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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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Following controversies over teaching communication strategies, the present study, first, examined the impact of language proficiency and extraversion/introversion on the use of communication strategies (hereafter CSs) by administrating communication strategy questionnaire developed by the researchers on the basis of Dornyei and Scott's (1997) Inventory of Strategic Language Devices and the Persian restandardized form of EPQ to 182 students at elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate levels in a private English Language Institute. The One-way ANOVA and independent sample t-test analyses were performed to examine the effects of language proficiency and extraversion/introversion on the use of CSs. The analyses of the data indicated that language proficiency does not influence the use of CSs and CSs favored by introverts are similar to those favored by extraverts they only differ in the use of a few strategies. Second, the impact of teaching CSs of circumlocution, appeal for help, time-stalling devices, and message abandonment on Iranian EFL elementary students' oral performance was investigated. Four intact classes were selected (3 as the treatment groups with 27 students and 1 as the control class with 20 students). Data were collected through video/tape recording of pre and post tests of picture description, telling a story, and telling a joke and CSs were identified on the basis of Dornyei and Scott's (1997) taxonomy of CSs. The Chi-square analysis of the findings revealed that teaching circumlocution, appeal for help, and time-stalling devices are pedagogically effective. 

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This small-scale study investigates (a) whether academic vocabulary compares in development with vocabulary breadth and depth for Iranian ESP/EAP learners and, if the answer is positive, (b) whether this trend of development happens across proficiency levels. Fifty-seven graduate students served as the subjects who were also divided into high and low groups based on whether they had acquired the most frequent 2,000 words. Multiple regression analysis results show much shared variance between breadth and depth tests, and academic vocabulary test for the participants as a whole group. Therefore, as learners’ vocabulary breadth and depth increase, so does their academic vocabulary. A similar finding is also observed for the high group and low group. However, the finding for the low group is contrary to our expectation. The results suggest more systematic vocabulary development for the high group, less for the participants as a whole group, and least in the low group. This investigation has some implications for language, and more particularly vocabulary, instruction for ESP/EAP purposes in Iran.
 

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Considering the future of the application of a dual explicit-implicit learning system to the L2 theory and research, Ellis (2006) argues that further investigation of the distinction is useful for modeling, understanding, and measuring second language proficiency. This study explored the differential accessibility of EFL learners' explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge to their language proficiency. The participants were 160 EFL graduate and undergraduate students at Shahrekord University (Iran). A test battery including a timed grammaticality judgment test (GJT), an untimed GJT, and a TOEFL was used to gather the data. A set of correlation coefficients was computed to explore the contributions of implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge to the TOEFL and its sub-components. The results showed that there was no statistically significant correlation between the EFL learners' implicit grammatical knowledge and their TOEFL (sub-components) scores, but there was a strong relationship between the EFL learners' explicit grammatical knowledge and their general proficiency. A medium relationship also existed between the explicit knowledge and the TOEFL sub-components. Then, a Standard Multiple Regression demonstrated that explicit knowledge better predicted the EFL learners' general L2 proficiency. The results suggest that learning explicit grammatical knowledge is necessary in EFL contexts and needs much more consideration when the primary focus is on the cognitive academic language proficiency or skills.

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This study explored EFL learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness in processing implicit pragmatic input and the extent to which their awareness of the target features was related to motivation and proficiency. It was carried out in an EFL context to explore the roles of these two variables, particularly intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, in noticing bi-clausal request forms in implicit pragmatic input. The participants in this research were 121 advanced EFL learners from a language center, participating as members of intact classes. All participants took a proficiency test and completed a motivation questionnaire in order to explore the factorial structure of motivation. Then, out of them, 35 learners were randomly selected to form the treatment group. They then took part in a noticing-the-gap activity as a treatment task. The degree of learners' awareness of the target pragmalingustic features was assessed through a respective awareness questionnaire administrated immediately after the treatment. However, the current study shows that EFL students are rather extrinsically motivated and instrumentally oriented to notice pragmalinguistic features, which is incompatible with what Takahashi reported on students’ intrinsic orientation to notice pragmaliguistics in the Japanese EFL context. This suggests that learners in different contexts have different motivational dispositions to pragmalinguistic awareness.

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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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This meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the effect of 22 primary studies which have been conducted to test the effect of the integrated skills approach (ISA) on language skills and components. Three questions guide this analyses: What is the overall effect of ISA  on language skills and sub-skills? To what extent moderator variables such as learners level of education and proficiency modify the effect of  the ISA?  What is the magnitude of publication bias in this analysis? The overall effect size was found to be 1.18, which  represents a  large effect size based on Cohen, Manion and Morrison’ (2007) scale. The results of moderator analysis revealed that the ISA has the largest effect for advanced learners and at a tertiary level of education. The symmetrical funnel plot together with fail-safe N test shows that publication bias does not have any significant effect on the effect size reported in this study. The findings of this meta-analysis have clear implications for practitioners, policymakers, and curriculum developers.

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People are constrained by their culture and social life when telling stories. A second language learner then cannot be expected to tell stories in the target language without cross-cultural effects that influence the way of narration. The present study examined the role of the first language (L1) and second language (L2) in the organization of narratives by focusing on Persian speakers’ and EFL learners’ lived narratives. For this purpose, 125 oral stories were voice recorded. Seventy-five EFL learners’ narratives and 50 Persian narratives as told by Iranian native speakers were collected via classroom discussions and interviews. To examine the substantive effect of L2 knowledge, the EFL learners were selected from pre-intermediate and upper-intermediate proficiency levels. The Labovian analytical narrative model was employed for the analysis. The findings indicated that EFL learners’ narratives were mostly affected by L1 rather than L2. Furthermore, English linguistic knowledge, rather than the English narrative structure itself, affected the organization of EFL narratives