Facilitation

This study tried to find out what factors underline the characteristics of acquisition of English language in EFL classrooms. To this end, the Characteristics of English Language Acquisition Scale (ELAS) consisting of 41 items was designed by the researchers of this study and administered to 388 pre University Iranian EFL students at various private and public schools in Neyshabour and Zebarkhan. Factor analysis was run to determine the number of factors underlying the scale. The application of Principle Axis Factoring and rotating the extracted factors showed that the characteristics loaded acceptably on twelve factors underlying the learners’ EFL acquisition, i.e., learning boosters, facilitation, determination, voluntary, teaching methodology, affective factors, attitudes toward foreign speakers and their culture, learner engagement, adjustment, enhancement, teachers' output and individual differences. The results are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of web-based games on facilitating and enhancing reading and writing skills in learning English vocabulary. The research employed a pre-test and post-test experimental design with a control and an experiential group. Thirty-six elementary students at fourth, fifth, and sixth grades from the west of Tehran were selected as the participants who were randomly assigned to research groups. The experimental group used web-based games. Then, a checklist developed by the researchers was used to assess learning and facilitation in the two groups. Having examined the differences between the experimental group and control group by removing the pretest factor and by controlling the effect of the pretest, the study showed a significant difference in posttest (P <0.05 and F = 32.79) between the two groups. As a result, the hypothesis that educational intervention (web-based games) had a significant effect on reading and writing scores was confirmed with 95% confidence. The following results were obtained from statistical analyses: (a) Web-based learning has a significant effect on facilitating the learning of English vocabulary; and (b) Web-based learning has a significant effect on improving reading and writing skills. Therefore, the findings of this study show that using web-based games can be effective in facilitating and increasing reading and writing skills in learning English vocabulary.