مطالب

This study examined the effect of two types of feedback, post-text as a written feedback and recast as an oral one on written grammatical accuracy of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To this end, 45 intermediate students who were studying at Ideal Language Institute in Sari were selected based on their performance on the Nelson proficiency test, and then divided into three groups (two experimental and one control groups) randomly. As pretest, the participants were asked to write 150-200 words about the worst memory they had in their life. Then, they were exposed to 10 weeks of treatment. Each week, they received a topic to write. One of the experimental groups received post-text feedback and another one recast. Afterwards, the three groups sat for the posttest. The obtained results were compared using ANCOVA. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference between the post-test scores of the students in different groups. It was made clear that both treatments were effective on the reduction of students grammatical errors in writing, but post-text feedback was much more effective than recast.

The changing culture toward multimodality enforces acquiring visual literacy in every aspect of today’s modern life. One of the fields intermingled with using various modes in different variations is language teaching and learning, especially for and by young learners. Young language learners’ (5-12 years old) lack of world experience forces them to make the most use of non-verbal modes of communication to receive and send the intended message, enhanced in foreign language learning environment. As a result, the language teacher him/herself will be supposed to be armed with visual literacy of this new language and to have the ability to successfully transmit this knowledge to the students. The present study aims to investigate whether the three focused factors in educational semiotics; namely, Process of abduction, Principle of kinesics, and Proxemics- proposed by Sert (2006) exist in the curriculum of Iranian pre-service language teachers in one of the educational districts in Isfahan. By distributing two questionnaires among TTC course instructors and pre-service teachers, and obtaining the percentage of the analyzed data, the findings showed that the number of institutes which focus on the matter are rare. Also, it was revealed that the pre-service teachers, majoring in English Language, performed better in terms of realizing the meaning of body language units and comparing and contrasting them (principle of abduction). The results will be useful for future teachers and their educational curriculum in favor of enhancing the fifth language skill, foreign language visual literacy.