirmed. This study has pedagogical implications for EFL English teachers and stakeholders in providing feedback on EFL learners’ writings.

The Regulatory Focus Theory, a classic self-regulatory approach, posits that human behavior is significantly influenced by salient standards and reference points that are either situation-dependent or chronically accessible in a person's mind. This study examined the impact of regulatory focus orientations, namely prevention and promotion, on the willingness of Iranian EFL learners to communicate in an English class. We selected 48 upper-intermediate-level students via the Oxford Placement test. These students were divided into three groups: promotion-focused, prevention-focused, and control. The promotion-focused group was encouraged through positive reinforcement of their success and accomplishments when using correct linguistic features during class. Conversely, the prevention-focused group was immediately corrected when a linguistic error occurred to avoid further mistakes, and no praise was given for correct language use. The control group received no intervention. Results derived from a one-way ANOVA demonstrated a significant relationship between the regulatory focus orientation and students' willingness to communicate. EFL learners exposed to promotion techniques demonstrated a higher willingness to communicate. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical implications and pedagogical applications of the study.

In the present study, we analyze the semantic fragmentation and conventionalization in Persian compound nouns ending in the verbal stems –andāz ‘throw’, -band ‘fasten/close,’ -foruš ‘sell’, -gir ‘catch’, -keš ‘pull’, -paz ‘cook’, -yāb ‘find’, and -zan ‘hit’ from the usage-based perspective. The analysis is based on a 800 data set extracted from diachronic and synchronic corpora. The words produced from the general compounding pattern [XV PRS]N can be categorized in a range of semantic categories, including agent, instrument, location, and object. In describing the semantic fragmentation of [XV PRS]N, we propose the human agent as the starting meaning, from which the instrument sub-pattern is derived by the mechanism of metaphorical extension. However, to justify the object and location meanings, we consider the metonymic extension mechanism to be involved. The sense extension mechanisms do not only apply to the individual words but can happen on the pattern level. It is also argued that these mechanisms are not mechanically applied to all the patterns ending in the verbal stems, instead, it is the usage and the communicative needs of the speakers that determine the semantic fragmentation of any patterns. To illustrate this point, as a case study, we focus on the development of instrument meaning in the pattern [X-paz PRS]N. We show that the instrument sub-pattern is a recent linguistic phenomenon that coincides with the introduction of modern cooking equipment with mostly English names to Iranian society. The increasing use of these types of equipment has led to a new communicative need for naming such instruments. This extra-linguistic factor has motivated the pattern [X-paz PRS]N to be extended through analogy with English compound instrument nouns. The findings of this study may contribute to the understanding of word-formation patterns in general and compounding patterns in particular.