Foreign Language Teaching and Research

AbstractDeveloping self-regulated learners has been the life-long ambition of different stakeholders in education. This study was set out to find the relationships between self-regulated strategies as defined by time and resource management, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, achievement goals classified as mastery, performance-approach and performance-avoidance, and the listening achievement of EFL learners. Two hundred and fifty five Iranian high-intermediate EFL learners attending Iran Language Institute of Mazandaran were randomly selected. Correlational analysis of the data demonstrated that self-regulated strategies were significantly correlated with mastery goal orientation and listening achievement of the learners. Performance-approach goal orientation was neither correlated with these strategies nor with mastery goal orientation. It only showed a significant negative correlation with performance-avoidance goal orientation. The findings are in congruence with the assumptions made in social cognitive theory of learning, expectancy-value theory and the model of self-regulated learning developed by Pintrich and De Groot (1990).

AbstractThe interference of the native language in acquiring a foreign language is unavoidable. In an attempt to explore the phenomenon why this occurs, the study was conducted in English as a foreign language writing. The study also investigated how the native language interference occurred in the writing process. In fact, this qualitative study explored the reasons and the process of native language interference in writing performances of EFL learners. The data were collected from Thai undergraduate students through semi-structured interviews. Results obtained from the analysis of this study suggested that the reasons of native language interference in EFL writing were found in three main themes: learning strategies of language learners, inadequate knowledge of the target language, and attitude towards English. Furthermore, the interference of the native language appeared in the initial stage and repeatedly occurred throughout the entire writing process. Finally, the suggestions related to the teachers’ awareness of the problematic area, the use of English as the classroom language, and the use of monolingual dictionary are offered to the EFL writing instructors in order to help their EFL students to minimize the errors caused by the native language interference.

AbstractThis study aims to highlight the key roles played by metacognitive strategies training in the development of listening comprehension skill and self-regulation strategies of EFL learners. The participants of this study (N = 60) were female Iranian students assigned to two groups of experimental and control in Kish English Language Institute. Learners in the experimental group received 6-week instruction on the listening metacognitive strategies, while those in the control group received no strategy instruction. Four instruments were used in this study: a pretest of listening comprehension, Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), and a posttest on listening comprehension. The analysis of the data revealed that metacognitive listening strategies training improved the listening performance of the learners in the experimental group compared to those in the control group. It also showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in the use of problem-solving, planning-evaluation, mental translation, and personal knowledge strategies. The results also showed that learning metacognitive strategies helped language learners to regulate their use of self-evaluation, organizing, goal-setting, seeking assistance, environmental structuring, and responsibility strategies. Additionally, regression analyses demonstrated that self-regulation strategies accounted for 37% of variance in the EFL learners’ listening comprehension, while metacognitive listening strategies accounted for 6 % of the variance. The findings of this study suggested that (a) listening metacognitive strategies training can have benefits on listening skill development, increase use of self-regulatory and metacognitive strategies, (b) learners who used more metacognitive strategies revealed a high level of self-regulation strategies use.

AbstractIn this study, the researchers examined the sources of demotivation among adult language teachers in Najafabad language institutes. Two objectives were pursued in the process of implementing this research: 1) Determining the main sources of demotivation among adult teachers teaching in Najafabad language institutes 2) Uncovering the most significant demotivating factors among English adult teachers in Najafabad. Based on convenience sampling, seventy male and female teachers were chosen as the participants of this study. The questionnaire used in this study, Teacher Demotivation Questionnaire (TDQ), contained four parts: students’ attitudes in class (SAC), teaching materials and facilities (TMF), research and working condition (RWC) and human relations (HR). Fifty copies of the questionnaire were distributed among the teachers. One-sample t-test was utilized to examine the statistical significance of the analyses. Comparing the findings, the most demotivating factors in SAC, TMF, RWC and HR were "Students are not interest in studying", "low teacher evaluation from students", "low pay" and "little appreciation from the administration", respectively. Among four subsections of the questionnaire, "students’ attitude" and "research and working conditions" were more influential and regarded as more effective demotivating factors.

There is insufficient rigorous research examining which features of EFL/ESL learners’ writing can be improved through their awareness/knowledge of collocation. This study, therefore, addressed this issue and examined the effect of this awareness on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance with respect to the specific features of each writing sub-component (i.e., content, organization, vocabulary and language use) in the short and long term. The study was a quasi-experimental using a within- and between-group approach utilizing a pre-test/post-test design with a control group supplemented with the qualitative information obtained from the interviews with the writing raters. The results showed that developing knowledge/awareness of collocations effectively improved the participants’ quality of writing in terms of ‘vocabulary’, ‘organization’ and ‘language use’. A deeper analysis of the results revealed that the observed improvements in these sub-components were in terms of some particular features: the range of sophistication, lexical choice and usage; succinctness, fluency and clarity of the expressed ideas; and the accuracy of agreement, tense and prepositions. In addition, the sub-findings emerging from the results accentuated the significance of instructional intervention, in general, and first language-second language contrastive analysis, in particular, in helping L2 learners notice, note and incorporate collocations in their output.

The present study assessed the construct validity and reliability of a researcher-constructed psycho-motor mechanism scale based on the communicative theory of translation proposed by PACTE (2003). In doing so, the necessary criteria for designing the scale were obtained by a thorough review of related literature on previously constructed scales in error analysis or holistic ones. Moreover, in the first part of the research, a qualitative data analysis according to the translation tasks done by eleven participants and their feedback through a semi-structured translation problems interview was done for finding the descriptors in designing the psycho-motor mechanism scale. Next, by designing the scale, two translation tasks were given to 90 M.A. students majoring in Translation Studies at four different branches of Islamic Azad University. Based on the rating done by two experienced raters, construct validity and reliability of the scale was revealed by the use of factor analysis and correlation statistics. The findings approved by the construct validity and reliability of the researcher-constructed scale could contribute to the field of Translation Studies since having a more objective scale for translation tasks in line with anchored theories of translation quality assessment like those of PACTE (2003) is a felt need.

The purpose of this study was to probe the effect of metacognitive strategy instruction through dialogic interaction on the reading comprehension performance and metacognitive awareness of Iranian EFL learners. The data were collected through the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) and a reading test to examine changes in metacognitive awareness and reading performance before and after the intervention. The participants were 60 intermediate EFL learners in two groups. The experimental group (n = 30) went through an intervention program in which the learners were taught metacognitive strategy instruction through dialogic interaction for ten sessions. The control group (n=30) went through a conventional reading instruction program and covered the same materials without receiving metacognitive instruction. The results revealed that metacognitive strategy instruction through dialogic interaction helped learners develop their reading ability and raise their metacognitive awareness.

Oral Communication Strategies are conscious techniques that L2 interlocutors employ to overcome the communication breakdowns in the target language. Hence, they can help to promote the effectiveness of communication ability. However, it must be noted that many variables can influence the use of these strategies. The present study, therefore, aimed to investigate the role of language proficiency and cultural background variables on the use of oral communication strategies. After piloting the Oral Communication Strategy Inventory and Cultural Milieu and examining the reliability analysis as well as the construct validity, the questionnaires were administered to 320 participants majoring in the English language at B.A and M.A levels. Then, SPSS 18.0 computer program was used to analyze the collected data. Next, an interview was held to gain more information on the use of strategies by the Iranian EFL learners. The results of this inquiry revealed that there is no significant difference between learners at different language proficiency levels in terms of oral communication strategies use, while there is a significant difference between different cultural backgrounds in the use of OCSs. The findings of this research can be useful for developing the use of oral communication strategies among EFL learners, particularly with Persian and Turkish cultural backgrounds.