English language learning
Amir Mashhadi; Abbass Fahad; Ahmed Kadhum Fahad
Abstract
The expansion of mobile wireless technology into education in recent decades has offered an incredible opportunity to design learning differently and to enhance students' learning experiences that extend beyond the typical teacher-led classrooms. Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent ...
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The expansion of mobile wireless technology into education in recent decades has offered an incredible opportunity to design learning differently and to enhance students' learning experiences that extend beyond the typical teacher-led classrooms. Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent closure of educational institutions around the world, distance/mobile learning has become a widely accepted form of information and communication technology-enhanced education. Given the infancy of technology-enhanced education at Iraqi educational institutions, this study was conducted to determine how Iraqi EFL learners preferred information and communication technology-enhanced education and how ready they were to adopt mobile learning for English learning purposes in higher education. This study also examined whether there were any significant differences in the learners' preferences and readiness for mobile learning considering their gender. Methodological triangulation was undertaken using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with some Iraqi EFL learners at four public universities so as to seek the research objectives. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the data from the questionnaire. The data of the interviews were then analyzed using thematic analysis to identify and report the common themes of the two coders of the interviews. The findings...
English language learning
Sanaz Mohazabieh; Rahman Sahragard; Ehsan Rassaei; Mustafa Zamanian
Abstract
This quantitative study aimed to investigate the combined effects of two types of strategic planning, namely collaborative and teacher-led planning conditions and task complexity on Iranian intermediate language learners' oral production in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To achieve this ...
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This quantitative study aimed to investigate the combined effects of two types of strategic planning, namely collaborative and teacher-led planning conditions and task complexity on Iranian intermediate language learners' oral production in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To achieve this purpose, 90 EFL learners were selected through convenience sampling from a language institute in Shiraz, Iran, and randomly assigned to two control and four experimental groups. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design in the form of pretest, treatment, and posttest. In the first step, all participants took part in a speaking pretest in which they were required to narrate a story based on a series of picture description tasks. While the experimental groups underwent 10 treatment sessions of picture description task performance along with two planning types i.e., teacher-led and collaborative planning conditions, the control groups were not allowed to plan the task performance. In the last session, the language learners took a posttest whose results were compared with those of the pretest. The findings revealed that the language learners in the collaborative planning groups outperformed the other groups in terms of both fluency and complexity. Further, teacher-led groups did better than the other groups in terms of accuracy. This study carries crucial implications for EFL teachers, material developers, syllabus designers, and speaking skill examiners.
English language learning
Mohammad Ahmadi Safa; Seyed Amir Afzalimir
Abstract
This study aimed at investigating the comparative effects of cooperative and competitive learning on English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ speaking ability and self-confidence. Moreover, EFL learners’ attitude towards cooperative and competitive learning procedures were explored. To ...
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This study aimed at investigating the comparative effects of cooperative and competitive learning on English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ speaking ability and self-confidence. Moreover, EFL learners’ attitude towards cooperative and competitive learning procedures were explored. To these ends 90 learners were selected on the basis of a sample PET results and were assigned into three 30-learner cooperative, competitive and control groups. The speaking section of a sample PET test and Academic Confidence Scale were administered to the three groups before the treatment. As the treatment, the first experimental group members were engaged in cooperative learning, the second experimental group members were engaged in competitive learning, and the control group received regular teacher-fronted instruction. At the end of the treatment, the speaking section of another sample PET and Academic Confidence Scale were re-administered as the posttests.10 EFL learners were randomly selected from each experimental group and seated for a semi-structured interview. The analyses revealed that while both cooperative and competitive learning procedures had significant within-group effects on the learners' speaking ability, the impact on academic self-confidence was significant only for cooperative learning procedure. Moreover, analyses verified that the impact of cooperative learning on speaking ability and self-confidence of EFL learners was statistically superior to the other procedures. Content analysis of the interview data showed that the majority of EFL learners believed that cooperative learning helps them develop their own ideas in greater depth, enhance their participation and creativity in speaking, improve self-confidence and reduce anxiety.
Elahe Saedpanah; Mohammad Hadi Mahmoodi
Abstract
AbstractThe present study examined relationships among critical thinking, writing strategy use, second/foreign language (L2) writing anxiety, and L2 writing performance of Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this end, 100 homogenized EFL learners (57 female learners and 43 male learners) ...
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AbstractThe present study examined relationships among critical thinking, writing strategy use, second/foreign language (L2) writing anxiety, and L2 writing performance of Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this end, 100 homogenized EFL learners (57 female learners and 43 male learners) filled out Facione and Facione’s (1993) California Critical Thinking Skills Test-form B (CCRST), Petric and Czarl’s (2003) Writing Strategy Questionnaire (WSQ), Cheng’s (2004) Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI), and the second task of the academic version of IELTS exam. Multiple correlation analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between L2 writing performance and writing strategy use; and L2 writing performance and critical thinking. Results also revealed a significant negative relationship between L2 writing performance and L2 writing anxiety. Furthermore, it was found that L2 writing anxiety was a stronger predictor of L2 writing performance. Additionally, the results of one-way MANOVA showed a significant difference between Iranian male and female EFL learners regarding both their L2 writing performance and L2 writing anxiety. These results emphasize the inclusion of pre-planned writing sessions for Iranian EFL learners which can help foster critical thinking skills and writing strategy use, reduce L2 writing anxiety and hopefully, improve their L2 writing ability. Key words: Critical thinking, EFL learners, L2 writing anxiety, L2 writing performance, writing strategy use.
sahar zahed alavi; Alireza Ahmadi
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.
Hanieh Varmaziyar; Azam Sazvar
Volume 9, Issue 19 , June 2017, , Pages 169-197
Abstract
The main objective of the present study was to investigate the differences between Iranian EFL monolinguals and bilinguals in terms of vocabulary language learning strategies. In fact, it was an attempt to investigate whether bilingual/ monolingual learners differ significantly in using vocabulary learning ...
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The main objective of the present study was to investigate the differences between Iranian EFL monolinguals and bilinguals in terms of vocabulary language learning strategies. In fact, it was an attempt to investigate whether bilingual/ monolingual learners differ significantly in using vocabulary learning strategies. To this end, 70 EFL, 45 monolingual (Persian) and 25 bilingual (Arabic-Persian) pre-university students were selected to answer Schmitt’s Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire (VLSQ). The participants were homogeneous in terms of age, sex, nationality and level of instruction. Following the administration of a general English proficiency test and one VLSQ, interviews were conducted. Then, descriptive statistics and independent t-test were used to analyze the data. The findings obtained through comparison revealed significant dissimilarities between bilinguals and monolinguals’ usage of determination, memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies. There was no significant variation, however, in their use of social strategies. Further, interviews exhibited some aspects that were not mentioned in the VLSQ.
Karim Sadeghi
Volume 2, Issue 217 , October 2010, , Pages 131-154
Abstract
Cloze was officially introduced in a journal on Journalism as a technique for estimating text readability and as "a new psychological tool for measuring the effectiveness of communication" (Taylor, 1953: 415). Different varieties of cloze have since been developed and experimented upon as measures of ...
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Cloze was officially introduced in a journal on Journalism as a technique for estimating text readability and as "a new psychological tool for measuring the effectiveness of communication" (Taylor, 1953: 415). Different varieties of cloze have since been developed and experimented upon as measures of such diverse traits as reading comprehension and language proficiency. The findings of numerous corrleational studies on cloze as a measure of either skill is at best unsatisfactory and indeed contradictory. The present study seeks to find an answer to the question of whether standard cloze (with different text difficulty levels) is a valid measure of EFL reading comprehension (with IELTS Reading Paper as the criterion). 76 junior and senior students majoring in English Language and Literature at Urmia University participated in the study, where they sat 3 versions of standard 5-th deletion rate cloze tests as well as the Reading Paper of an Institutional IELTS (UCLES, 1995, 1997). While the results are in accordance with most previous research findings that cloze is a valid measure of EFL reading comprehension, serious problems are identified and discussed on the appropriacy of such a validation technique as correlation.
