درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This article reports on a study of interaction amid beginners with the use of the technological resource WhatsApp . Its major objective was to analyze online oral negotiated interaction characteristics, using mainly WhatsApp audio-recorded messages, but also multimodal interaction (text, images, GIFs, emoticons, etc.). It was a qualitative, interpretive, and exploratory case study applied to 33 participants from a public technical school in Brazil, in which participants were in the first year of High School. The analysis revealed that negotiated interaction was the main component of interaction, although in a different sense if related to the theoretical framework held in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Therefore, this study added a discussion on interaction in SLA, which considered the peculiarities of the online oral negotiated interaction among beginner learners of English using WhatsApp . The interpretive findings discussed in this article may enlighten pedagogical practices in SLA as well as broaden possibilities in terms of activities development to work on online oral interaction amongst beginners, with the aid of technological resources. Finally, this study may serve the purpose of promoting reflections on SLA theories about interaction.

Context is a vague notion with numerous building blocks making language test scores inferences quite convoluted. This study has made use of a model of item responding that has striven to theorize the contextual infrastructure of differential item functioning (DIF) research and help specify the sources of DIF. Two steps were taken in this research: first, to identify DIF by gender grouping via logistic regression modeling, an inventory of mostly cited DIF sources was prepared, based on which a list of demographic items was appended to the TOEFL reading paper only to be administered to the intermediate Iranian undergraduates; second, using multiple-variable matching regression (Wu & Ercikan, 2006), a built-in sequence was followed to let every potential DIF source be considered as a covariate, over and above the conditioning variable, and specify whether a particular ecological variable could reduce DIF value/status. Then, all significant variables were analyzed together to show the final DIF predictors. The same procedures, i.e., individual/collective analyses, were employed after the purification of the test. The results indicated three ecological predictors affecting DIF before and after purification: income, administration convenience, and SES. The ultimate predictors helped create an EFL configuration of the ecological model of item responding. The implications for validity arguments are also discussed.

The focus of the present study was to explore the effect of self-directed learning method on Iranian EFL students’ writing achievement in two levels of language proficiency (pre-intermediate and intermediate). It also attempted to find out if there was any significant difference between two groups of learners, control and experimental, in each level regarding their development of writing skill. In order to reach this goal, 30 male EFL learners that were selected based on random sampling, participated in this study. After the treatment was over, both groups in each level were given the post-test, the results of which were compared with pre-test results. Then, an independent sample t -test was run to find the effectiveness of two approaches to detect the differences among the means of the two groups in each level. The results of the present research indicated that the self-directed learning method had significant effects on the pre-intermediate and intermediate students’ performance of English writing ability. The results also indicated that there was a significant difference between the two groups of learners in each level regarding their development of English writing ability.

Condemning a laissez faire approach to English Language Teaching (ELT), English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher trainers unanimously agree that the building blocks of teachers’ teaching framework are profoundly influenced by conducting research. Focusing on quantitative research, this study endeavored to scrutinize the impact of the Critical Appraisal of Published Research (CAPR) in undergraduate teacher training programs on EFL teachers’ Data Analysis Knowledge (DAK). To this objective, 30 male and female EFL teachers were non-randomly selected and randomly assigned to two groups. In two Research classes, the experimental group received the CAPR whereas the control group received traditional teacher-centered instruction with summative assessment. The DAK section of the Quantitative Research Literacy (QRL) questionnaire was employed as the pretest and posttest. Subsequent to corroborating participants’ pre-treatment homogeneity in terms of DAK, analyzing the post-treatment data through running an independent-samples t-test, eta squared = .338 (representing a large effect size), indicated the existence of a significant difference in the post-treatment DAK scores between the two groups. The obtained results confirmed that the CAPR has a significantly better impact on EFL teachers’ DAK which is a key area of QRL. Therefore, it seems accurate to argue that ELT teacher training programs should endeavor to involve the students in a mentally engaging process, e.g. CAPR, where the content of the course is put into practice by the students, something which is required for balancing the concrete and the abstract.

Teacher education philosophy plays an important role in enhancing the teachers’ awareness of the practices particularly in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). This study meant to observe the possible effect of the awareness of teacher education philosophy on EFL teachers’ professional skill in the light of Kumaravadivelu’s postmethod parameters, tapping teachers’ gender, academic qualification, teaching experience, and age. Through a mixed-method approach employing the posttest-only equivalent-groups design, 60 EFL teachers from four language institutes in Isfahan, Iran, were randomly appointed to experimental and control groups. The philosophy of adult education inventory for treatment of experimental group and a book for placebo of control group were used. A questionnaire, an interview, and classroom observation checklist were tools for data collection. T-test, ANOVA, and Mann-Whitney tests exposed a significant difference between EFL teachers’ awareness of teacher education philosophy and their professional skill. Female teachers, bachelor holders, the most experienced teachers, and teachers in the third age range showed better perception of the teacher education philosophy. The implications derive education policy-makers to demarcate quality resources, teacher educators to modify training approaches, and EFL teachers to develop their professional related presentations.