English language learning
Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpour; Fatemeh Ghanbarpour
Abstract
Interference or transfer from language learners’ first language (L1) is one of the significant variables that contributes to the complexity of SLA process and usually persists intensely at the initial stages of L2 acquisition and development. Drawing upon Meriläinen’s (2010) taxonomy ...
Read More
Interference or transfer from language learners’ first language (L1) is one of the significant variables that contributes to the complexity of SLA process and usually persists intensely at the initial stages of L2 acquisition and development. Drawing upon Meriläinen’s (2010) taxonomy of lexical transfer errors, the present study intended to explore Iranian EFL learners’ lexical transfer error caused by word form, word meaning, and word use. To this aim, a corpus of 189 compositions written by 89 male and 100 female students was investigated. The results revealed that females in general had more lexical transfer errors than males, and that a large amount of the errors stemmed from word use (54%) which was followed by word form (36%) and lastly word meaning (10%). The findings of the study suggest that shifting the students’ attention from vocabulary size to vocabulary depth and exposing them to a large number of authentic collocations and prefabricated patterns are advisable activities that might counteract negative lexical transfer.
Shiva Kaivanpanah; Mohammad Alavi; Rose Meschi
Abstract
Writing is thought as the most complicated skill in second language acquisition; therefore, L2 researchers have always been in pursuit of discovering an effective approach to improve it. One of the most debated ways is feedback which has a key role in improving the quality of writing. Much of the previous ...
Read More
Writing is thought as the most complicated skill in second language acquisition; therefore, L2 researchers have always been in pursuit of discovering an effective approach to improve it. One of the most debated ways is feedback which has a key role in improving the quality of writing. Much of the previous research on feedback has focused on analyzing different types of feedback and their effect on the learners’ writings and few studies have examined the effectiveness of computer feedback. Therefore, the present study was conducted to 1) determine what aspects of students’ writings receive computer feedback, 2) examine the difference in the effect of computer-generatedfeedback (CBF) and Teacher-based feedback (TBF) on improving the students’ writing quality and 3) compare the differences in Depth of Processing (DOP) in processing computer and teacher feedback. The results indicated that content, style and organization of their essays received feedback from the teacher and the computer. Teacher feedback was more effective in terms of its impact on improving the quality of the writing of the students than computer-generatedfeedback and it resulted in deeper processing of lexical items, whereas computer-generated feedback invoked medium processing on grammar.
Seyyed Mohammad Ali Soozandehfar; Rahman Sahragard
Volume 7, Issue 15 , May 2015, , Pages 125-156
Abstract
This investigation postulates Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and his related “scaffolding” metaphor as well as Norton’s (2006) principles of sociocultural identity as its theoretical foundation. This research intends to scrutinize the socioculturally-oriented ...
Read More
This investigation postulates Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and his related “scaffolding” metaphor as well as Norton’s (2006) principles of sociocultural identity as its theoretical foundation. This research intends to scrutinize the socioculturally-oriented mediational mechanisms utilized in student-student and student-teacher collaborations in an Iranian EFL writing class. Such scrutiny is to reveal the learners’ sociocultural change in behavior, and how their sociocultural identity is scaffolded and developed through collaborative negotiation in writing. For this purpose, Lidz's Rating Scale (1991) was adopted to delve into the sociocultural-identity-conducive interactions produced by 32 sophomores of English Language and Literature at Shiraz University as they collaborated in writing. The analysis of such scaffolding-mediated discourse provides useful insights into the nature of the learners’ sociocultural identity development. Particularly, the results provide evidence that dialogic exchanges through linguistic means on the part of peers and the teacher include some behaviors such as intentionality, joint regard, affective involvement, communicative ratchet, contingent responsivity, intersubjectivity, and L1 use in collaborative writing tasks which play the most significant role in establishing new identities and gaining self-regulation, i.e. developing sociocultural identity.
İsmaiel Faghih; MohammadJavad Ansari
Volume 5, Issue 11 , November 2013, , Pages 31-52
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to find a practical solution for improving writing skill among Iranian high school learners of EFL. The main question was whether pragmatics had any priority over traditional methods in improving writing or not. Forty high school students were selected on the basis ...
Read More
The purpose of this study is to find a practical solution for improving writing skill among Iranian high school learners of EFL. The main question was whether pragmatics had any priority over traditional methods in improving writing or not. Forty high school students were selected on the basis of their performance in PET (2009). In addition the following instruments were also used in this quasi-experimental research: California Standard Test (2008), Writing Discourse Completion Task, and Discourse Self-Assessment Task. The special treatment of the experimental group on the role of pragmatics lasted for about ten weeks, while the control group received only the traditional instruction on writing. The results show that there is a meaningful relationship between the pragmatic competency and the improvement of the EFL learners' writing skill. Paired t-test was utilized for analyzing the data. The study concludes that the teachers can use insights from pragmatics to teach writing skill appropriately and by improving writing skill through pragmatics, EFL learners will be able to communicate in a more appropriate way.
Hadi Farjami; AmirHossein Eghbali
Volume 5, Issue 11 , November 2013, , Pages 53-72
Abstract
This research is an investigation of the relationship between the emotional intelligence of a group of Iranian English language learners and the coherence of the essays they produced. A 40-item TOEFL-type test of English proficiency including items on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension with the ...
Read More
This research is an investigation of the relationship between the emotional intelligence of a group of Iranian English language learners and the coherence of the essays they produced. A 40-item TOEFL-type test of English proficiency including items on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension with the Cronbach’s alpha reliability of .742, was planned to identify the proficient candidates who could produce substantive and meaningful texts. Moreover, a 33-item inventory of Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale and a task of essay writing on a specific topic were administered. From 110 candidates who took the test, questionnaire and the task, 79 subjects completely submitted them. Forty-five students managed to score above 23 out of 40 on the proficiency test; therefore, their emotional profiles and essays were further analyzed. For objective assessment of the coherence of the essays, Bamberg’s (1984) Holistic Coherence Scale was used with five points ranging from ‘fully coherent’ (4) to ‘unscorable’ (0). The Spearman’s rho test was used in investigating the association between the coherence of the essays and the emotional intelligence of their writers. Flying in the face of the researchers’ expectation, an insignificant relationship was observed.
Nader Assadi Aidinlou
Volume 3, Issue 8 , December 2011, , Pages 53-70
Abstract
The writing skill is often perceived as the most difficult language skill since it requires a higher level of productive language control than other skills (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000). The present study introduced a discourse-based framework for the teaching of writing on the basis Systemic Functional ...
Read More
The writing skill is often perceived as the most difficult language skill since it requires a higher level of productive language control than other skills (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000). The present study introduced a discourse-based framework for the teaching of writing on the basis Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). To this end, 60 students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) were selected from among three different universities and assigned to experimental and control groups. All subjects were pre-tested for homogeneity, and then the experimental group was treated with SFL-oriented discourse knowledge for ten sessions with the non-treated group just receiving the traditional method of teaching writing. Following the treatment, a post-test was administered to the groups the results of which showed that there was a significant difference at p < .05 in the performance of the two groups on writing. It was concluded that the discourse-based teaching had a great effect on the writing of the Iranian TEFL majors.
