درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The study aims at investigating the influence of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ perfectionism and anxiety on their Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in EFL classes. To do so, a set of questionnaires, namely “Willingness To Communicate” (MacIntyre et al., 2001), “Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety” (Horwitz et al., 1986) and “Multidimensional Perfectionism Scales” (Hewitt & Flett, 1991) were distributed among 120 (50 males and 70 females) Iranian EFL university students. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted to indicate the extent to which each independent variable (perfectionism and anxiety) could predict the dependent variable (WTC). The results showed that both EFL     students’ anxiety (B=-.586, p<.0.05) and their perfectionism (B=-.224, P<.0.05), had a significantly negative influence on their WTC in language classes. These two independent variables could explain .456 percent of the variance in the dependent variable (WTC).  The results of the study were discussed and the implications were made.

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n=21) were taught based on regular in-class writing instruction and the students in the experimental group (n=25) made use of blogs in addition to the traditional in-class writing instruction. The data were collected through administering a learner autonomy instrument, consisting of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective components, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the blog-mediated writing instruction contributed to enhancing learner autonomy of the participants. More specifically, the students who experienced blog-mediated writing activities showed improvement in metacognitive and cognitive components of learner autonomy. The findings offer significant implications for EFL teachers.

While some researchers have questioned the efficacy of corrective feedback (CF), other researchers believe that CF can be effective if implemented through new technology types, including e-portfolio (EP). However, whether EP can be used as a medium of providing CF for language learners at different levels of language proficiency is still unknown. The purpose of the present study, therefore, was twofold: (a) to examine the writing performance of EFL learners across three levels of language proficiency receiving direct corrective feedback (DCF) via EP, and (b) to investigate which language proficiency group benefits more from DCF provided via EP. For the purposes of the present study, sixty (60) Iranian EFL learners who were divided into three levels of language proficiency at Sharif language center in Tehran, Iran participated in this study. The results of data analysis showed statistically significant differences for two components of writing—content, and mechanics—between beginning and intermediate, and beginning and advanced language learners. The results also showed that the higher the language proficiency level of language learners, the more they benefit from the provision of DCF through EP. These findings suggest that EP may be a viable option to supply Iranian EFL learners across levels of language proficiency with DCF. The article concludes with a call for testing the threshold-level hypothesis that may exist for language learners to use EP.

This study explored both teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of teachers’ pedagogic strategies which may engender willingness to communicate (WTC) in an English as a foreign language class and the difference between their perceptions to detect how convergent or possibly how divergent these are. The project used a convenience sample of 300 students taking an intermediate English course and their teachers (N=60) in several English Language Institutes in Tabriz, Iran. The instruments included a Likert scale questionnaire on teachers’ pedagogic strategies and learners’ WTC completed by both teachers and learners. Based on the data collected from the questionnaires, it was revealed that the teachers and learners agreed on the role of teachers’ wait time in learners’ WTC but not on the other strategies such as motivating strategies, error correction strategies, and teachers’ congruence. The findings of the study have important implications for teachers in terms of reconsidering their pedagogic strategies to play their facilitating roles in engendering students’ WTC in the class. The results also have the implications for EFL teacher education in the new era of communication.

The use of Web 2.0 technology in language education has received much research attention quite recently. In an attempt to shed more light on the use of Google Docs as a kind of Web 2.0 technology in language learning, the purpose of the present study was to compare the effects of online collaborative writing using Google Docs and collaborative writing in a face-to-face classroom on the writing performance and writing self-regulation of EFL learners. A sample of 38 homogeneous intermediate learners was recruited as the participants who were then randomly divided to an experimental group (N= 19) and a control group (N= 19). The participants of the experimental group received online collaborative writing using Google Docs while the control group received collaborative writing in the face-to-face classroom. Two timed-writing tasks and the Second Language Writing Self-regulation (SLWS) scale were administered to gather the data. The results obtained from performing paired-samples t-tests and ANCOVA revealed that collaborative writing both via using Google Docs and in the face-to-face classroom significantly enhanced the writing performance and writing self-regulation of the participants. However, the gains experienced by the experimental group were significantly higher than those experienced by the control group. Pedagogical implications for Google Docs supported collaborative writing are finally discussed.

هدف از پژ وهش حا ضر مقایسه ی تا ثیر سه شیوه آ موزشی واژگان :شیوه تدریس اجزا ء سا زنده واژ ها ، فلش کارت و استفاده از شیوه سر نخ های متنی بر یاد سپاری بلا فا صله و با تأ خیر واژگان دانش آ موزان پا یه سوم دبیر ستان های ایران است.به همین دلیل نود دانش آ موز در این پژ وهش شر کت نمو دند که مشغول تحصیل در مدارس تبریز بودند.برای اطمینان از همگن بودن آن ها ، آزمون پت به آ ن ها داده شد ، بر پایه نتا یج بدست آ مده بیست نفر از هر کلاس انتخاب شدند و این سه کلاس دست نخورده به صورت تصا د فی در سه گروه آ موزشی قرار گر فته اند. ابتدا به عنوان پیش آزمون شصد واژه به عنوان پیش آ زمون به آن ها داده شد که چهل تا از آ ن ها نا شنا خته برای دانش آ موزان بودند، هر کلاس تحت تدریس یک شیوه قرار گر فت ، و آ موزش های لازم داده شد .برای فهمیدن تأثیر هر شیوه تدریس در آ خرین جلسه پس آ زمون متشکل از چهل واژه داده شد و بعد از چهار هفته پس آ مون با تا خیر داده شد و نمرات بدست آمده با استفاده از آ مون انو وا مقایسه شد .نتا یج بدست آ مده نشان داد که تا ثیر سر نخ های با فتی بر یادگیری واژ ها بیشتر از شیو های دیگر است .نتا یج بدست آمده مفید برای اساتید زبان ،دانش آ موزان ، مدارس و دانشگا ها است

Emotion and cognition are both considered influential factors in language learning. In this study, the role of "emotioncy" (which is a combination of emotion and frequency) in the cognitive load and sentence comprehension of a group of language learners was examined. Emotioncy includes emotions that are evoked by the senses. To this aim, 200 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were asked to fill out the NASA Task Load Test, a sentence comprehension test, and an emotioncy scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was run to measure the construct validity of the emotioncy scale. Subsequently, Pearson Product-Moment correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to analyze the data. The results showed that emotioncy has a significantly negative and positive relationship with cognitive load and sentence comprehension, respectively (p