درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aimed to discover the possible relationship between intrapersonal intelligence and grammatical ability of Iranian EFL male and female learners. To this purpose, 139 undergraduate English students (46 males and 93 females), with the age range of 22-32, were selected through a TOEFL test as the participants. To obtain the needed data, the instruments used were a 119-item Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire (MIDAS) to assess the participants’ intrapersonal intelligence, and a 30-item grammar TOEFL test to the measure their grammar ability. The obtained data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and linear regression. The difference between male and female students in grammar ability and intrapersonal intelligence was determined by independent samples t-test. The results indicated a statistically significance relationship between intrapersonal intelligence and English grammar ability scores. The results also revealed no significant difference between male and female students in terms of intrapersonal intelligence and English grammar ability. The findings of this study may assist language teachers, policy makers and curriculum designers to consider the role of intrapersonal intelligence as a helpful construct in learning English grammar.

Free riding behavior or not contributing equally in group work, is a common obstacle in many cooperative activities in language learning. The present study aimed at comparing male and female EFL learners' attitude and their free riding tendency to use the benefits of lowering free riding behaviors in order to make group work more influential in language learning. To this purpose, 140 intermediate and upper intermediate Iranian EFL learners and 30 teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to investigate the topic. The obtained results revealed that the female learners act better in reducing free riding behaviors. The results further revealed a positive perception of interpersonal activities at both level of language proficiency-- intermediate and upper-intermediate. Actually, the obtained results showed that the intermediate group (males and females) acted more positively than the other group in this respect. The findings of the study bear some implications and suggestions for scholar interested in the topic of this.

This study aimed to investigate collaborative reading in reading sessions among young Iranian EFL learners. It actually was an attempt to examine the process and components of collaborative reading which are expected to improve young learners’ reading ability in the English language. To this purpose, a group of second year Iranian EFL young learners at a primary school in Tehran together with their teachers participated in the study. The young learners were around eight years old. The duration of the study was 12 weeks. Since the study was qualitative in nature, teachers’ reflective journals, a number of observations and face-to-face interviews with teachers were used as instruments to collect the needed data. The analysis of the qualitatively-elicited data presented a in so far as reading processes and reading comprehension enhancement through collaborative deeper understanding of the importance of the process and components of collaborative reading. In fact, the findings revealed that collaborative reading promote young EFL learners’ reading performance. Thus, the study has practical implications for both teachers and young EFL learners reading in terms of reading performance enhancement.

This study was an attempt to examine the effects of direct (DCF), indirect (ICF) and metalinguistic (MCF) written corrective feedback and the types of responses (i.e. + /– revision) on the perception of present/past perfect tenses by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. A pretest-posttest design was utilized to conduct the study with 210 intermediate EFL learners who were randomly selected based on their scores on Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). They were assigned to 7 groups, each including 30 participants: DCF+ Revision, DCF – Revision, ICF + Revision, and ICF – Revision, MCF + Revision, and MCF – Revision, and a control group. All students were asked to take a multiple-choice test (i.e. perception test) as a pretest and a posttest. After administering the pretest and imparting the relevant treatment, the posttest was administered. Results indicated that all experimental groups improved their knowledge of past/present perfect tenses from the pretest to the posttest, the ‘DCF + Revision’ group outperformed all other groups, all of the groups doing revision (i.e. DCF / ICF / MCF + Revision) outperformed their counterparts without revision (i.e. DCF / ICF/ MCF – Revision), and the only groups whose scores were not significantly different were the ‘ICF + Revision’, ‘DCF – Revision’, and ‘MCF – Revision’ groups. The findings provide insights into new ways of helping students to improve their L2 writing skills in general and specifically teaching grammatical structures through effective combinations of written corrective feedback and follow-up revision.

The need for a strong educational system is felt more than ever due to globalization. In this respect, teacher agency has an important role in educational change. This qualitative meta-study, therefore, addressed the attitude of the teachers towards agency and the way they enact agency to facilitate learning process. To this purpose, the needed data were gathered from the narrative of life, professional history and class observations of five English teachers in Iranian context. Then, based on the Grounded Theory Approach, the data were analyzed and the obtained results showed that teachers’ pre-teaching and during teaching processes were made up of complex relationships among different resources; that is, teachers’ life ideology (their perception towards themselves and their job) and financial status. At the same time, the results revealed that teachers’ instruction experiences highly affect both their magnification of agency and their decision-making processes. It was further seen that agency was not stable at all, meaning that social factors and environmental conditions played important roles in shaping teacher’s agency.

Student evaluation apprehension as one of the detrimental factors in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, reduces and gradually diminishes student participation in classroom activities, since learners are mostly concerned with how others (teacher and classmates) evaluate/judge their performance. Due to the fact that the studies considering the important role of student evaluation apprehension are scarce in number, this study was conducted to validate the newly-designed questionnaire via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and find the relationship between student evaluation apprehension and academic achievement, gender, and educational level of 258 EFL students. The results from EFA, CFA, and reliability analyses revealed that the new questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument measuring EFL students’ evaluation apprehension. Moreover, a significant negative correlation was observed between student evaluation apprehension and academic achievement. Besides, it was found that females experience evaluation apprehension more than males, and BA students were also found to have more evaluation apprehension than their MA counterparts.

Although Diagnostic Classification Models (DCMs) were introduced to education system decades ago, it seems that these models were not employed for the original aims upon which they had been designed. Using DCMs has been mostly common in analyzing large-scale non-diagnostic tests and these models have been rarely used in developing Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) from scratch. Despite the prevalence of retrofitting CDA studies, true applications of CDA are believed to be rare since, firstly, a coherent framework to conduct such studies had not been available and, secondly, researchers were not able to analyze various DCMs according to the same model fit indices and criteria. This paper presents a summary of different types of DCMs and reviews true and retrofitting CDA studies. Having examined the limitations of previous CDA studies, the present study argues for the implication and application of Ravand and Baghaei’s (2019) framework to conduct true CDA studies. This framework is of importance since not only does it fit into prominent frameworks in education assessment such as Cognitive Design System and Assessment Triangle, but also it can provide test-developers with practical steps in conducting valid cognitive diagnostic tests.

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) assume different roles amongst which is leadership. To lead effectively, they need to possess some significant awareness of the language in order to adequately respond to learners’ needs. One domain of awareness is the ability to distinguish between structurally similar, yet semantically different structures. This study set out to assess ESL teachers’ level of semantic awareness in view of establishing their readiness to meet learners’ needs within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The Follow-up Explanatory Research Design was used. Data on the cognitions of ESL teachers were elicited from a questionnaire survey while a test was used to quantify ESL teachers’ language awareness levels in the domain of semantics. The quantitative data from the test were analyzed using frequencies and simple percentages while the qualitative data were analyzed using the framework of Content Analyses. The findings reveal that though ESL teachers overestimate the level of their knowledge base in components that have a bearing on semantics awareness, a majority of them do not wield beyond a fundamental level of awareness as concerns applying that knowledge to differentiate the meanings of structurally similar pairs of sentences. It is therefore crucial for English language pre-service and in-service teacher training to seek ways of enhancing the professional knowledge base of ESL teachers especially in domains that are critical to establishing differences between pairs of sentences that tend to be similar.