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Showing 17 results for Iran
Reza Ghafar Samar, Mansooreh Amiri,
Volume 11, Issue 1 (3-2008)
Abstract
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.
Mohammad Hossein Keshavarz, Soroor Ashtarian,
Volume 11, Issue 1 (3-2008)
Abstract
The present study investigated the relationship between the reading comprehension of three types of text and the gender of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, several reading passages with the same length and readability were selected based on which a reading comprehension test was constructed on three different text types namely essay, history, and short story. After determining the validity and reliability of the reading comprehension test, it was administered to 62 male and female students who were at the same level of language proficiency based on their scores on the TOEFL Test. A one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the data, the results of which indicated that male and female EFL learners differ in their reading comprehension ability with females being better comprehenders of English passages. The results of a two-way ANOVA also showed that both males and females are better at comprehending essays followed by history and short story, i.e. different types of text are understood differently regardless of the gender of the subjects. The findings are interpreted to have direct implications for EFL teachers and instructors as well as syllabus designers and test developers.
Hamid Marashi, Layla Baygzadeh,
Volume 13, Issue 1 (3-2010)
Abstract
This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of fostering cooperative learning on EFL learners’ overall achievement. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 56 female students of Saba Language School in Tehran were selected from a total number of 90 based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET) and randomly put into two experimental and control groups. The same content was taught to both groups throughout the 24-session treatment. The only difference was that the experimental group was taught through communicative language teaching with the use of cooperative learning activities, which consisted of the three-step-interview, think-pair-share, paired annotations, round robin, and learning together, while the students in the control group were taught through the communicative language teaching approach without the cooperative teaching procedure. An achievement posttest within the content taught was given to the students in both groups at the end of the instruction and the mean scores of both groups on the test were compared through an independent samples t-test. The result showed the rejection of the null hypothesis thus concluding that cooperative learning had a significant effect on the overall achievement of Iranian EFL learners.
Mahmood Reza Atai, Maryam Nasseri,
Volume 13, Issue 2 (9-2010)
Abstract
Informal fallacies of argumentation as pitfalls of reasoning appear frequently in students' written texts, specially EFL / ESL Learners' argumentative essay writings. The present study examines whether gender could be considered as a determining factor influencing Iranian advanced EFL learners' argumentative writings with regard to informal fallacies of argumentation. The corpus comprised of argumentative essays written by 120 Iranian male and female English language learners. The participants’ age and discipline were also included as independent variables. Nine major categories of informal fallacies were examined in learners’ texts and the observed frequencies were analyzed using MANOVA. The results of the Multivariate Tests for all independent variables and /or their interactions indicated no significant differences for the overall informal fallacies. However, three separate instances of differences were observed. Finally, the findings of the present are discussed in relation to the previous literature and some implications of the study are suggested.
Ali Rahimi, Ali Soltani,
Volume 14, Issue 1 (3-2011)
Abstract
This study investigated the probable relationship between Iranian EFL learners' language proficiency and intercultural sensitivity. It also looked into the feasibility of enhancing their intercultural sensitivity through actual classroom training. To this end, 36 male and female college seniors were randomly selected from two classes after being homogenized. The participants were required, initially, to complete an Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS).They, then, attended a half-a-semester-long intercultural sensitivity training course and completed the same scale once again at the end of the semester. The data obtained through pre-test and post-test were subjected to some statistical techniques such as the Wilcoxon Signed-rank test and the Chi-square test. The results of data analysis indicated that intercultural sensitivity training promoted Iranian EFL students’ intercultural sensitivity level significantly and that there exists a statistically significant relationship between students’ language proficiency and intercultural sensitivity. This study in turn confirms the possibility of teaching intercultural sensitivity and is hoped, if generalized nationwide, to enrich foreign language teaching. It can also encourage ELT practitioners to give due weight to intercultural competence as a crucial component of modern language education.
Vahid Rahmani Doqaruni, Baqer Yaqubi,
Volume 14, Issue 1 (3-2011)
Abstract
This study focuses on the use of communication strategies in teacher talk. While previous studies have presented communication strategies largely from an outside researcher's perspective, the aim in this paper is to move the focus to that of classroom contexts, especially EFL teaching contexts. Furthermore, it is argued that communication strategies should also be studied in the situated talk of the classroom teacher, and not just second language learners. Showing some examples from our database, we underscore the crucial role these devices play in classroom interaction. The participants were five non-native Iranian teachers. The data consisted of a total of fifteen recordings, made up of three lessons for each teacher. The detailed examination of the database revealed that the teachers in the study made frequent use of different types of communication strategy in their talk with students and these strategies were potentially an important aspect of teacher talk. The most important implications of this finding are that, first, an extended concept of communication strategies that moves beyond learners to include teachers' communication strategies should be taken into account and, second, developing these strategies are necessary for effective L2 communicative language use.
Fahimeh Marefat, Musa Nushi,
Volume 15, Issue 1 (3-2012)
Abstract
This pseudo-longitudinal study adopted typical-error and corrective feedback approaches to investigating interlanguage fossilization. The errors in the argumentative essays of 76 Iranian EFL learners within and across three proficiency levels were identified and classified using the model proposed by Gass and Selinker (1994). The learners were first provided with implicit and then explicit feedback to see if the two feedback types would improve written production, and if there were errors that persisted. The results indicated that word choice, plural, word form and article “the” were the most frequent types of errors, with word choice topping the list. The results also showed that, although providing learners with feedback could lead to a reduction in errors, explicit feedback was a more effective strategy. However, the t-test results demonstrated that the short-term impact of feedback could not be sustained over time, a finding congruent with those of Truscott (2007) who questioned the efficacy of error correction. Moreover, the findings revealed that the error categories of pronoun, word order, passive and possessive were likely candidates of fossilization because, although for all the other error types implicit feedback could be beneficial, these showed resistance to correction and needed explicit feedback to be eliminated.
Mohammad Ahmadi Safa,
Volume 16, Issue 1 (3-2013)
Abstract
The development of different sub-competences of second/foreign language is affected by a variety of cognitive, personal, and social factors (Ellis, 1994). As for personal factors, a wide range of emotional variables have been incorporated into second language acquisition (SLA) studies however, emotional intelligence (EQ) is relatively new to this domain (Pishghadam, 2009). Given that EQ seems to affect EFL learners' interlanguage pragmatic competence (ILP) development due to the face-threatening nature of some of the speech acts involved and in an attempt to explore the nature of the tentative interrelationship, the researcher administered the Bar-On EQ-i (1996) questionnaire as an EQ measure, two ILP competence tests, and a TOEFL test to 52 Iranian EFL majors. The analyses results did not reveal any significant correlation between EQ, ILP competence and general English proficiency despite the evident strong correlation between the ILP and general English proficiency. Furthermore, the results did not feature EQ as an effective predictor of EFL learners' general English proficiency and ILP competence development level. The findings imply that EQ as a seemingly construct irrelevant factor to EFL learners' both foreign language proficiency and ILP development might not be rightly considered as an effective personal variable in EFL educational contexts.
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Volume 17, Issue 1 (4-2014)
Abstract
Despite their widespread popularity and rapid growth, the Internet-mediated English educational materials for learners of English as a foreign/second language (FL/SL) have rarely been analyzed in terms of their potential hidden curriculum. Accordingly, the present study aims to address this need through conducting a CDA investigation into some lessons which are randomly selected from an English educational website called “Englishcentral.” Adapting, expanding, and adopting some elements of Van Leeuwen’s (2008) Social Actor Network, the researchers attempt to describe and explain the representation of “Iran” in Englishcentral. Investigating and thematizing the research data revealed that the keyword “Iran” was used in this website to refer to three groups of social actors, namely the Iranian government and officials, Iranian people, and Iranian people and/or government/officials. The way these social actors are associated and dissociated, activated and passivated, personalized and impersonalized creates remarkable findings which give support to the presence of particular hidden agenda in this program. In all, the results of this study reveal that the Iranian social actors are portrayed unfavorably in Englishcentral, which is an alleged English educational program.
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Volume 17, Issue 2 (9-2014)
Abstract
This paper provides a fairly detailed corpus-based vocabulary profile of the Iranian EFL books used in public schools. To this end, the WordPerfect files of all the seven books were converted to text format to get rid of the formatting features and be compatible with the software used for analysis. The software tools used were the Compleat Lexical Tutor suite, version 6.2 (Cobb, 2011), AntConc (Anthony, 2012), and AntWord Profiler (Anthony, 2012). The output of the analysis included general counts of words in Iranian school books at different levels, the frequent function and content words, frequent n-grams, frequent metalinguistic words, the coverage of several well-known, corpus-based word lists in these books, the range of the words across the books, and the amount of vocabulary recycling. The paper discusses the vocabulary representativeness and recycling and the adequacy of exposure to English in these EFL books. Detailed word frequency tables as well as some practical implications of the quantitative results constitute important features of this article.
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Volume 19, Issue 1 (4-2016)
Abstract
This paper takes a critical look at the news reports of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia on Mina stampede. Previous studies have indicated that media discourse contributes to public opinion and ideology. Little, however, has been mentioned on how variation in media discourse affects the process. This study analyzed 24 news reports from the two countries from 24 to 31 September 2015 using the components of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The results indicate differences in the reports from the two countries in using variation patterns which in turn have the potential of changing and monitoring readers` ideologies through influencing their opinions on the nature of power relations and interactional structures. The paper tries to contribute to the area of research on media discourse and ideology construction by arguing that discourse variation has not been sufficiently theorized. An attempt will also be made to offer a tentative theorization of such variation
Ali Akbar Jabbari, Mohammad Omid Mohammadi, Ali Mohammad Fazilatfar,
Volume 20, Issue 2 (9-2017)
Abstract
| This paper focuses on the impact of an asynchronous online discussion forum on the development of students’ ability in and attitudes toward writing in English. Two groups of third-year students (N = 60) majoring in English were assigned to two treatment and control groups, each receiving different types of feedback. Students in the treatment group were required to participate in an online learning environment and exchange feedback with their peers, whereas students in the control group received the traditional face-to-face feedback provided by the teacher. The results of a pre-test, a post-test, and a survey revealed that students’ writing in the treatment group significantly improved, both semantically and syntactically, and they expressed more positive attitudes toward writing. The findings also indicated that as a result of engaging in the asynchronous online discussion forum and exchanging feedback with peers, students exhibited more control over their work, involved more effectively with the learning tasks, collaborated more with their classmates, and employed self-assessment strategies to independently revise or rewrite their work. The implications of the study offer guidelines to improve and facilitate writing skill in EFL contexts. |
Mohammad Khatib, Fattaneh Abbasi Talabari,
Volume 21, Issue 2 (9-2018)
Abstract
| This study aimed, firstly, to investigate the underlying components of Iranian cultural identity and, secondly, to confirm the aforementioned components via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. In order to achieve these goals, the researchers reviewed the extensive local and international literature on language, culture and identity. Based on the literature and consultations with a group of 30 university undergraduate and post graduate learners English language learners and a cadre of four university professors in the field of sociology, an Iranian EFL Language Learners’ Cultural Identity Model with six components (Nationality, Religion, Arts, Persian Language and Literature, Media, and Globalization) was hypothesized. In order to test and validate the model, a questionnaire was developed. To probe the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s Alpha was used. The reliability of all the items in the questionnaire was 0.78. To estimate the construct validity of the model, Exploratory Factor Analysis using PCA was performed, which indicated five components (Religion, Arts, Persian Language and Literature, Media, and Globalization) underlying Iranian Cultural Identity. Then, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis through AMOS 22 was performed to test the model and the interaction among the components. The SEM results confirmed the existence of five factors. Finally, statistical results are discussed and implications are provided. |
Leila Hassanzadeh, Saeideh Ahangari, Nasrin Hadidi Tamjid,
Volume 23, Issue 1 (3-2020)
Abstract
In educational psychology, mindsets refer to a set of core beliefs about intelligence and its role in successful learning in a specific domain. This study investigated the extent to which, the EFL learners’ mindsets might predict their English achievement considering the mediating roles of engagement and self-regulation. The data were collected by means of three questionnaires: The Language Mindset Inventory (LMI), the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI), and the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), as well as the institutes’ reports on their English achievement. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the SPSS 20 and Amos 8 Software. The results revealed that there was a significant direct relationship between language mindsets and English achievement of the EFL learners. Besides, this relationship was significantly mediated by the learners’ engagement and self-regulation. Drawing on the findings of this research, the challenge for teachers is to cultivate in students the mindsets that emphasize growth and potentials rather than constraints and stagnation.
Hoda Divsar, Manoochehr Jafarigohar,
Volume 23, Issue 1 (3-2020)
Abstract
The present study investigated the educational objectives of the English literature curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels at Iranian universities based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Using a detailed checklist based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy and the respective classifications, the educational objectives associated with knowledge (factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive) and cognitive (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create) dimensions were analyzed. The results of the content analysis revealed the dominance of the lower-order thinking skills in the undergraduate curriculum and the prevalence of the higher-order thinking skills in the graduate curriculum. The results showed that the most frequent objective in terms of the knowledge domain was understand in both curricula. Regarding the knowledge dimension, conceptual and procedural knowledge occurred most often at both curricula, confirming that acquiring the knowledge of concepts and the processes safeguards the commended quality for the curriculum designers. Moreover, it was found that the metacognitive-related categories were almost missing from the categories. The results of the cross-tabulation revealed the superiority understand/conceptual in BA and the supremacy of understand/procedural in MA objectives. The findings entail the revisions of the educational objectives to accommodate critical thinking. The findings have pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, the curriculum developers, and policy makers.
Ali A. Ariamanesh, Hossein Barati, Manijeh Youhanaee,
Volume 23, Issue 2 (9-2020)
Abstract
This study compares three integrated tasks of the TOEFL iBT speaking subtest in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To this end, a group of TOEFL iBT Iranian candidates took a simulated TOEFL iBT some days prior to their real exam. The collected oral responses were first transcribed and then quantified using software such as ‘Syllable Counter’ and ‘Coh-Metrix3’ for fluency and complexity, respectively. For accuracy, however, the responses were tallied manually. The results revealed the responses to the three speaking tasks were significantly different in terms of fluency. The difference in the accuracy index also turned significant, though the pairwise comparisons showed some inconsistencies. As for the selected complexity measures, lexical diversity, the mean number of modifiers per NP, and latent semantic analysis all showed significant differences between tasks 2 and 3 on the one hand and task 4 on the other. Left-embeddedness, however, revealed no significant difference among the three tasks. The results may support the influential role of prompting texts in such integrated speaking tasks
Seyyed Mahdi Modarres Mosadegh, Mohammad Rahimi,
Volume 24, Issue 1 (3-2021)
Abstract
IELTS preparation courses have gained significant popularity in Iran in the past decade. Although teachers in such an exam-oriented context have started to use formative assessment to improve their writing instruction, their knowledge and beliefs about assessment for learning are still a myth. This mixed-methods study investigated Iranian IELTS teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about the four main aspects of formative assessment of writing in preparation courses for IELTS Writing task 2. Thirty-nine IELTS teachers provided answers to a 23-item questionnaire focusing on four areas: feedback, self-assessment, peer-assessment, and using assessment results for day-to-day classes, to illustrate how frequently they use such techniques. In the next stage, six of the teachers sat for an interview to provide their reasons for using/not using such techniques. The results showed that the teachers have good feedback literacy and make use of some self-assessment techniques such as rubric orientation while they did not value or know enough about how they can involve their students in their own learning process. The teachers seemed to overestimate their role in their students’ learning process while considering the students as somewhat incapable of monitoring their own progress and achievement, which is a crucial aspect of formative assessment. These findings have implications for teacher professional development and further formative assessment programs to be conducted in Iran.
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