درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aimed to compare the effect of teaching metacognitive listening strategies through shadowing activity on the listening comprehension of field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) EFL learners. Since the researcher had access only to female participants,85 female EFL learners from a language institute in Tehran, at the pre-intermediate level of proficiency with the age range of 18-35 were selected out of the initial 120 participants based on their performance on a piloted PET. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was administered to the selected participants in order to categorize them into the two experimental groups (49 FD and 36 FI). The participants including both FD and FI sat in several classes. During a five-week instruction period (twice a week), both groups practiced listening comprehension for 45 minutes through a combination of shadowing activity, and metacognitive strategy instruction with no difference in treatment. The results of the independent samples t-test demonstrated that there was no significant difference between listening posttest scores of FI and FD groups. Therefore, it was concluded that metacognitive strategy training coupled with shadowing activity could be equally beneficial in terms of listening proficiency for all students regardless of their perceptual tendency (FD/FI). The findings of the present study have implications for language teachers regarding metacognitive strategy training and listening comprehension enhancement.

Being expert in establishing cohesion and coherence in writing is not an easy task. The EFL learners are to pass through very long, uneven paths such as précis exercise to achieve this skill. The present study was launched to explore the effect of précis writing on the creation of a compact text. To this end, a true-experimental method of research with the pretest-posttest control design was employed. Via double-stage sampling, 40 female students were selected at Fatemeh-al-Zahra High School in Kabutarahang, Hamedan, Iran. The control group was taught some grammatical structures such as active and passive voices, reduced adjective clauses, and different tenses in English during twelve sessions; while the experimental group received a lesson plan consisting of twelve sessions of précis writing. To analyze the data collected via pretest and posttest, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was run. The findings of the study indicated that the participants in the experimental group performed better in producing cohesive and qualified texts than those in the control group. The conclusion drawn was that teaching précis, as a basic skill, can improve the writing ability and provide the students with more opportunities to utilize the cohesive devices and consequently produce more cohesive pieces of text.

The present study investigated whether word learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task's involvement load, i.e., the amount of need, search, and evaluation the task imposes. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) contend that tasks with higher degrees of these three components induce higher involvement load, and are, therefore, more effective for word learning. To test this claim, 64 Iranian intermediate EFL learners were selected based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET). The participants were randomly assigned to two equal groups. Each group completed different vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the amount of involvement they induced. The tasks were jigsaw task (Group A) and information gap task (Group B). During the ten treatment sessions, recall and retention of the 100 unfamiliar target words were tested through immediate and delayed posttest. Data were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVA. The results indicated that learners benefited more from jigsaw task with higher involvement load. This study supported the Involvement Load Hypothesis, suggesting that higher involvement induced by the task resulted in more effective recall; however, no significant difference was observed between the two tasks in the retention of the unknown words.

The learners’ identity is one of the most important key elements of learning to motivate learners to learn English. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the male and female EFL learners’ motivation and their identity with a focus on gender. The study had a descriptive correlational design. The participants of this study were 50 Iranian male and 50 female postgraduate English majors, aged between 23 and 41, who were selected through convenient sampling. Three questionnaires of motivation, hardiness, and perfectionism were distributed among the participants. The results of Pearson correlation analyses demonstrated that there was not a significant relationship between EFL learners’ motivation and their hardiness in both genders. Also, the results showed no significant relationship between EFL learners’ motivation and their perfectionism in the two groups. Moreover, the results of independent-sample t-tests failed to find any significant difference between male and female students’ motivation and their hardiness and perfectionism.