مهدی سرخوش

Inspired by Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (SCT), the current study intended to investigate the effect of summary training (i.e., oral and written) on intermediate EFL learners’ reading comprehension in different conditions (i.e., individual and collaborative). Data collection tools and procedures encompassed PET test, First Certificate in English (FCE) reading pre-test, and post-test. First, to ensure that the instruments, scoring, as well as summary training procedures were reliable, the researchers conducted a pilot test. During the main study, 120 Iranian EFL intermediate male and female learners aged from 16-18 were considered as the main participants. Learners were divided into 6 groups (i.e., three individual and three collaborative conditions). Furthermore, each condition included three groups with oral summary, written summary groups, and no summary group. A post-test followed the treatment that lasted for 6 sessions. A series of ANOVA with follow up pair-wise comparisons and a series of independent-samples t-tests indicated that: (1) summary training, especially the oral one, was more effective in enhancing the EFL learners’ reading comprehension, and (2) members of the collaborative groups outperformed the members of the individual groups regarding their reading comprehension development. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed concerning enhancing the EFL learners’ reading comprehension.

Many studies have been conducted on the ways of promoting willingness to communicate in learners in EFL/ESL contexts. While different scholars have undertaken studies on many of these variables, few of these studies have aimed at EFL university students in Iran. This study reports on the role of international posture and perceived communication behavior on Iranian EFL learners’ communication in English. The participants who accepted to attend the survey completed questionnaires on WTC, international posture and perceived communication behaviors. The results driven based on this research indicated that Iranian English BA students are generally tended to speak in English. The participants' willingness to communicate in English was found to have a significant relationship with their perceived communication behaviors and international posture. The findings of this study will be beneficial for various policy makers and practitioners, including those dealing with curriculum development and teacher education to focus more on the elements influencing communication in English. Many studies have been conducted on the ways of promoting willingness to communicate in learners in EFL/ESL contexts. While different scholars have undertaken studies on many of these variables, few of these studies have aimed at EFL university students in Iran. This study reports on the role of international posture and perceived communication behavior on Iranian EFL learners’ communication in English. The participants who accepted to attend the survey completed questionnaires on WTC, international posture and perceived communication behaviors. The results driven based on this research indicated that Iranian English BA students are generally tended to speak in English. The participants' willingness to communicate in English was found to have a significant relationship with their perceived communication behaviors and international posture. The findings of this study will be beneficial for various policy makers and practitioners, including those dealing with curriculum development and teacher education to focus more on the elements influencing communication in English.

The present study aimed to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ pragmatic performance of making suggestions improve after receiving discourse completion task (DCT) and role-play with discussion. One Hundred twenty intermediate Iranian EFL learners whose scores ranged between 41 and 59 at the Oxford Proficiency test were selected for participation in the study from several Iranian language schools through convenience sampling. They were assigned to the control group receiving no treatment and discourse completion group, and role plays with the discussion group. Before the treatments, the experimental groups received instruction on the exemplar forms, conversational practice, and performance of suggested activities in the book "Function." After the familiarity of the participants with various suggestion forms and their appropriate use, the first experimental group was provided with a discourse completion task and the second one received role play with discussion. The learners were provided with an explicit explanation of formality, and status as socio-pragmatic factors influencing the selection of appropriate suggestion forms. Then, they were supposed to act out the scenarios and discussed and evaluated the appropriateness of the responses. After the two treatments, the participants took a post-test with 4 sample conversations. The findings were indicative of the effectiveness of the two treatments. The conclusion drawn from the results was that EFL learners could benefit from pragmatic instruction via pragmatic awareness-raising tasks in their pragmatic performance.  

Based on the importance of virtual classrooms and due to the inevitability of using them in difficult situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the current study was an attempt to investigate the perception of high school EFL teachers toward virtual learning systems' experience. Also, probing the perception of high school EFL teachers toward virtual learning systems' opportunities, exploring the perception of high school EFL teachers toward virtual learning systems' challenges and threats, and informing the educational society of the solutions to the barriers of virtual learning systems based on the perception of high school EFL teachers were the other objectives of the current study. To this end, the attitudes of 120 EFL teachers (males=67, females=53) with the age range of 30 to 50 who were teaching at different high schools of West Azerbaijan province, Urmia, Iran, were gathered via a researcher-made questionnaire. The results of the study show that although high school teachers faced some barriers such as low internet access, low interaction, and low concentration by learners, actually they actually have positive attitudes toward the use of digital learning, particularly in virtual classrooms. Furthermore, the findings showed that data retention power and quick and easy access were favored by most of the teachers, and they believed these two items can be regarded as positive opportunities. In addition, teachers presented some comments such as adding visuals to the virtual classrooms, using chat boxes, and planning interaction hints to resolve the virtual classrooms’ existing problems such as poor connection and low concentration. The implications of the study will be discussed.

Prior to Covid-19 pandemic, online education was given little importance in the educational system of different countries, including Iran and Turkey. Actually, previously there was no need for online education. However, in pandemic situation the need for online classes and its significance in language learning became more ubiquitous. Thus, in view of the paucity of research on perceptions toward the efficacy of virtual learning, particularly the sheer dearth of comparative work on the issue, the researchers in the current study intended to investigate the practicality of commonly used online platforms in Iran and Turkey, i.e. Adobe Connect and Zoom. To this end, a total of 10 EFL professors (5 Iranian and 5 Turkish) participated in the interview session to deeply investigate their attitudes on the platforms of Zoom and Adobe Connect as regards issues related to materials and resources, instruction, and assessment. As the results of the interview showed, both Turkish and Iranian university professors had similar ideas towards the online platforms and they listed some merits such as easy access, attractiveness, and applicability for teaching and learning in Covid-19. Also, the demerits were low interaction and communication, being demotivating for non-disciplined learners, and so on. In general, based on the participants’ points of view, both online platforms were useful in terms of materials and resources as well as instruction; however, they had less control on cheating of tests, in terms of assessment. Different parties such as teachers, syllabus designers and materials developers will benefit from the outcomes study.

Teacher identity has been studied from several perspectives. However, the present study makes an attempt to investigate the process of identity formation through narrative telling from the framework of complexity theory. In a case study design semi-structured interview data and teacher-produced diaries of a novice Iranian English teacher were analyzed in order to identify attractors of identity formation. As a result, four major attractors that had the strongest effect on the process of identity formation were detected. Then the mechanisms through which these attractors exerted influence on identity formation are discussed. Finally, it has been argued that narrative construction of identity requires the individual to stress different aspects of their identity at different times; and that the phase shifts that occurred when the identity system moved in the direction of another attractor were triggered by the moment-to-moment requirements of narrative formation. The findings are followed by a discussion of pedogogical and theoretical implications.

Although there is an increasing amount of research examining the efficacy of Witten Corrective Feedback (WCF) in enhancing the grammatical accuracy of EFL learners, only a few studies have explored the perspectives of EFL teachers regarding Formulaic-oriented Witten Corrective Feedback (FWCF) in EFL settings. Using a mixed-method approach, this interpretive exploratory study sought to understand the attitudes of Iranian EFL teachers toward FWCF. The analyses were based on quantitative data from a 13-item anonymous bespoke online survey, qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, and an open-ended question at the end of the survey. EFL teachers (n =137) responded to the online survey, and 7 participants participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings indicated that female teachers' favorable opinions about the effectiveness of WCF for improving EFL learners' writing performance resulted from their belief that the learners' capacity to use more formal and courteous language in their writing assignments was positively impacted by using these formulaic sequences. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that EFL teachers preferred direct WCF methods over indirect tactics. The most essential component that affected teachers' practices in the classroom was training designed to change their perspective of the valuelessness of WCF. The teachers' lack of satisfactory understanding of formulaic sequences stemmed from their lack of information. In addition, teachers' hesitancy to use them in the lower proficiency levels emanated from their misconceptions of their uselessness in the language learners' writing tasks.

The researchers in the current study aimed to explore the impact of metalinguistic corrective feedback and recasts on learners’ process writing ability through virtual learning environment. To this aim, a total of 63 Iranian EFL learners were selected and arranged in four groups (metalinguistic feedback, metalinguistic + error logs, recasts, and recasts + error logs). To conduct the study, an expository writing task selected from IELTS task 1 was administered to all participants as the pretest. The treatment lasted for eight weeks, and then the process writing posttest was administered. The main focus of the writing task was process writing and passive voice was selected as the target structure. The topics for pretest and posttest were selected with a lot of care, so that they could lend themselves to process writing, and would evoke the use of passive structure. The data were analyzed via paired sample t-test, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and one-way ANOVA. Based on the findings, though all groups significantly improved from pre- to posttest, no significant difference was found among the four groups as a result of being exposed to four types of corrective feedback. The findings offer implications for university EFL learners, professors, and material developers.

The current study was performed to investigate the impact of metalinguistic oral and written corrective feedback on learners’ process writing ability through virtual learning environment. To this aim, a total of 66 Iranian EFL students in Shahrekord University participated in the study. To conduct the study, a sample of IELTS expository writing (Writing Task 1) was administered to all participants for homogeneity purposes. Then, each of the two classes was divided into two parts, and each was randomly assigned to one of the four comparison groups (oral metalinguistic feedback, written metalinguistic feedback, oral metalinguistic + error logs, and written metalinguistic + error logs). Next, the writing pretest (a process writing task) was given to participants prior to instruction. The treatment lasted for eight weeks, and then process writing posttest was administered. The results revealed that all groups made progress from pretest to posttest. However, no significant difference was found among the four types of metalinguistic corrective feedback. The implications of the findings are discussed throughout the paper.