سیروس ایزدپناه

The present study was an investigation of metacognitive strategy training on improving Iranian EFL learners’ listening performance and the differences and similarities at three levels of elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Few studies have been conducted to investigate three levels. So, 348 third grade female senior high school students of Zanjan/Iran were selected through multistage cluster random sampling method and based on Cambridge placement test (2010), 116, 132, and 100 students in 3 elementary, advanced, and control groups participated in this experimental study. During two months and over period of nine forty-minute sessions, students in experimental groups received metacognitive and listening instructions. To address the research question, ANOVA test was conducted and the results showed that there were meaningful differences between students’ performance and the students of experimental advanced group showed more improvement than students in experimental intermediate and elementary groups, and students of intermediate experimental group showed more improvement than students in experimental elementary group. The implication of the study is that metacognitive strategy training should be incorporated into the regular listening teaching programs to help students become more effective listeners.

In the present study, two different models of task complexity; namely, limited attentional capacity model and cognition hypothesis were examined. To this end, the manipulation of cognitive task complexity along +/- single task dimension on Iranian EFL learners’ production in terms of fluency was explored. Based on the results of the writing test of TOFEL (2004), 48 learners were selected as the participants of the study and were divided into two groups, simple task group (STG, n=24) and complex task group (CTG, n=24). The participants in the STG were given an eight-frame picture which had been arranged in the correct sequence before its administration (+ single task). The participants in the CTG were given all the eight frames which were not arranged in their correct order. These participants were required to order the frames in the right sequence first, before starting writing (- single task). Their output was encoded based on the measure of fluency. One independent sample t-tests was run.  The results indicated that the participants significantly generated more words in the complex task. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that in the Iranian context, the predictions of limited attentional capacity model were more accurate.

The effect of assessment types (self, peer, and teacher) on the EFL writing strategies development was examined in this study. Sixty upper-intermediate EFL learners at Qazvin Islamic university in four groups (one control and three experimental groups) were studied. One-way ANOVA checked homogeneity of the groups prior to the treatments and, then, the participants’ records and diaries were employed to gather data. Explanatory and descriptive analyses were implemented to analyze and classify the strategies the EFL learners picked up. This provided the type, frequency, and percentage of the strategies the participants mostly employed. The results revealed that the experimental groups, namely, self-assessment group, peer assessment group, and teacher assessment group employed more cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies than the control group. Affective strategies were more appealing to the control group. Focusing on the diction of the words, concentrating on the complex structures used by different writers, and making use of the structures the participants became interested in or found suitable were the most frequently referred to strategies. Teaching strategies the participants more picked up in this study might enhance EFL learners’ writing development at TEFL centers.

One of the important abilities of learners is to monitor their own learning process and take charge of their development. To this end and based on the correlational nature of the study design, total of 125 students (for the Winter semester of 2017) educating at Zanjan Universities (89 B.A. students of Islamic Azad University and 60 B.A. students of Payam-e-Noor University) were chosen as the statistical population. Using Cochran formula and stratified random sampling method (each university was considered as one separate strata), the sample size was determined as 108 (65 students educating at Islamic Azad University and 43 students educating at Payam-e-Noor University). To gather the information, Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope’s, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Sternberg’s Thinking Styles Inventory, and Learner Autonomy Questionnaire (LAQ) developed by Zhang and Li were used. The results of K-S test showed that non-parametric test was liable to be used in order to study the research hypotheses. Using Spearman correlation coefficient, a relationship was found between autonomy and language anxiety among Iranian university students. The other research question was an attempt to determine if there was a relationship between learner autonomy and thinking style which was confirmed through the use of Spearman correlation coefficient. Ultimately, the association between language anxiety and thinking style was addressed through the use of Spearman test which confirmed this relationship. Findings of the current study suggest pedagogical implications for second or foreign language teaching and learning as well as textbook writers and curriculum designers.

This study was an investigation of the washback impacts of task-based assessment on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary learning and grammatical ability at the intermediate level. For this purpose, 184 male and female students who were in their third year of school were chosen from 12 schools of (X) (X). This election was done via a multistage cluster random sampling technique using the Cambridge Placement Test (2010). All of the sessions were divided into two parts, 20 minutes were considered for teaching grammar and 20 minutes were for teaching vocabulary. The components of this study were Oxford Practice Grammar Intermediate Diagnostic Test and a standard vocabulary test extracted from TOEFL exams between 2017-2020. The researchers prepared a test for every two groups at the end of every three sessions. It was found that by removing the pre-test factor, the covariance, the task-based evaluation’s washback impact makes the grammatical and vocabulary learning of students better. Considering the reality that every academic endeavor contains planned testing and evaluation techniques to maximize academic achievement and progress, the findings hint that TBLA as an academic measurement device can nicely replace the traditional evaluation techniques.

The present study examined the effect of four types of post reading-based tasks with different index of task-induced involvement load (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) on EFL learners’ recognition and recall of unfamiliar L2 vocabularies. To this end, 88 intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to four groups and were instructed to employ four different tasks after reading two narrative texts: (1) simple sentence writing; (2) text summary writing; (3) creative sentence writing; and (4) imaginary story writing. A day after the output activity session, the participants took two post-tests: the production test and the recognition test. Three weeks later, the delayed post-tests were administered. Mixed ANOVA (Split-plot) was run to compare the performances of the groups on immediate and delayed post-tests. The results revealed that there were overall significant within-group and between-group differences among four groups of the study both in immediate and delayed posttests. The creative sentence writing group outperformed in comparison to the other three groups. The results of this study turned out to be partially consistent with involvement load hypothesis.