Issues in Language Teaching

The 5E Learning Cycle Model (Bybee, 1990) is an instructional design model which has roots in inquiry-based learning and constructivism and has received much support in non-EFL-related literature as a way to improve 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking and creativity, among students and to prepare them for an amazing occupational future. However, little work has been done on the model concerning English language students; hence, this study dealt with the effect of 5E-based online activities on English language students’ critical thinking and creativity. The study utilized a mixed method grounded theory method approach. A sample of 60 adult English language students studying in a pre-IELTS class at a private language academy took part in the study during a 12-session semester, in addition to an extra session at the beginning of the semester, in which they received instruction with regard to the platforms to be used, namely Easyclass and Nearpod. Student interviews and self-reflections, teacher interviews, self-reflections, and field notes were applied to extract qualitative data, and student self-assessment checklists were used to gain quantitative data. The analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data via an independent sample t-test, inductive thematic analysis, and grounded theory demonstrated that the employment of 5E-based online activities culminated in the improvement of EFL learners’ critical thinking and creativity. The findings have theoretical and practical implications not only for 21st-century language practitioners’ education and competencies but also for curriculum development.

The present paper examines the theory of conceptual metaphor, using the theoretical framework of the cognitive writing model to improve EFL learners’ writing creativity and metacognitive writing awareness. To that end, 120 male and female EFL Bachelor-of-Arts (BA) students majoring in English language from Foreign Languages Center at Islamic Karaj Azad University in Iran voluntarily participated in this research study. The participants were randomly assigned into two equal groups, with the experimental group receiving the cognitive instruction and the control group the traditional instruction. Using a two-way analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) procedure, the researchers assessed the posttest scores of both groups. The results of the analysis indicated that the experimental group significantly enhanced its scores in the posttest of metacognitive writing strategies and writing creativity compared to the control group. Findings suggest that writing is not drafting and rewriting prefabricated patterns, but it is a recursive and interactive process in which writers attempt to construct meaning and create original ideas using real-life experiences. Findings also imply that conceptual metaphors are powerful literary devices for improving EFL learners’ idea generation, writing creativity, and metacognitive writing awareness which deserve to be taught at universities.

There is ample research evidence indicating that task implementation options and design features differentially affect the linguistic quality of second language (L2) oral output. The overarching aim of the current research was to add to the available body of research findings by investigating what effects the combination of two task implementation options, namely pre-task planning and post-task transcription, exerts on L2 learners’ focus on form. The study involved sixty Iranian L2 learners who were presented with a picture story to be narrated under one of the following four conditions: pre-task planning (PTP), post-task transcription (PTT), both pre-task planning and post-task transcription (PTP/PTT), and control. Findings showed that while pre-task planning increased fluency and complexity, the anticipation of post-task transcription enhanced focus on form as indicated by more accurate performance. More importantly, pre-task planning along with the foreknowledge of post-task transcription of performance made for an exponential increase in accuracy, a gain which was achieved to the detriment of complexity. The outcomes are of pedagogical significance in that they lend support to the efficacy of using pre-task planning opportunity along with the anticipation of post-task transcription to elicit the highest accuracy level while learners are primarily concerned with conveying meaning.

Much of the research on the comprehension of passive sentences has targeted healthy adults, L1 acquirers and people with aphasia. However, a topic that lacks evidence is the comprehension challenges of EFL learners facing different passive structure types. Consequently, this study investigated the comprehension difficulty of different passive structures by 186 intermediate EFL learners. The participants’ task was to read a sentence and choose a corresponding answer in a multiple-choice format via a software application designed for this study. The answers were analyzed in terms of the comprehension accuracy and the reaction time. Compared with the passive sentences, the participants needed less time comprehending active sentences and had a higher success rate. The results suggested that different passive verb types (i.e., regular/irregular, action/state, double-object/single-object, negative/affirmative, and question/statement) imposed different degrees of comprehension challenge to EFL learners; passives with regular verbs (PR) were the least challenging and passives with double-object verbs (PDO) were the most demanding structures. It was also revealed that the participants’ comprehension of different passive structures was significantly different based on their reaction times. The study’s findings may be of insight for EFL instructors and material developers to possibly invest more time for the more challenging passive structures.

With the spread of English, the conception of English is currently changing into English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) worldwide. However, the form of English teaching and learning is still identified by reference to native-speaker norms. In response to the increasing use of ELF and an emergent need to describe it in various domains, the current study takes a preliminary step in linguistic analysis of the written mode of ELF. Adopting an exploratory case study, the morphological marking of third-person singular present tense main verbs, i.e., -s/es has been analyzed using the Written ELF in Academic Setting (WrELFA) corpus. The selected corpus included 82369 tokens. It was tagged by the LancsBox software, and all instances of variation were categorized into two groups: omission and addition of the suffix. The quantitative analysis revealed that most ELF writers conform to the grammatical rules of English simple-present tense, yet, there is a negligible amount (0.5%) of variation in the use of this suffix in a way that writers either drop it or overgeneralize it. Dropping the third-person singular suffix accounts for around half of the entire variety (56%), and overusing this feature accounts for the other half (44%). Moreover, through qualitative analysis, factors contributing to such variations were identified. The overall findings indicate that such minor grammatical errors shouldn't be overemphasized, as long as they do not hinder the reader's understanding. The results may contribute to constructing a framework for teaching ELF in general and English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) in specific.

Teachers have the power to change their students' lives for the better, therefore teachers should be armed with some skills to be effective. Reflective teaching as one of these skills empowers teachers to observe and evaluate themselves. Although research on reflective teaching has a long tradition, little is known about whether it could be a significant predictor of language teacher immunity and work motivation as two important factors determining the success or failure of teachers, particularly in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Thus, the present study aimed at examining the possible association among reflective teaching, language teacher immunity, and work motivation through path analysis. To this end, English Language Teacher Reflective Inventory (ELTRI), Language Teacher Immunity Instrument (LTII), and Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS) were administered to 320 Iranian EFL teachers. Data analysis revealed that teachers with higher reflective teaching practices are more immunized and motivated. Moreover, the significant role of language teacher immunity on work motivation was discovered. The implications of the present study may shed new light on the significance of incorporating reflective approach into teacher development programs as a core subject.

Task complexity has recently attracted great attention in second language (L2) studies. However, its potential impacts on learning transitional devices have not been considered. The current study was an attempt to analyze the impacts of manipulating task complexity conditions on EFL learners’ grammatical enhancement in terms of learning transitional devices through doing writing tasks. For this purpose, 75 intermediate EFL learners learning English in three English language institutes in Iran were randomly selected. They were assigned to four experimental groups and one control group (each with 15 participants). Each of the experimental groups was presented with a pretest, writing tasks, an immediate posttest and a delayed posttest. The participants took part in 9 sessions and in each session some transitional devices were introduced to the experimental groups with which they were supposed to write a paragraph based on a special topic using all those transitional devices. The different experimental groups received writing tasks with different complexity levels which were determined through the manipulation of factors including ± few elements and ± planning time. The participants in the control group just participated in a regular English class for 9 sessions without doing such tasks. The performances of all groups were analyzed, and the findings revealed statistically significant differences among the five groups in both the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest, after controlling for the effect of the pretest. The findings of the current study have practical implications for curriculum development and EFL writing instruction.

Abstract The necessity of using online education during the Coronal virus pandemic and the barriers created by the absence of face-to-face instruction has shifted the researchers’ focus to web-based instruction and assessment. In this regard, an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was selected to consider the effects of web-based dynamic assessment (DA) on learners' grammar accuracy, autonomy, and attitudes. To this end, a convenient sample of 60 male English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners was chosen and categorized into two groups of web-based dynamic assessment and a control group. The data collection tools were a pretest and posttest of grammar, a pretest and posttest of autonomy, and a semi-structured interview. The participants were exposed to web-based DA via a designed web based on the level and the students’ needs in grammar, whereas the learners in the control group learned the grammar through the traditional method of instruction. Based on the results of ANCOVA and Mann-Whitney U test, the learners’ grammar accuracy and autonomy mean scores in web-based DA increased compared to those of the control group. In addition, the results of interview showed that the learners had a positive attitude toward web-based dynamic assessment treatment. The results of the semi-structured interview with the experimental group verified the quantitative results. The platform and methods employed in this study suggest encouraging implications for the field of language instruction which will be discussed.

There have been a number of research concentrating on the request production of ESL/EFL, and native speakers. There have been some studies investigating the production of request speech act of EFLs and ESLs. However, no research has yet focused on the production differences of request speech act among Iranian EFLs and ESLs in terms of internal and external modification devices. First, the participants were given Oxford Placement Test (OPT) to determine their English proficiency level and 95 learners were chosen out of 123 ESLs and EFLs to respond to the scenarios adopted from Schauer (2009). Second, the scenarios were given to the participants via email or an already-made GoogleDoc link of the scenarios. The results of the independent t-test revealed that Iranian ESLs outperformed their EFL counterparts. The results regarding request head act, internal and external modifiers demonstrated that ESLs mostly applied conventionally indirect request strategies while EFLs mostly tended to apply direct request strategies. It was also revealed that requests produced by ESLs were more native-like with no or few grammatical mistakes and that both EFLs and ESLs utilized external modifiers more than internal modifiers. This study implies that due and sufficient attention is to be paid to EFLs since they lack sufficient exposure to L2 and such impoverished pragmatic input might result in inappropriate applications of speech acts in general and request speech act in particular.

This study compared the Discussion section of theses written by M.A. English L1 and L2 students regarding lexical sophistication. Certain linguistic features were applied to investigate whether texts written in English L2 had any similarities or differences with native speakers’ (NSs) texts. To achieve this, 20 English L2 theses authored by Iranian M.A. students of Islamic Azad University of Isfahan (Khorasgan), were sampled. As such, 20 English L1 theses written by M.A. English NSs of the same major in the US and UK were randomly downloaded as a comparison corpus of English L1. The corpora were later uploaded to Coh-Matrix that processes text and discourse at different levels of language. Two main statistical procedures for data analysis were the MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) and Discriminant Function Analysis. According to Coh-Metrix analysis, the results revealed certain similarities and differences between the corpora. Specifically, more CELEX content words were used in the NSs theses. However, the differences between the two corpora did not reach a statistical significance in terms of other indices of lexical sophistication (i.e., polysemy, concreteness, hypernymy, age-of-acquisition scores, and lexical diversity). Concerning these similarities and differences, academic writing pedagogy and theses writing abilities of Iranian English L2 learners can be improved by applying both word processing tools like Coh-Metrix, appropriate writing strategies and techniques according to the given results of current contrastive corpus study.

Despite the widely recognized significance of values education in a rapidly changing world and teachers’ education-related beliefs, little research has investigated how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers navigate values in their classrooms. The study reported in this paper explored in-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of values education and their conceptions of their moral roles, aiming to develop an instrument related to values education. To this end, this exploratory sequential mixed-methods study recruited 10 EFL teachers selected through maximum variation sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher participants and the data were analyzed inductively through thematic analysis. Furthermore, the existing literature and the insights gleaned from the initial phase of the study led to the development of a questionnaire, which was administered to 332 EFL teachers in the quantitative phase of the study. Six overarching themes were identified through thematic analysis of the interview data, namely relational values, personal growth, academic excellence, regulatory values, teachers’ personal standards and global values with teachers prioritizing students’ motivation and wellbeing over other value types. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis of the developed questionnaire verified a five-factor structure. Only 23 items out of 53 initial items were retained in the final version of the questionnaire. Overall, the results revealed that master obligation of teachers, associated with nurturing students’ dignity was prioritized over teachers’ prima facie obligation which promotes students’ learning and intellectual growth. After a detailed discussion, implications and suggestions for future research are presented in the end.

Motivation and affect as two salient variables in L2 development are no longer seen as the stable individual difference factors they were once believed to be. Influenced by process-oriented approaches and by increasing understanding of how the complex dynamic system theory (CDST) works, researchers have been emphasizing the holistic, non-modular, dynamic and changeable nature of motivation and affect to-date. Accordingly, this study utilized the principles underlying the CDST perspective to examine the interrelationships between Iranian EFL learners’ motivational and affective factors mediated by working memory and gender over an academic semester. To this end, 445 pre-intermediate male and female students completed the motivation questionnaire and L2 Enjoyment Scale four times with one-month intervals during an academic semester and Working Memory Scale once in the beginning of the term. Relationships that emerged indicated both motivational and affective stability and fluctuation over a semester of instruction at one month intervals. The findings also illustrated how these factors are inseparable from students’ learning context. Implications of study and directions for further research were also discussed.