Alireza Ahmadi; Sahar Alavi Zahed
Volume 9, Issue 20 , November 2017, , Pages 1-24
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of two types of paragraph on EFL learners’ written production. It addressed the issue of how three aspects of language production (i.e. complexity, accuracy, and fluency) vary among two types of paragraphs (i.e. paragraphs of chronology ...
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The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of two types of paragraph on EFL learners’ written production. It addressed the issue of how three aspects of language production (i.e. complexity, accuracy, and fluency) vary among two types of paragraphs (i.e. paragraphs of chronology and cause-effect) written by EFL learners. Thirty intermediate level learners of English participated in the study. Each learner wrote the two specified types of paragraphs in the final exam of their writing course. In the first phase of the study, separate paired t-tests were conducted on each dependent variable to see whether there were any statistically significant differences in measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency across the paragraph types. In the second phase of the study, to investigate if the raters detect the inconsistencies in the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of paragraphs written by a learner, four raters were asked to rate 12 paragraphs written by six learners whose paragraphs differed extremely in one of the three features. The findings revealed that EFL learners performed significantly better in paragraphs of chronology than the paragraphs of cause-effect in terms of fluency and accuracy. However, the analysis of complexity measures showed that there was no significant difference between the two types of paragraphs. In the qualitative analysis, it was found that raters did not consistently consider these three features in their examining the quality of the paragraphs. They paid attention to qualities such as coherence, cohesion and unity more consistently.
sahar Zahed alavi; Rahman Sahragard
Volume 8, Issue 17 , July 2016, , Pages 93-114
Abstract
This study investigated nine General English books (five produced by non-native Iranian speakers and four produced by native speakers) in terms of learning objectives in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (2001). The aim was to find out which levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy are dominant in the books. ...
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This study investigated nine General English books (five produced by non-native Iranian speakers and four produced by native speakers) in terms of learning objectives in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (2001). The aim was to find out which levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy are dominant in the books. So, the contents of the books were codified based on a coding scheme designed by Razmjoo and Kazempurfard (2012). The inter-coder and intra-coder reliability of the coding were estimated through SPSS software resulting in 96.5 and 97.3 respectively, which are very high. The data were analyzed and the frequencies and percentages of occurrence of different learning objectives were calculated. The results of the study revealed that in books produced by non-native speakers, A1 (Remembering Factual Knowledge) is the dominant learning objective level used, and in books produced by native speakers, both A1 (Remembering Factual Knowledge) and B1 (Understanding Factual Knowledge) are the dominant levels. Furthermore, lower order thinking skills (the three low levels in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy) are the most prevalent learning levels in books produced by both non-native Iranian speakers and native speakers. However, the percentages of occurrence of higher order thinking skills in books produced by native speakers are higher than those in books produced by non-native Iranian speakers.
