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This study investigated a new blended approach for enhancing vocabulary achievement. To this end, the project used a convenience sample of 50 intermediate EFL learners ranging from 19-35 years of age from three intact classes studying English translation at university. They were randomly assigned to two groups of 25 students each. In the experimental group, the treatment consisted of providing photos/cartoons related to the sessions’ course of instruction on Instagram, with the learners discussing and exploring the meaning of vocabularies via peer scaffolding using metacognitive strategies. The control group followed the syllabus and assigned homework according to the class program. To investigate the vocabulary achievement of the participants, a piloted multiple-choice vocabulary posttest was administered. The results that were analyzed through independent samples T-test revealed that the blended approach could significantly affect the performance of the experimental group. This study has implications not only for teachers, researchers, and syllabus designers but also for EFL learners with unpacking the notion of metacognition and peer scaffolding, proposing an integrated framework that illustrates how it may pervade the teaching-learning process as an educational goal. The implication of this study supports student responsibility, a student-centered classroom, and higher levels of cognition.

Materials are the most noticeable components of every language-learning context. One of these materials is the specific textbooks being used by English language academies; they are crucial in directing EFL teachers and learners and guiding them through the route of language learning. The present study attempts to compare the cultural content of two course books being used currently in Iran called ILI and Rise and Shine series in order to see which one is more useful in developing the intercultural competence of EFL learners. The participants of this study include 30 EFL teachers (15 teachers in ILI who teach advanced level books and 15 teachers in Chitsazan academy who teach advanced level books). The instrument of this study includes a questionnaire adapted from (Ahmadi Safa, Moradi et al. 2015) that consists of 38 questions designed based on Likert scale. The collected date were analyzed by an independent t-test. The obtained results revealed that Rise and Shine series include more intercultural features than ILI series and they are more applicable in improving the intercultural competence of EFL learners.

Correlational studies supporting the link between learners’ multiple intelligences and their learning are superseded by interventionist attempts to explore direct applications of Multiple Intelligence (MI) Theory in language teaching and learning. This quasi-experimental study examined the extent to which engaging ELT major university students in writing tasks, compatible to their dominant intelligences, might enhance the accuracy, organization, and fluency of their writing. The participants were 64 male and female English major sophomores. They were in three intact classes, randomly assigned to a control no task (NT) group, a task-supported (TS) group, and an MI-oriented task (MIT) group after their initial homogeneity was assessed. The fifteen-session treatment comprised pre-writing brainstorming activities in the NT group and a set of pre-writing tasks performed by the TS group. In the MIT group, however, individuals with the same dominant intelligences were grouped together to perform tasks that were compatible with their dominant intelligences. The one-way ANOVA analysis of the research data obtained from the post-test writing scores revealed that the MIT group surpassed the other groups in accuracy, fluency and organization. The findings underscore the necessity of taking learners’ intelligences into consideration as a criterion for task selection and offer important pedagogical implications for teaching writing.

The present study investigated the interplay between language anxiety, locus of control, and language proficiency of EFL students in online classes. The participants of the study were 67 upper-intermediate students between 18 to 30 years old and were selected randomly from a few language institutes in Shiraz. Two questionnaires and a proficiency test were used: Chametzky’s Online World Language Anxiety Scale, Rotter’s Locus of control questionnaire, and The Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English. Pearson-product-moment correlation, multiple regression analysis, and independent-samples t-test were run to answer the research questions. The results of the study revealed a strong negative correlation between locus of control and language proficiency, meaning that those who had higher scores on the proficiency test were internal. In addition, a strong negative correlation was found between language anxiety and language proficiency, indicating that anxiety has adverse effects on language proficiency. Thirdly, both locus of control and language anxiety could predict language proficiency, but the former was a better predictor. This means that the effect of locus of control is much higher than anxiety on the language proficiency of Iranian EFL learners in online classes. This research can help students and teachers to recognize individual differences better.

This study compared the efficacy of explicit and implicit instruction of requestive strategies on upper-intermediate female English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ email writing development. Sixty-two participants in four intact classes were randomly assigned to two explicit and implicit groups. In this quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design study two email evaluation tests and two written discourse completion tests (WDCT) were used to collect the data. In the pretest phase, an email evaluation test and a WDCT were administered to the participants in two sessions. Next, the two groups were provided with ten treatment sessions. The explicit group received direct instruction and metapragmatic explanation on the use of appropriate requestive strategies in writing emails. The implicit group, however, received instruction on writing requestive emails without any explicit explanation about the requestive strategies in emailing. Then, the participants took the posttest of email evaluation test and WDCT in two successive sessions. The results indicated that both modes of instruction exerted significant effects on the learners’ production of requestive strategies in English. The comparison of the two modes of instruction, nonetheless, indicated that the participants who underwent explicit instruction significantly surpassed those in the implicit group. The findings have implications for materials developers and instructors.

It is by now well established that materials may have an impact beyond simply learning a language they present. Hence, in this study attempts have been made to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of a textbook Summit 2B which is currently being widely used in Iranian EFL classes. The textbook has been evaluated based on criteria provided by McDonough and Shaw (1993) on the basis of two stages: an external and an internal evaluation. Efforts have been made to critically evaluate the textbook in terms of the layout, grading and sequencing of assignments, design, content, different activities, sort of texts utilized, and the skills emphasized in the book. The findings showed that albeit there appears to be some shortcomings, Summit 2B seems to be more efficient to meet the requirements of EFL learners as compared with the other textbooks which have hitherto been used at different language classes. Accordingly, investigating and evaluating the book proved to be very lucrative and valuable in terms of pedagogy as well as the efficient attributes that suits the context of the present study. Finally, the implications as regards the efficiency of this particular course book as the consequence of evaluating it have been put forward and the strengths and weaknesses related to it have been argued.

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 current research examined the use of lexical bundles in the result sections of research papers by Iranian non-native writers in the field of applied linguistics. The WordSmith Software was applied to identify lexical bundles. In addition, the two analytical frameworks Biber et al. (2004) and Ruiying and Allison (2003) were used to categorize the bundles with regard to their structural features and their moves and steps. Moreover, with the aid of concordance, the identified clusters were analyzed and categorized according to their communicative functions. The results of the current research showed that Iranian writers relied heavily on the use of specific formulaic bundles to perform the communicative functions associated with the moves and steps. The findings also revealed that four moves out of six moves were mostly used by Iranian authors. Moreover, the researchers found that the extensive range of formulaic clusters used to demonstrate Move 2, Reporting results, the least bundles occurred in Move 4, Summarizing results, and also no clusters were used in Move 5, Evaluating the study along with Move 6, Deductions from the research by Iranian writers. The findings of this study boost the awareness of formulaic sequences usage for novice writers in particular discourse and communicative function.

Corrective feedback refers to a teacher or student’s reaction to a learner’s target language production containing an actual or perceived error. The last three decades have witnessed a large amount of research on the impacts of various types of corrective feedback on students’ written production. Along the same vein, the present study seeks to explore the effectiveness of providing teachers’ metalinguistic feedback vs. peers’ collaborative feedback on students’ writing performance. In so doing, the present study adopted a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design including three upper-intermediate groups (i.e., two experimental and one control). The participants of the study were a total of 62 English as a foreign language (EFL) freshman students from two public universities in Tehran, Iran. The writing tasks utilized in the present study were adopted from IELTS writing Task 2. The results of one-way between groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that students produced significantly more lexically diverse as well as grammatically accurate language as a result of both treatments. Moreover, it was observed that collaborative peer feedback led to significantly higher lexical diversity than those of other two groups. The findings of the present study suggest that L2 teachers can opt for a combination of corrective feedback strategies to help learners improve their writing performance.

Following Swales’ (1981) definition of genre analysis many scholars have attempted to characterize good academic writing; however, this can be difficult and worrying for non-native writers. Since a well-written abstract encourages readers more effectively, the present study intended to find differences in the rhetorical structures of abstracts by TEFL students from the University of Tehran (UT) and Islamic Azad University of Gorgan (IAUG). To meet this end, 100 abstracts (50 abstracts by TEFL students from UT and 50 abstracts by TEFL students from IAUG) were randomly selected. Swales’ (1981) IMRD (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion) and Swales’ (1990) CARS (Created A Research Space) models were employed to recognize the rhetorical structure of the abstracts. Then, the frequencies and sequences of moves and steps were calculated using chi-square to find the differences. The results revealed that there were significant differences between the abstracts by TEFL students from UT and IAUG. The findings indicated that TEFL students from IAUG followed the IMRD and CARS more than TEFL students from UT. The findings of this study have some pedagogical implications for both non-native writers and postgraduate students as well as English academic writing teachers and students.  

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.