International Journal of Research in English Education

This paper attempted to explore the impact of dynamic assessment (DA) in improving EFL students’ writing ability. To this end, 60 homogenous pre-intermediate EFL learners from a private high school participated in this study and after administering QPT, the forty students were randomly divided into two equal groups; 20 learners in an experimental group and 20 learners in a control group with the same age and the same English knowledge and background. In the first session of instruction, the pre-test was administered in order to evaluate the learners’ writing ability. Then the control group received the traditional approach and the experimental group was exposed to dynamic assessment instruction to learn how to write with more efficiency. The treatment endured 12 sessions. The results of data analysis showed that the experimental group improved significantly. It is indicated that the dynamic assessment procedure is more efficient in teaching writing than the traditional methods. Furthermore, dynamic assessment enhances L2 writing and can play a crucial role in language learning.

Dissatisfaction with product-oriented and static forms of assessment led to the emergence of process-oriented testing or dynamic assessment. Learners’ involvement in the assessment process can enhance their learning autonomy and help them process linguistic features more deeply. Accordingly, using a quantitative quasi-experimental research design, the researchers sought to explore whether utilizing DA principles would have any differential impact, believed to be statistically significant, on the Iranian male and female intermediate EFL learners’ learning and retention of English grammar. To this end, 30 EFL learners from two intact classes who were taking a general English course at Shayestegan English Language Institute, in Rasht, Iran were selected as a homoscedastic group of participants based on the scores they obtained on a sample copy of Oxford Solutions Placement Test (OSPT). The intact classes, each comprising 15 students, were then assigned to one experimental and one control group who then received treatment on their L2 grammar under different conditions: The experimental group received instruction on English grammar as per the principles of dynamic assessment in an eight-session intervention program. The control group likewise received treatment on L2 grammar over the course of the study, but they were trained using teacher-fronted instruction. Finally, the groups sat for an immediate and a delayed posttest of grammar to demonstrate their degree of learning and amount of retention of English grammar. Capitalizing on a 2 by 2 factorial design, which allowed for examination of both main and interaction effects of instructional modality and participants’ gender, the researchers employed a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to examine the participants’ performance scores. The results revealed that, regardless of participants’ gender, instruction as delivered through dynamic assessment privileged the participants in the experimental group much better than that of the conventional method in terms of their learning an

This study investigates the impact of teachers’ rapport on classroom interactions and students’ participation in class activities, comparing experienced and novice EFL teachers. Rapport, defined as a positive, harmonious relationship between teacher and students, is often cited as critical for effective communication and a supportive learning environment. Despite the extensive literature emphasizing the importance of rapport in enhancing student engagement, motivation, and classroom dynamics, limited research has explored the role of teaching experience in moderating these effects. The study involved 40 EFL teachers (20 experienced and 20 novice) from Safir Language Academy in Tehran, with data collected through classroom observations. An independent t-test was used to analyze the differences in classroom interaction and student participation between the two groups. The findings indicate no significant difference between experienced and novice teachers in terms of the impact of rapport on classroom interactions and student participation. The study’s results challenge previous research, suggesting that the level of teacher rapport, regardless of experience, does not significantly influence classroom dynamics or student engagement. These findings imply that other factors may play a more substantial role in shaping classroom interactions and participation, warranting further investigation into the complexities of teacher-student relationships and their effects on learning outcomes.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the possible effect of using WordUp Software on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary learning. The participants were 60 upper-intermediate EFL learners who were selected out of 72 based on the Oxford Proficiency Test. Then, the participants were randomly divided into two groups of study namely experimental and control. The participants in the experimental group underwent an eight-session treatment including learning vocabulary based on using WordUp Software. In the control group, however, the participants gained new vocabulary by conventional methods. The quantitative approach employed a quasi-experimental method to obtain pre-test and post-test results from learners in both the experimental and control groups. The results of the study revealed that using WordUp Software caused a considerable improvement in learning the vocabulary among the learners in the experimental group. The findings of this study could benefit language learners, language teachers, and curriculum developers by providing valuable insights into vocabulary acquisition through WordUp for EFL learners.

The interplay of Iranian EFL learners’ tolerance of ambiguity and their performance encountering unknown vocabularies in reading comprehension while considering their L2 reading anxiety was investigated in this study. A sample of 70 intermediate-level EFL learners from a language institute in Shiraz, Iran participated in the study. The Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (SLTAS) and the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) were used to measure participants’ ambiguity tolerance and L2 reading anxiety, respectively. To assess students’ performance in dealing with new words in reading comprehension, two vocabulary tests and two reading tests were given to them. The data were analyzed by both SPSS and PLS 4 software using Pearson correlation and structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed significant relationships between ambiguity tolerance and reading comprehension performance encountering unknown vocabularies, between L2 reading anxiety and reading comprehension performance encountering unknown vocabularies, and between ambiguity tolerance and L2 reading anxiety. Additionally, L2 reading anxiety was found to play a significant mediating role in the relationship between ambiguity tolerance of Iranian language learners and their performance in dealing with unknown vocabularies in reading comprehension. Moreover, the study provides evidence that reading anxiety does not play a moderating and significant role in the relationship between ambiguity tolerance of Iranian language learners and their performance in dealing with unknown vocabularies in reading comprehension. The study suggests that ambiguity tolerance and L2 reading anxiety are important factors that influence Iranian EFL learners’ performance encountering unknown vocabularies in reading comprehension. This study highlights the importance of fostering ambiguity tolerance and reducing L2 reading anxiety in both language teaching and learning. In addition, it provides insights for syllabus designers to d

Learning-oriented assessment constitutes an approach that integrates language assessment into the learning process to expedite learners’ noticing of their weaknesses and maximize their learning opportunities. The present study scrutinized Iraqi EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices of LOA. In light of this objective, the researchers used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to conduct the study. Accordingly, they selected 103 male and 114 female teachers in 37 public high schools in Baghdad (Iraq) as the participants. Moreover, they administered Aloswat’s (2022) learning-oriented assessment questionnaire to these participants to obtain quantitative data on their proclivity in adhering to the principles of this assessment approach. Finally, they selected a small number of the above-mentioned teachers based on the data saturation criterion. Using a semi-structured interview protocol, they gathered qualitative data on their perceptions of learning-oriented assessment. The researchers used independent-sample t-test and thematic analysis to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data. The results indicated that female teachers adhered more strictly to the principles of learning-oriented assessment than male teachers. In addition, female teachers had more favorable perceptions of this assessment approach compared to their male counterparts. The results may provide teacher educators and syllabus designers with guidelines on implementing LOA in EFL courses.