International Journal of Research in English Education

This study aims to investigate university students’, teachers’ and educators’ attitudes toward the use of code-switching (CS) in the Vietnamese EFL context. It also measures the relationship between students’ type and level of anxiety with their preferences toward CS. Participants were five teachers and educators, and 94 non-English major students from a university in Vietnam. Both quantitative (FLCAS by Horwitz et al., 1986) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) research methods were used to gather data. Results of the interviews highlight that both teachers and students had positive attitudes toward CS, claiming CS as an effective tool. This finding was in agreement with previous research and supported the use of CS in some situations (e.g. explaining complex grammar or vocabulary; medium of instruction; checking for understanding; expressing terms with no equivalent in L1/L2; showing solidarity; disciplining students; encouraging/ aiding learning process; saving time; and aiding students with low level of English proficiency). It also highlights that avoidance of CS is impractical and a natural process in EFL context. However, the educators in this study showed different views, indicating CS may hinder students from learning L2. Results of the questionnaire survey indicate a positive correlation between students’ type/level of anxiety and their preferences toward CS (r=.60). The results also reveal that students with high and moderate levels of anxiety preferred the use of CS in class to handle their test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. Students with low anxiety, however, expressed negative views toward CS. Drawing upon the findings of this study, the article presents the benefits of CS in EFL context, especially for students with anxiety. It also suggests teacher training courses in Vietnam to offer supplementary advice and information about the use of CS in EFL classrooms.

The present study examined the macrostructure of published Case Reports (CRs) to provide information about the organizational structure of CRs and to develop a framework that can respond to the urgent needs of students at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (KUMS). Overall, 100 published reports were selected from the established journals and were analyzed following the Swealsian (1990) model of genre analysis. Another set of data included 32 CRs written by medical students who were invited to report a case, in English, they recently observed during their clinical courses in 2019. Following awareness raising tasks, the students’ reports were compared to published CRs. Findings demonstrated variations in the obligatory and optional moves and steps in each section of a case report. The differences can be ascribed to the specific nature of each case and the distinct medical procedures. The study concludes that familiarizing novice researchers with the generic structure of standard case reports can be helpful in understanding medical case reports.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of lexical and syntactic simplification of materials on listening comprehension of intermediate EFL learners and to see whether or not there was any significant difference between learners who listen to authentic materials and those who listen to simplified ones. It was also intended to compare the lexically-simplified-material group with the syntactically-simplified-material group in order to examine which type of simplification leads to a greater gain in listening comprehension. To this end, three hundred Iranian EFL intermediate learners from different language institutes in Sari participated at the onset of the study. To choose a homogeneous sample, an OPT was administered and 150 subjects were selected. Then they were randomly assigned into 3 groups, one control group and two experimental groups. A pretest of listening was administered to assess the initial status of the participants. Then, the intervention was given for two hours in ten sessions. The control group listened to authentic materials, but the two experimental groups listened to lexically and syntactically simplified materials, respectively. Afterwards, a posttest was administered to compare the groups to see how much they improved. The scores of the three groups were analyzed through ANOVA. The results revealed a significant difference among the control group and the two experimental groups. Moreover, the group who listened to syntactically simplified materials outperformed the group who listened to lexically simplified materials.

Since learners’ motivation and engagement have a considerable impact on learning a foreign language, the importance of humanizing the materials in today’s world of materials development is gaining much more attention. This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of literature reading as one of the most important elements of humanizing the materials on Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners’ creative writing ability. In so doing, 60 learners studying at Zehtaban English Institute in Rasht, with the age range of 19 to 23, were selected from among 160 participants based on their performance on a sample copy of QPT. The study employed a true-experimental design in which the participants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and two control groups. First, a pretest of creative writing was administered. Then, the experimental groups received an eight-session treatment that was the instruction through literature reading. Meanwhile, the control groups received an eight-session placebo. A posttest of creative writing was then administered to all the participants. The use of two-way ANOVA revealed that the experimental groups with the treatment of instruction through literature reading outperformed the control groups in creative writing test scores. Based on the findings of the present study, all stakeholders, particularly materials developers and teachers are proposed to include literary texts in language teaching and learning materials so that remarkable opportunity for improving creative writing ability among learners would be provided.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of phonetic transcription of TV news on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ pronunciation accuracy at the word level. The question of this study sought to answer whether or not the phonetic transcription of TV news improves the pronunciation accuracy of Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate word level. To answer this question, the selection of participants was done among 30 intermediate language learners in Erfan Academic in Ramsar. They were divided into two groups with equal numbers of control and experimental group. Both of these groups received pretest and posttest of pronunciation which included twenty words. The experimental group practiced pronunciation via phonetic transcription of TV news while the control group practiced through the conventional method. After 5 sessions, the posttest was administered to both groups of study. Finally, the data were analyzed via applying an independent sample- T-test. The results of the study indicated that the mean of these two groups was significantly different (sig≤0/05) and the results can be of significance for language teachers, language learners, as well as language material designers.

Metadiscourse as one of the pivotal multifunctional linguistic features in spoken and written discourse has been investigated from two points of view; narrow and broad. In narrow point of view of metadiscourse, reflexivity in discourse is focused. Among the two points of view of metadiscourse, reflexivity is mostly used in spoken discourse, thus this study aims to trace the realization of functions of reflexivity metadiscourse in PhD dissertation sessions. To meet this end, four PhD dissertation defense sessions (totally 56837 words) were selected to make the corpus of this study. The transcription of the four sessions were analyzed for reflexive metadiscourse markers functions based on the model that includes four functional categories; “metadiscourse comments”, “discourse organization”, “speech act labels”, and “references to the audiences.” The results showed that disciplinary speaking conventions have the most pivotal and significant impose on speakers to use categories of reflexive metadiscourse. For instance, it was found that in defense session on “Fosil Plant”, the “reference to audience” was the most frequent category while in defense session on “Music”, the “metalinguistic comments” has received the greatest attention for speakers. Findings of this study could contribute to the existing literature by helping EFL PhD candidates to understand and appropriately use reflexive metadiscourse markers.

Online courses are popular around the world these days as people can access learning being in different times and spaces. At the same time, the retention of participants in any online course is always challenging. This qualitative case study investigated the issues related to participant retention in an online course and explored the effective ways to retain the participants in such courses. The data were collected through the interviews conducted with 12 teachers who partly or wholly participated in a year-long online course. Teacher participants’ online communication exchanges on Edmodo and Viber platforms during the course period also served as data for this study. The Edmodo and Viber extracts were originally in English while the interviews were conducted in Nepali; therefore, in the process of analysis, some key extracts were translated, especially focusing on the message they communicated. The findings based on thematic analysis reveal that the issues related to retention include facilitators’ delayed response, poor activity design and inappropriate selection of web tools, and need for additional time among others. This study is expected to assist course designers, institutions, and organizations that run online courses as well as teachers who plan to run and join online courses as they can be informed of the issues that play a role in the retention of participants in online courses.