درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The perceived outbreak of COVID‐19 has forced the closure of schools in Iran. Alternatively, e-learning has emerged as a viable replacement for training students. The present study examined the comparative effects of applying Shaad as online learning versus face-to-face teaching on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ vocabulary learning. To achieve this aim, sixty ninth-grade high school students were randomly selected. The members of the study were assigned to the Shaad and control groups. The instruments were a Cambridge Placement Test (CPT) and a researcher-made test administered as a pre-and post-test. First, the CPT was used, then a pre-test was administered to members of both groups. EFL learners’ vocabulary learning was analyzed at the end of the research; thus, the students in both groups performed the vocabulary post-test. Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-tests were run to determine the effect of Shaad on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary learning. The results revealed that teaching vocabulary through Shaad as online learning did not have a statistically significant effect on EFL students’ vocabulary learning. The results also showed a significant difference between the vocabulary learning of EFL students exposed to face-to-face teaching and those exposed to Shaad; thus, face-to-face learning is more effective. One of the study implications is that policymakers might provide infrastructure for virtual education to contribute to the improvement of EFL learning along with face-to-face education after the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, material designers can remove the deficiencies of the Shaad platform to develop the student’s vocabulary learning as an instructional aids tool.

The impact of humor on language acquisition has been documented in scholarly accounts. Hence, this study investigated Iranian pre-service and high-experienced and low-experienced in-service EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices of humor in the classroom. In order to collect data, the researchers adopted four distinct instruments including pedagogical humor questionnaire, semi-structured interview, observation checklist, and field notes. A total of 182 Iranian EFL teachers participated completed the questionnaires, while 10 in-service EFL teachers engaged in semi-structured interviews. Additionally, the second researcher observed 36 classes. The results indicated that both pre-service and in-service EFL teachers believed that humor was effective. Notably, high-experienced in-service EFL teachers displayed more pronounced positive beliefs in humor compared to their pre-service and low-experienced counterparts. The results also disclosed that humor was a routine practice for high-experienced teachers. Based on the findings of the present study, it can be suggested that it is essential to train and educate both pre-service and in-service EFL teachers in order to integrate humor into different EFL classrooms.

This study explored the syntactic acquisition by Persian monolingual and Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English as a second and third language and the effect of instruction on beginner learners' syntactic acquisition with reference to UG-based non-primary language learning theories. A group of EFL learners (23 Persian monolingual and 73 Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners) were selected. They were divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced levels based on their performance on the Oxford Placement Test. A grammaticality judgment test, a translation test and a functional test were used to collect data. ANOVA analyses indicated that Kurdish- Persian bilingual learners of L3 English and Persian monolingual learners of L2 English were able to reset the parametric variations related to the intended features at intermediate and advanced stages of L3 acquisition, but they failed to do so at the initial stage. The Direct Access (DA) hypothesis, the Full Transfer/Full Access (FTFA) hypothesis and the Modulated Structure Building Hypothesis (MSBH) were found to best explain the findings. Paired-samples t -test showed that instruction positively influenced the acquisition of the syntactic features by beginner-level learners after the treatment.

There is growing agreement among researchers on the advantages of using automated feedback programs (AFPs), but most of the previous studies have evaluated more well-known AFPs like Grammarly, Ginger, etc. in English writing classes. None of the previous studies on AFPs evaluated the effectiveness of and users' perception of InstaText. Thus, this study was aimed at examining the effects of InstaText on improving the language quality (i.e., grammar, spelling, and style) of Persian-English freelance translators using InstaText for editing their English translations of Persian academic papers, which are considered technical translations. In addition, it was conducted to investigate how the said users perceived this InstaText. This quantitative study was conducted in two phases: a one-group pretest-posttest phase, where the effect of using InstaText on improving the language quality of translated technical texts was examined with 75 participants; and a survey phase, where the participants' perception toward InstaText was measured using Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of Use (USE) questionnaire. InstaText did not help the participants make significant progress in grammar and spelling, but its effect on improving their style was significant. Further, the participants perceived the tool as intuitive, user-friendly, efficient, time-saving, and satisfactory.

Knowledge of verb-argument constructions (VACs) has been examined in a variety of contexts where English is mostly taught from the early stages of their schooling. No study has so far examined EFL learners’ knowledge of VACs in a context where English as a foreign language is taught only late at the secondary school level. The current study fills this gap by exploring construction knowledge in a context where teaching EFL is postponed until other languages have been introduced to learners. Using written essays of 180 students of 3 different proficiency groups, three indices of syntactic sophistication (i.e. the frequency of the Verb-argument constructions, the frequency of the verb-construction combinations and the verb-construction strength of association) were examined for their development across the three grade levels. As a second objective, this study examined the ability of these indices to predict students’ writing quality, through their grades. The results suggest that while the higher proficiency group showed a significant improvement in the rareness of their VACs, the three groups showed slow progress in the use of less frequent and less strongly associated verb-construction combinations. Similarly, only the index of construction sophistication (i.e. rareness) correlated significantly with and could predict variance in the writing score. This suggests that EFL learners follow a ‘necessary first’ principle in their learning of constructions. Similarly, these results indicate that the use of rare constructions enhances raters’ judgements of students’ writing quality.

This study investigated the attitudes of Iranian female and male elementary English as a foreign language (EFL) learners toward peer and self-assessment of descriptive writing. It also attempted to find any gender-specific differences in their attitudes toward peer and self-assessment of descriptive writing. In so doing, the study relied on exploratory sequential mixed-methods procedures including qualitative and quantitative phases. The first group of participants was 40 EFL teachers (20 males and 20 females). The second group of participants was 50 individuals (25 males and 25 females) who took part in a five-session descriptive writing course, participated in interviews, and filled out the questionnaires. The content of the course was a combination of Bartlett's (2015) peer and self-assessment methods and Spencer's (2005) models of assessing composition. In the qualitative phase, a thematic analysis of the interviews, known as the constant comparative method of analysis, helped to extract four main themes shaping the participants’ attitudes, namely ‘Cooperation’, ‘Knowledge’, ‘Motivation’, and ‘Practice’. In the quantitative phase, exploratory factor analysis and a one-way MANOVA test were carried out to examine any gender-specific impacts on the learners’ attitudes toward peer and self-assessment of descriptive writing. Finally, the results of the study implied that the participants had positive attitudes towards the descriptive writing course, although females were more positive than males. This study has some educational implications for those involved in peer and self-assessment.

Language learners' test performance is affected by individual attributes that are not part of test takers’ language ability (Bachman, 1990). The identification of such factors and the study of their association/impact with/on EFL learners' test performance has been a real test validity concern for language testing researchers (Bachman, 1990, 2004). This study was designed to explore the relation of a number of cognitive and psychological attributes and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' test performance. To this end, two hundred male (100) and female (100) Iranian intermediate EFL learners selected through convenience sampling procedure took Goal-orientation Scale, Test Preparation and Test-taking Strategy Scale, and Examination Stress Scale and a sample Test of English as a Foreign Language Junior Standard (TOEFL Junior). Regression analyses of the questionnaires and the TOEFL test results demonstrated that mastery goal orientation, performance goal orientation, test-taking strategy and test anxiety all correlated with EFL learners' test performance; however, test taking strategy was the strong cognitive predictor and performance goal orientation was the strongest psychological predictor of the EFL learners' test performance. The results seem to indicate that in addition to previously identified factors like test anxiety and test taking strategies some factors like performance and mastery goal orientations which were once deemed as construct irrelevant factors in EFL learners' test performance need to be added to the battery of personal attributes that are influential factors in this regard.

Learner autonomy, which emphasizes learners’ engagement in self-dependent learning to enhance their ability to become self-reliant learners, is the key element in the language learning process. Although many studies have been carried out on learner autonomy, very little is known about the students' engagement in autonomous learning in the resource poor areas. This research uses a mixed-method research design and collected both qualitative and quantitative data from students (n=84) and teachers (n=20) from different colleges (n=15) located in Far Western Nepal and explores students’ engagement in autonomous learning and discusses the challenges and practices of learner autonomy in an EFL context in difficult circumstances. This research reveals students' over-dependence on their teachers, and teachers seemed to spoon-feed their students during their instructional practices. This research suggests how learner autonomy can be fostered in the actual instructional practices which can be of interest to the teachers, material designers, policymakers, and researchers working in developing the proficiency level of English language learners in remote and resource-poor areas.

This paper investigates the most influential factor of anxiety in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context through classroom observation and questionnaires in a private vocational higher education in Indonesia. It also explores the differences in the anxiety level based on the year of study. One hundred seventy-one students participated in the study. The Foreign Language Anxiety Classroom Scale (FLACS) questionnaire was adapted to find out the students’ anxiety levels. The questionnaire was administered using Google form, then collected and statistically analyzed using SPSS. It was revealed that the most influential factor of students’ anxiety was the domain of Communication Apprehension. Furthermore, the ANOVA test showed that all students in each year suffered from anxiety. The most notable cause of the Communication Apprehension domain was performing without preparation. Self-negative evaluation was the primary cause of the Fear of Negative Evaluation domain. Meanwhile, for the domain of Test Anxiety, failure in language tests was the principal reason. This study implies that teachers should frame pleasant communication in the classroom as well as create fun and collaborative activities to reduce students’ anxiety.

This study aims to determine whether the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness can significantly predict the students’ intention to use video conferencing applications in an online classroom. This study utilized a descriptive predictive quantitative research design. This study used the survey questionnaires adopted from the study of Salloum et al. (2019). The researchers conducted an online survey using Google form for over a month. Out of 153 target respondents, 130 responded to the survey questionnaire. Linear regression was initiated using JASP 0.16.0.0. The findings revealed that the two variables perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness can both significantly predict the students’ intention to use video conferencing applications in an online classroom. The results further showed that the perceived ease of use can better predict the students’ intention to use video conferencing applications in an online classroom as compared to perceived usefulness. The findings imply that video conferencing applications used in the teaching and learning process should be user-friendly and pedagogically relevant to support students’ desire to use video conferencing applications.

Flipped classrooms refer to teaching approaches that like usual teaching is not done inside the class. It means that before the class students watch videos that the teacher carefully chooses or prepared. The selected videos have to fulfill the required content that advances the abilities of the students in their learning. This study investigates the influence of online flipped classrooms on Iranian EFL high school students’ reading ability. To this aim, the study was done on 50 EFL 12th-grade and pre-intermediate level female students. The students were set into two groups experimental and control. A reading test was run on both groups as the pre-test, at the beginning of the study. Then, after 10 treatment sessions, the post-test was given to both groups. An independent samples t-test was run to compare the means. The outcomes illustrated the significant outperformance of the experimental group over the control group. In addition, to identify the EFL high school students’ attitudes toward the flipped classroom, the students were asked to answer an open-ended question. The results of students’ responses using thematic coding showed that most of the students had optimistic opinions regarding implementing the flipped classroom. Finally, the present study indicated that this model provides an opportunity for students to learn at their own pace and time. Therefore, it has some implications for teachers, students, and institutions which can increase student-teacher interaction in the teaching-learning process.

Researchers have always been concerned with innovative approaches to facilitate the learning process for language learners. One of the facilitating strategies is guided discovery learning, which can help learners to develop their critical and analytical thinking skills. Hence, the present study is an attempt to discover the effects of guided discovery learning on the development of teenage and adult learners’ syntactic structures. The participants of this study were 34 male EFL Iranian learners in Iranmehr Language Institute, Aleshtar, Lorestan province, Iran. The participants were divided into two experimental groups based on their age (12 to 18 as teenagers, and 18 to 30 as adults). First, the Longman proficiency test was given to the participants to measure their language ability. After that, a pre-test was given to the students regarding syntactic structures before the treatment. Then, every two weeks a post-test was given to the students to assess their gradual development. One immediate and two delayed post-tests were given to the students. In this study, paired and independent samples t-tests were used to compare the development of syntactic structures in the studied groups. The results of this study showed that both groups (teenagers and adults) made an improvement but adults improved more significantly than teenagers. The findings of the study contributed to the practical employment of guided discovery learning as an effective teaching methodology, especially for adults in the process of language learning