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In order to investigate the relationship between aggressiveness and oral proficiency of Iranian EFL learners, first a TOEFL test was given to 100 EFL students in order to homogenize the sample. Out of this, 71 participants whose scores fell one standard deviation above and below the mean were regarded as intermediate and, therefore, interviewed. They were then asked to complete the Persian version of a validated aggression questionnaire. All the tape-recorded interviews were rated by two raters. Based on their scores on aggression questionnaire, the subjects were divided into two groups of aggressives and non-aggressives and the means of their scores in oral interviews were compared using t-test. Results of the t-test showed that, aggressive and non aggressive groups are different in their oral proficiency. Finally, the correlations between the two main variables and also between four subscales of aggression and all the components of oral proficiency were estimated to see exactly what the nature of the relationships is. Overall, the results of these calculations showed that aggression negatively affects oral proficiency of L2 learners. Moreover, verbal aggression and anger as different subscales of aggressiveness were found to have negative effect on the components of oral proficiency.

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The present study examines the impact of focused tasks on the development of Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. To this end, we compared the effectiveness of the dictogloss (DIG) as an output-based task and the consciousness raising (CR) as an input-based task in teaching English requestive downgraders. Prior to the experiment, 147 Iranian EFL learners participated in the study to develop the instruments. Also, 43 American native English speakers provided the baseline data for the construction of the recognition test and the instructional treatment.  We matched 60 Iranian EFL learners in two groups based on their scores on the Oxford Placement Test (2004). The groups were then randomly assigned to instructional conditions namely, the DIG and CR tasks. The instructional treatment continued for 8 sessions. The results revealed that neither the effects of instructional treatment nor the effects of time were significant between the groups on pragmatic measures. The findings also demonstrated that participants in both tasks preformed significantly better in the immediate and delayed posttests than in the pretest. Similarly, participants in both groups maintained the positive effects of the treatment in the delayed posttest on the production and perception measures. For the recognition measure, however, the participants in the DIG condition significantly fell to a lower level in the delayed posttest.