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An overview of pedagogical interventions in the field of interlanguage pragmatics reveals the under-exploration of the processes in which changes in learners' second language (L2) pragmatic competence are established and that most of these investigations have focused on the product or final outcome of the learners' pragmatic development (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper, 1996; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006). This study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis of the microgenetic development of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' pragmatic knowledge of request speech act. A total of 140 male and female participants received instruction on request strategy types and internal and external modification devices for seven sessions (weeks) through consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks. The data were collected after instructional sessions during the first, third, fifth, and seventh weeks through discourse completion tests (DCTs). The results indicated that, in the course of time, the participants stopped using direct request strategies and employed conventionally indirect strategies more frequently in situations involving high-status interlocutors and high-imposition requests. Moreover, as time progressed, the learners became more preoccupied with pragmatic appropriateness rather than grammatical correctness. The results of the study suggest that C-R instructional tasks offer an effective means of teaching pragmatics. Considering request speech act, learners should become conscious of the significance of concepts such as status and imposition as well as internal and external modification devices in request formulation.

As the main part of a large-scale project, the present study investigated the relationship among reflective thinking, listening anxiety, and listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners with regard to their proficiency level. To this end, 223 (106 intermediate and 117 advanced) adult male and female Iranian EFL learners from a private language institute took part in the study by completing the Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ) developed by Kember et al., (2000), the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS) developed by Kim (2000) and a listening comprehension test selected from the listening part of IELTS. Using factor analysis and Chronbach’s Alpha, the questionnaires were revalidated and their reliability was re-estimated. The results of Pearson product moment correlations indicated there was a statistically significant: (a) positive association between reflective thinking and listening comprehension, (b) reverse correlation between listening anxiety and listening comprehension, and (c) reverse relationship between reflective thinking and listening anxiety of Iranian EFL learners. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analysis indicated listening anxiety, compared to reflective thinking, was a significantly stronger predictor of listening comprehension. Additionally, the results of MANOVA revealed there was a significant difference between intermediate and advanced EFL learners with respect to their reflective thinking and listening anxiety. In the light of the findings of the study, foreign language education policy makers in general and EFL teachers in particular are thus recommended to introduce ways to enhance reflective thinking of the students and decrease their listening anxiety if they are to improve their listening comprehension. The results and implications of the study are discussed in more detail in the paper.

Theoretically framed within Vygotskyan sociocultural theory of mind (SCT), Dynamic assessment (DA) is a new approach to classroom assessment offering mediation to help learners perform beyond their level of independent functioning. As a web-based qualitative inquiry into the nature of mediation in DA and its impacts on the participants’ private speech patterns, this study explored the role of private speech as a social and psychological tool to mediate learners' thinking and performance in online DA. The subjects of the study were two Iranian university students along with two English native speakers orally narrating a series of picture stories and having weekly DA mediation with the researcher via Skype. In the present study, the students' private speech markers’ typology emerged out of thematic analysis of oral narratives transcribed before and after DA mediation and it was presented as a criterion to evaluate the learners' progression towards self-regulation. The frequency of occurrence of the learners’ private speech markers was reported and interpreted based on the emergent typology to evaluate the possible changes in their use as the result of DA mediation. Meanwhile, the differences between native speaker participants and the learners’ use of private speech markers in oral narratives were highlighted and discussed. The results of the study indicated that mediation was effective in reducing the number of private speech markers in the learners' narratives after mediation which reflects their progression towards self-regulation in online DA. The findings of the study highlight the importance of private speech as a mediating tool in DA which reflects learners’ struggle to take control of direction of learning and move beyond their current capabilities.

Cognitive linguistics gives the most inclusive, consistent description of how language is organized, used and learned to date. Cognitive linguistics contains a great number of concepts that are useful to second language learners. If-clauses in English, on the other hand, remain intriguing for foreign language learners to struggle with, due to their intrinsic intricacies. EFL grammar books are paying focal attention to present explanations of if-clauses in terms of their form not meaning, hence not giving attention to their contextual meaning usage. Cognitive linguistic insights on if-clauses discuss their complexity in such a way that could be very beneficial for L2 learners. This study aims to investigate the effect of two different ways of teaching (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) on learning English if-clauses. A sample of 60 non-English postgraduate students in three groups, two experimental groups (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) and one control group participated in our study. The results indicated that participants from the cognitively-oriented group performed better than those in task-oriented and control groups and proved a higher degree of comprehending English if-clauses in different contexts. The findings have implications for curriculum and materials developers, as well as the English language teachers in incorporating insights from cognitive linguistics in second language materials.

The field of ELT is constantly witnessing the introduction of new instructional approaches: one such perhaps recent initiative is critical discourse analysis (CDA). Accordingly, the present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of CDA instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ descriptive and argumentative writing ability. To fulfill the aforementioned purpose, a sample TOEFL was primarily piloted among a group of 30 upper intermediate EFL learners by the researchers; with the acceptable reliability and item analysis indices achieved, then the researchers administered the test among another group of 90 upper intermediate learners. Ultimately, those 60 learners whose scores fell one standard deviation above and below the mean were chosen as the participants of the study and were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group with 30 participants in each. Both of these groups underwent the same amount of teaching time during 20 sessions which included a treatment of CDA instruction based on Jank’s (2005) set of 14 features for the experimental group. A posttest was administered at the end of the instruction to both groups and their mean scores on the test were compared through a multivariate analysis of variance. The result (F = 14.41 and p = 0.000 < 0.05) led to the rejection of the two null hypotheses raised in this study, thereby demonstrating that the learners in the experimental group benefited significantly more than those in the control group in terms of improving their descriptive and argumentative writing ability. Hence, the major pedagogical implication of this study is that CDA instruction can be effectively used to assist EFL learners improve their argumentative and descriptive writing ability.

تاکنون روند تهیه و تدوین مطالب اموزشی زبان از زوایای مختلفی بررسی گردیده است. برای مثال اهمیت تأثیر نگاه اجتماعی به طراحی و تدوین کتب آموزش زبان تأکید و بررسی شده است. هدف از نگارش این مقاله پرداختن به این مطلب است که ایا ایده تهیه و تدوین مطالب تا چه اندازه تحت تأثیر مک دونالدیزاسیون قرار گرفته است. مک دونالدیزاسیون در تهیه مواد آموزشی زبان را به عبارتی می توان این گونه تعریف کرد: تأثیرپذیری مطالب در واکنش به تغییرات اجتماعی و رابطه بین این تغییرات فراتر از سطح کلاس ارائه جزییات کامل در مورد شرایط کنونی ایران و عواقب به استعمار گرفتن مواد آموزشی زبان از دیگر اهداف این مقاله می باشد. برای پاسخگویی سوال مهم مطرح شده چگونگی رابطه مک دونالدیزاسیون و آموزش زبان سعی بر این بوده تا هر چه بیشتر تصویری واضح از شرایط مواد آموزشی و نحوه تدوین مواد آموزش زبان در ایران ارائه شود و اهمیت استانداردسازی أن که دغدغه بسیاری از اهالی این علم می باشد نشان داده شود. نتایج بررسی ها در این تحقیق حاکی از اهمیت حضور نوعی یکسان سازی مطالب در کلاس های آموزش زبان است. بررسی ها نشانگر این مطلب است که نقش معلم زبان به عنوان مصرف کننده مطالب در ایران نسبت به طراح مطالب در آموزش زبان ایران تأکید شده است. راه هایی همچون ارتقاء سطح کیفی معلمین و برگزاری کلاس ها و دوره ها و برنامه هایی برای پیشرفت هر چه بیشتر علمی انها نیز پیشنهاد شده است.

This study investigated the role of interactive output tasks in developing EFL learners’ vocabulary knowledge. The participants were 103 elementary female Iranian EFL learners who were randomly divided into three groups: input-only, input-output-no-interaction, and input-output-interaction. After all participants took a placement test and a vocabulary pretest, the input-only group was exposed to input tasks, while the other two groups received both input and output tasks with or without interaction. Then, all the participants took a vocabulary posttest. The results of ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis tests showed that the participants in both the input-output-no-interaction group and the input-output-interaction group outperformed the ones in the input-only group in the vocabulary posttest (in both the overall vocabulary test and in the productive vocabulary section). Moreover, the results of the t-test and the Mann-Whitney test revealed that the participants in the interaction and no-interaction groups performed similarly on both the overall vocabulary posttest and the productive vocabulary section. The findings of this study support the idea that output is a facilitative factor for the acquisition of L2 vocabulary and, specifically, productive vocabulary development. The results also suggest that both interactive and non-interactive output-plus-input tasks can lead to higher achievement in vocabulary knowledge compared to the input-only condition lacking output tasks

این مقاله گزارش پژوهشی است درباره رابطه میان هوش هیجانی گروهی از فراگیرندگان زبان انگلیسی ایران و انسجام نوشته های آنها. در راستاس این پژوهش یک آزمون توانش زبانی که شامل 40 پرسش چهار گزینه ای مربط به دستور زبان، لغت و درک متون انگلیسی بود و از پایایی با کرونباخ آلفای 742. برخوردار بود به تعدادی از فراگیرندگان زبان انگلیسی داده شد تا آن هایی که توانایی تولید متون نوشتاری معنادار را داشتند مشخص شوند. پس از آن مقیاس هوش هیجانی شات (شامل 33 پرسش) به شرکت کنندگان در پژوهش داده شد و نیز از آن ها خواسته شد تا مقاله ای کوتاه در مورد موضوعی مشخص بنویسند. از 110 نفری که آزمون توانش زبانی، پرسشنامه هوش هیجانی و تکلیف مقاله نویسی را گرفتند، 79 نفر به هر سه پاسخ دادند. 45 نفر از 79 نفر توانستند به بیش از 23 پرسش از 40 پرسش آزمون توانایی زبانی پاسخ دهند و از این رو پاسخ های آن ها به پرسشنامه هوش هیجانی و نوشته های آنها مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. برای ارزیابی عینی نوشته ها، از مقیاس انسجام متن کل نگر بامبرگ (1984) استفاده شد که دارای 5 درجه، از کاملا منسجم (4 امتیاز) تا غیرقابل نمره دادن (صفر امتیاز)، است. برای مشخص کردن ارتباط میان انسجام نوشته ها و هوش هیجانی نویسندگان از آزمون اسپیرمن استفاده شد. اما برخلاف انتظار پژوهشگران، رابطه میان دو متغیر مورد بررسی قوی و معنادار نبود.

The present study was aimed at examining concerns about the social effects of EFL learning, a challenging area of research which has not been discussed sufficiently. It tried to investigate the relationship between EFL learning and national identity. In addition, attempt was made to find a relationship between language motivation types and national identity. Furthermore, the role of two demographic variables, gender and age was examined. To this end, a sample consisting of 350 undergraduates studying at Allameh Tabataba'i University in Tehran took part in the study. A questionnaire on national identity and another one on language motivation types followed by an interview were the instruments used. The questionnaires had already been developed. However, there were some major modifications for the former which consisted of 30 items measuring national identity for all participants. The latter contained 42 items measuring language motivation types for only EFL learners. The Regression analysis, independent samples t-tests and a one-way ANOVA were run. The results revealed that claims over the harmful social effects of EFL learning were not arguably significant and it was found that among the eight language motivation types, going abroad and social responsibility were correlated with national identity. Furthermore, gender and age indicated significant differences among the participants' tendencies. The findings indicated that the social concerns about EFL learning are too pessimistic. So, materials developers, syllabus designers and teachers might consider the potentiality of some social elementsand demographic variables for the development of EFL learning.

One of the major criticisms leveled at task-based language teaching (TBLT), despite its countless merits, is developing fluency at the cost of accuracy. The post-task stage affords a number of options to counteract this downside through task repetition and task recycling. These two options are considered to positively affect learners' oral performance in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity (CAF). The purpose of the present study is to compare the relative effect of task repetition and task recycling on Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ oral performance in terms of CAF. To this end, eight intermediate EFL learners, randomly selected from 30 students in two classes of 15, took part in this study. The participants in both task repetition and task recycling groups were assigned to perform a total of eight tasks. Four of these tasks were identical in both groups. Each session included one task plus its second performance, namely repetition for the first group and recycling for the second. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used to statistically analyze the recorded data of learners' performances on all eight occasions in terms of CAF. The results revealed a significant effect of task repetition on all three measures of performance while task recycling did not prove to have a significant effect except for fluency. On the level of between-group differences, task repetition was found to be dominant outweighing task recycling in all three measures of oral performance. Task repetition is hence advised to be incorporated in teaching English, particularly in EFL contexts as a viable tool to hone learners’ oral performance on CAF.

این پژوهش به بررسی تأثیر میزان انگیزه ی یادگیری زبان انگلیسی، میزان تماس با زبان انگلیسی و مدت اقامت برروی مهارتهایِ منظورشناسی دانشجویان کُره ای در مقاطع تحصیلات تکمیلی پرداخته است. در این مطالعه تلاش گردید تا سیر متمایز پیشرفت مهارتهایِ منظورشناسیِ 50 دانشجوی کُره ای تحصیلات تکمیلی در ارتباط با عوامل ذکرشده در نظر گرفته شود. داده های لازم، با استفاده از سه ابزار تحقیق، جمع آوری گردیدند: یک پرسشنامه ی کتبی بمنظور کسب اطلاعات زمینه ای، یک آزمون تکمیل گفتمان، و یک نیم آزمون رویکرد/انگیزش. همچنین، از آمار توصیفی و تفصیلی برای تحلیل مجموع داده ها استفاده گردید. نتایج پژوهش حاضر آشکار ساخت که: الف) ارتباط متوسط و مثبتی بین میزان انگیزش و دانش منظورشناسیِ فراگیران زبان انگلیسی بعنوان زبان دوم وجود دارد و ب) میزان تماس با زبان دوم (انگلیسی) و طول مدت اقامت تأثیری ضعیف و غیر معناداری برروی دانش منظورشناسیِ شرکت کنندگان این مطالعه داشته است.

Teacher questions are claimed to be constitutive of classroom interaction because of their crucial role both in the construction of knowledge and the organization of classroom proceedings (Dalton Puffer, 2007). Most of previous research on teachers’ questions mainly focused on identifying and discovering different question types believed to be helpful in creating the opportunities for learners’ interactions. Drawing on conversation analysis through adopting socio-cultural perspective, this study, however, aims to examine how EFL teachers manage understanding-check questions in their talk-in-interaction. For this purpose, six EFL teachers’ discursive classroom practices were observed, video-recorded, and transcribed line-by-line in its entirety. Through the microanalysis of the transcribed data, our findings suggest that EFL teachers vary in their management of understanding-check questions and the teachers’ understanding-check questions tend to serve different functions in the different micro-contexts identified. Three major sequential environments emerged to feature understanding-check questions in this study: Activity-boundary environment, post-instruction environment and within-activity environment. The findings of the study indicate that understanding-check questions at activity boundary environment are designed to accomplish dual functions, however those launched in post-instruction and within-activity environments maintain a singular focus on ensuring absolute understanding of the just-given explanation or instruction.

This study examined the Iranian EFL learners’ multicultural developmental trend in light of Investment Hypothesis as they furthered their academic studies from BA toward postgraduate levels. In so doing 117 BA, 92 MA, and 35 Ph.D. EFL students at AllamehTabataba’i University, Tarbiat Modarres, and Islamic Azad Universities, Tehran, Iran, were randomly selected to provide answers to Multicultural Personality Traits Questionnaire (MPQ) that measures individuals’ Multicultural Personality Traits (MPTs: Cultural Empathy, Open-Mindedness, Social Initiative, Emotional Stability, and Flexibility). Ph.D. students’ MPTs mean was found to be 277.77; MA students’ MPTs mean score was 272.20; and BA students’ MPTs mean score was 267.96. The ANOVA conducted revealed that EFL Iranian students’ MPTs improved as they furthered their academic career from BA to MA and from MA to Ph.D. levels. The study concluded that advancement in EFL students’ academic career resulted in a concomitant development in their MPTs and among the five MPTs, cultural empathy and social initiative were found to have been significantly improved at Ph.D. level. Among the MPTs, Social initiative provides the highest contribution to social interactions and its significant development at Ph.D. level is confirmatory of the discursive-constructionists’ approach to L2 learning.