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The present study sought to investigate the effect of explicit instruction of lexical bundles (LBs) on the development of Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ writing quality and also their receptive and productive knowledge of Lexical Bundles (LB). Assigned to two experimental and control groups, the eighty participants took pre- and post-tests of writing tasks and the receptive knowledge test. Afterwards, the obtained scores were subjected to a series of Analyses of Covariance (ANCOVAs) and paired samples t-tests. Results of the within-group and between-group analyses indicated that explicit instruction of LBs enhanced the participants’ productive and receptive knowledge of LBs and also improved the overall quality of their written productions. Possible explanations are provided and the implications of the findings for the applicability of LBs instruction are discussed.

This research aimed to screen 'essay writing' difficulties that non-native university students at postgraduate levels usually experience regarding scholarly publication in mainstream, English journals. Two sets of variables including written literacy competencies in Persian and English languages were mapped over language uses (General vs. Academic). Initial screenings from one hundred Iranian students at PhD and MA levels with publication experiences in both Persian and English languages gave rise to some fifty-five participants randomly selected from different university disciplines (Humanities, Engineering, Medicine and Basic Sciences) and diverse university settings (Public and Private) across the country and classified via stratified sampling. A validated questionnaire from a large-scale project called ENEIDA (Moreno, 2011) was used for collecting the required data. Two measures were used to assess written literacy competencies across language uses: 1) participants' assumed, self-reported written literacy competencies in using English and Persian languages for General and Academic purposes were denoted as 'perceived' measures and 2) further supported by actual measures: mostly received comments from reviewers in the mainstream, English journals by the target group above. Findings were discussed in the light of recent lines of enquiries in Academic Literacy (AL) trends.

This article sets out to examine the effect of utilizing different culturally-based materials on EFL university students' foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, and reading proficiency within project-based classes. The research was carried out with two classes of intermediate freshmen majoring in English Language Teaching. The comparison group had to present their projects based on the reading passages of the book "Active" (L2 culturally-oriented texts) and the experimental group had to deliver their projects based on their L1 and L2 culturally-based reading texts designed by the researcher. Reading comprehension self-efficacy scale, foreign language reading anxiety scale, and the reading section of the Michigan Test (1998) were administered to students as pre-tests and post-tests at the beginning and at the end of one academic year consisting of two project-based reading courses. ANCOVA was utilized for analyzing the data. The results indicated that although in both groups significant improvements were observed regarding the three aforementioned variables, it was the experimental group that showed significantly less degrees of anxiety, compared to the comparison group. However, no differences regarding reading self-efficacy and reading proficiency were observed between the two groups. The findings of this study suggest that EFL teachers, material developers and syllabus designers can take advantage of cultural familiar texts when generating their own learning materials.

The Research was aimed at finding out the effects of the implementation of writing feedback techniques and students’ writing anxiety on students’ writing ablity. Experimental method of 3x2 factorial design was employed in the research. There were three experimental groups of students who were taught by using teacher feedback, peer feedback and the combination of peer and teacher feedback writing technique. Prior the treatment, each student was asked to do an expository essay writing test in order to get the writing scores and to fill SLWAI (Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory) to classify them into low and high writing anxiety students. Then, the students were taught on how to produce expository essay writing. At the end of the meeting, the students were asked to compose an expository essay as the posttest. The data were analyzed by using paired t-test, two-way ANOVA and Post Hoc test. From the results of data analysis it could be inferred that the implementation of writing feedback techniques affected students’ writing ability and the effects depended on the degree of students’ writing anxiety.

This study explores the relationship and interconnections between EFL teachers’ beliefs and their motivational practices in the classroom. The present study combined qualitative and quantitative methods of research. First, the motivational practices of 30 teachers in two private language schools in Tehran were explored with a classroom observation instrument, the Motivation Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT) which was used to estimate the time that teachers spent for each motivational strategy. Then, teachers’ beliefs were examined through the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) and an open-ended questionnaire aimed to assess beliefs about motivational strategies. The quantitative results indicated that the higher the teachers’ scores on the BALLI, the less frequently their use of motivational strategies in the classroom. The findings based on qualitative data, drawing largely on data from observations and the open-ended questionnaire, showed that although teachers were observed to generally follow their beliefs, there existed several points of difference between their beliefs and practices. Also, there was evidence that what teachers practice in the classrooms does not always impact their beliefs.

This study investigated the impact of visual-kinesthetic tasks on ESP university students’ vocabulary learning. Two intact classes of university students were selected as control (23 students) and experimental (36 students) group. A proficiency test, a pretest and a posttest were administered and the students were exposed to a set of treatments. Also a questionnaire administered to students, recognized each student’s learning style. The posttest mean score of experimental group was significantly different from control group’s posttest proved significant effect of visual and kinesthetic activities on ESP students’ vocabulary learning. Also this significant effect was repeated regarding student’ related learning style.