online courses

The current study aimed to find the relationship between personality traits and learning styles of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students across high, intermediate, and low levels of reading proficiency in online courses. To this purpose, 50 male and 50 female BA students were selected through convenient sampling from the executive management department at Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran. Their age range was 20 to 26 years. They were divided into three groups of high, intermediate, and low reading proficiency based on a simulated TOEFL CBT reading test. Their learning style and personality type were assessed through Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)-Form M and the Learning Style Inventory-3 (LSI3), respectively. Upon collecting the data from the MBTI, the LSI3, and the reading tests, the researchers coded the scores and used path analysis. The results showed that there were significant relationships among a number of the variables under investigation; especially extroversion was found to be an important personality trait affecting online reading proficiency and other variables. The results also showed that the extroversion trait had a positive significant relationship with high reading proficiency, while the thinking dimension resulted in low reading proficiency. Moreover, The participants who had the objective experience trait possessed a high ability in reading, and those who had the reflective observation trait were less proficient in reading.

The current study explored the effect of storytelling and translation techniques on learning proverbs among female Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in online classes, which came into vogue after corona pandemic, and the attitudes of the learners toward proverb learning. In order to do these, participants who were 30 female high school students studying in Iranshahr whose homogeneity as pre-intermediate learners was checked via the Nelson Proficiency Test were assigned to two groups: a storytelling group, and a translation group; each group containing 15 students. Treatment lasted seven sessions and it included 50 English proverbs chosen based on the frequency of their use in Google search. In each session, the participants of experimental groups were engaged in learning seven English proverbs. The translation group were presented with L1 equivalents of the proverbs; the storytelling group were presented with a funny story about each proverb. An attitude questionnaire and a test of proverbs were applied prior to and after the treatment. The results of the paired t-test indicated that both storytelling technique and translation were effective in improving learners’ knowledge of L2 (second Language) proverbs. The results of the t-test depicted that there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in the post-test. These findings have implications for material developers, L2 instructors, and L2 learners about the importance of the use of L2 proverbs.