English language learning
vahid reza mirzaeian; Katayoun Oskoui; Zohreh Nafissi
Abstract
Objective: A plethora of studies have explored the employment of AI bots in academic writing. Yet, exploring the strategies employed by Iranian EFL learners while using an AI bot to complete academic IELTS writing task 2 has been underestimated.
Methods: To address the lacuna, this qualitative study ...
Read More
Objective: A plethora of studies have explored the employment of AI bots in academic writing. Yet, exploring the strategies employed by Iranian EFL learners while using an AI bot to complete academic IELTS writing task 2 has been underestimated.
Methods: To address the lacuna, this qualitative study computer-recorded eleven participants’ interactions with AI bot to identify the strategies they employed to complete academic IELTS writing task 2. The researchers intended to clarify the intricacies of the human-AI interactions and infer the potential contributions of AI bots for academic writing in EFL settings.
Results: The findings revealed that despite the employment of several strategies by the participants to compose high-quality writing tasks, none of them fully trusted the AI outputs to use them without post-editing. They considered the AI bot as a writing assistant, used some revised segments of AI responses and added their own words respectively.
Conclusions: The pedagogical implications for language teaching in general, and IELTS-oriented practices in particular to take advantage of the emerging AI technologies for better educational outcomes are provided. Moreover, avenues for future research on AI-assisted Language Learning (AILL) are suggested.
English language learning
Vahid Reza Mirzaeian; Katayoun Oskoui
Abstract
This quantitative study aimed to investigate Iranian EFL student teachers’ perceptions on the use of Machine Translation (MT) for foreign language learning in academic context. To this end, 107 EFL student teachers from a women-only state university in Tehran, Iran, completed a recently developed ...
Read More
This quantitative study aimed to investigate Iranian EFL student teachers’ perceptions on the use of Machine Translation (MT) for foreign language learning in academic context. To this end, 107 EFL student teachers from a women-only state university in Tehran, Iran, completed a recently developed and validated questionnaire in the field. The findings revealed that most participants were familiar with digital technology including MT and its different types such as Google Translate (GT). Satisfied with MT output, the majority of the participants in the study installed MT apps on their smartphones or used its website on their computers to complete assignments or to translate from Persian to English and vice versa. However, they were neutral about whether their instructors confirmed their MT use, or whether they preferred their teachers know they use MT or not. They were also not sure whether consulting MT was against the regulations. The results showed that authorities in the field of foreign language teaching are required to take a positive stand on this emerging technology; in addition, considering the importance of training for both instructors and learners, they should hold workshops for more responsible and effective MT implementation.
vahid reza mirzaeian
Abstract
This paper reports an attempt to see if podcasting can be a valuable tool to improve English vocabulary learning and retention of Persian university students compared with traditional method of vocabulary teaching. Students have been randomly divided into two groups namely experimental and control group. ...
Read More
This paper reports an attempt to see if podcasting can be a valuable tool to improve English vocabulary learning and retention of Persian university students compared with traditional method of vocabulary teaching. Students have been randomly divided into two groups namely experimental and control group. In the experimental group, students are asked to produce podcasts collaboratively and students in the control group are asked to spend the same amount of time in a traditional class practicing vocabulary items. The analysis of covariance shows students in the experimental group significantly outperform students in control group in terms of both learning and retention of vocabulary items.
