داریوش نژادانصاری

The present study aimed to examine the effects of an educational technology called smart learning pen (i.e., iPen) as an ICT tool on young Iranian male and female EFL learners' speaking accuracy and fluency. A group of 180 young (6-9 years old) male and female learners with no previous formal education in English were randomly assigned into three different conditions: those who used the iPen in class and at home (IPC), at home only (IPH), and those who did not use the iPen at all (NIP). As gender was an independent variable, each condition had male and female groups. To address the research questions, the participants' performance on the oral sub-test of the posttest was put into analysis. The two-way ANOVA run on the effect of the independent variables (iPen and gender) and their interaction on the participants' speaking accuracy, and fluency revealed that using iPen helped the IPC and IPH participants significantly outperform the NIP group in terms of both accuracy and fluency. However, such an analysis did not show any significant effect for gender, nor did it show any significant effect when the interaction of gender and other variables was taken into account. The study has practical implications for policymakers, language teachers as well as software, hardware, and mobile phone application developers.

EFL learners’ low motivation and lack of sufficient prior knowledge can be regarded as the barriers that impede their success in presentation of high quality writing pieces. To solve the mentioned problems, some researchers suggest the application of inventive technology-enhanced instructions in teaching the writing skill. In this regard, WebQuest as a computer-based instructional model providing the already-selected website links can be proposed as an appropriate candidate. Hence, the very aim of the present experimental pre-test/post-test study was to address the effect of WebQuest-based instruction on Iranian undergraduate EFL learners’ achievements in their overall essay writing ability as well as their writing ability concerning the elaboration, focus, conventions, vocabulary, and organization sub-skills. To do so, 50 participants in the experimental group and 49 participants in the control group performed the WebQuest-based and the alternative tasks without access to the web links, respectively. To analyze the obtained data, six ANCOVAs were run. The results revealed a significant improvement in EFL learners’ overall writing performance as well as their outperformance in the organization, focus, elaboration, and vocabulary subskills, but not the conventions sub-skill. The findings of this study indicated optimistic implications about the potential applicability of novel educational technologies in Iranian higher education context. EFL learners’ improved writing performance and vocabulary acquisition as well as their increased motivation and collaboration in WebQuest-based writing classes can be regarded as a valuable clue for teachers, administrators, and designers to pave the way for further integration of innovative technologies in EFL settings.

The aim of this study was fourfold: (1) to investigate the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of Iranian Engineering students’ writing (2) to examine the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of their WhatsApp assisted writing (3) to determine whether their emotional intelligence (EI) increases through literature-based activities in a WhatsApp assisted setting and (4) to survey the effect of literature-based activities and the produced emotional intelligence on the complexity and lexical diversity of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing. In phase I, as students went through literature-based activities, no significant differences of accuracy were found; despite the fact that the mean difference and standard deviation scores were indicative of effective treatment, literature-based activities. In phase II, the results obtained from the analytic procedures of literature-based activities on the accuracy of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing showed that the experimental group showed higher accuracy of writing. In phase III, the result of emotional intelligence improvement was more remarkable in the WhatsApp assisted writing. Additionally, the WhatsApp assisted written productions were significantly more diverse in using lexis, t-units and clauses but not other parameters of complexity. The results have some implications for teachers and researchers in the ESP setting. 

This study aimed to investigate the influence of a gamification-enhanced language classroom within the context of Moodle in promoting extrinsic and intrinsic motivational attributes of language learners. A total of 220 language learners from different universities in Iran were recruited as the participants and randomly assigned to the gamification-enhanced (n= 114) and control groups (n= 106). Over the eight weeks of treatment, the experimental group members were taught using various gamified tasks and activities through the gamified Moodle LMS. A motivational orientation scale was administered before and after the intervention. The results of ANCOVAs demonstrated a significant boost in the extrinsic motivation of language learners, including external, introjected, and identified regulation. Furthermore, the study confirmed that the integration of gamification has resulted in a higher level of intrinsic motivation for the participants in the areas of knowledge, accomplishment, and stimulation. The relevant pedagogical implications and directions for future studies are discussed.

L2 learners' pragmatic development could be manifested by their proper speech act production. Due to the existing differences among languages, errors in speech act realization are inevitable. Employing well-established teaching methods could help L2 learners overcome their problems in speech act production. This endeavor aimed to explore the effects of explicit metapragmatic instruction on Iraqi EFL learners' use of English requests, apologies, and refusals examining the possible intervening role of error type and gender. The study sample comprised 80 English major B.A. students at Al-Kufa University, Iraq. Within six online sessions, the EG received instruction through direct awareness raising and being provided with metapragmatic information. Data analyses indicated that explicit pragmatic instruction significantly improved the students' speech act realization. Additionally, while the female learners benefitted more from the intervention and a higher percentage of sociopragmatic, compared to pragmalinguistic, errors were amended after the treatment, the variables of gender and pragmatic error types did not have significant intervening effects. The findings imply that developing pragmatic competence via direct pragmatic intervention and metapragmatic knowledge awareness needs to receive much attention on the part of Iraqi language instructors, materials developers, and curriculum designers, as it could greatly help learners avoid pragmatic failures.