Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly
Volume:8 Issue: 2, Summer 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate videotaping as a strategy for EFL teachers’ reflective teaching. To this end, eight participants were selected from a language institute in Iran and were under investigation for over a period of one month and a half. The data was triangulated from different sources: videotaping; self-reflection sheets; and semi-structured interviews. The analysis of in situdata suggested that there is a significant difference between teachers’ self-evaluations of their own teaching process at the beginning and end of the semester. Results also demonstrated that the contents of reflective teaching can be summarized into a framework including eight categories of communication patterns in the classroom, the affective climate of the classroom, classroom management, error correction, teacher’s physical appearance, teaching techniques and strategies, professional development, and teacher’s command of English. The current study may have some enticing implications for EFL teachers, materials developers, teacher trainers and syllabus designers.

English language teaching (ELT) writing practitioners have long attempted to improve EFL/ESL learners’ competence in writing with recourse to either instruction or feedback. Likewise, researchers have, to date, mainly focused on either of these treatments to enhance language learners’ composing ability. Which treatment leads to more significant improvements is, however, unclear. Moreover, of the various written genres, the genre of description seems to have been neglected by researchers. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the impact of metalinguistic feedback and scaffolded genre-based instruction through consciousness-raising tasks on EFL learners’ ability to write descriptive essays. To this aim, two groups, feedback group (n = 32) and instruction group (n = 32), participated in the present study. After pretesting the participants’ ability to compose descriptive essays, the researchers provided them with either written metalinguistic explanations on their compositions or gave them genre-based instruction. The participants then took a posttest, the results of which revealed that the instruction group had made more significant improvements.

Although lexis research (e.g., Lewis, 1997; Taguchi, 2008) has already evidenced the possibility of teaching formulaic sequences (FS), further research is still needed to examine the procedures or frameworks through which the approach can be applied and probe the second or foreign language (L2) areas where it demonstrates more relevance. This pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study aimed, firstly, to compare the effects of intensive and extensive lexis-based L2 instructions on the development of IELTS candidates’ speaking performance and, secondly, to explore whether different types of speaking tasks (i.e., monologic vs. dialogic) have any differential effects on the frequency of using FS by L2 learners. To this end, three intact classes including 40 L2 learners preparing themselves for IELTS in a language center in Iran were randomly assigned to one control and two experimental groups. The groups received the same amount of instruction, however differently, two receiving intensive and extensive instructions in FS (or unanalyzed chunks) and the other receiving conventional non-lexis instruction. The results revealed that both lexis groups outperformed the control group pointing to the effectiveness of both intensive and extensive lexis-based instructions to the learners’ development of speaking proficiency. Moreover, the results showed no significant difference between the effects of intensive and extensive types of lexis instructions upon IELTS candidates’ development of speaking performance. Further, it was revealed that dialogic tasks were more conducive to the FS use than monologic tasks. Finally, the implications for L2 theory and pedagogy are discussed.

Self-regulation is the ability to regulate one’s thoughts and actions to attain goals. Accordingly, self-regulated learning (SRL) involves plans and behaviors to achieve learning goals. With this in mind, in this study we investigated whether training English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners on the basis of a Self-regulated Learning (SRL) model improved their literal and critical reading comprehension. The study also sought to find out whether the learners’ proficiency level could moderate the impact of self-regulation training. Two intact experimental groups were taught self-regulatory reading processes, while two control groups received the traditional, routine reading instruction. The data of the study were collected by College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST) reading sub-tests including both critical and literal reading comprehension parts. Statistical analyses showed that self-regulation instruction could significantly improve participants’ EFL literal and critical reading comprehension, but their proficiency level did not moderate the effectof self-regulation training. These findings can encourage EFL teachers to apply SRL strategies to reading tasks and activities.

The present study aimed to satisfy a twofold On the one hand, it sought to verify the postulation that agent-based instruction could offer a compromise approach to teaching L2 idioms where form and meaning would be equally emphasized during instruction. Given that anthropomorphism has not been much under scrutiny, this research, on the other hand, sought to ascertain whether learning and retention of English idioms would be differentially impacted when two different modalities of virtual tutors —anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic— were present in the tutorial. To this aim, the participants of the study received instruction on 128 English idioms from human teachers, a multimedia application featuring a humanoid virtual teacher, or a piece of multimedia courseware with a non-anthropomorphic virtual tutor. Analysis of the post-intervention measures of L2 idiom knowledge revealed that agent-based instruction had proved more effective in improving both learning and retention of the target idioms among the participants. A further finding was that despite the greater motivational benefits of the humanoid virtual tutor, it had not privileged the participants, performance-wise.

The present study is an attempt to shed light on the effect of Dynamic Assessment (DA) on diagnosing and developing the receptive vocabulary abilities of upper-intermediate learners learning English as a foreign language. Fifty L2 leaners participated in First Certificate in English test and completed Vocabulary Knowledge Scale. Out of 50 students, ten learners who were identified as being homogenous and were not familiar with the new vocabularies volunteered to participate in individualized tutoring sessions. Reading texts were used to make learners familiar with the target words and cloze passages were administered to assess learners’ receptive vocabulary. Mediation was provided using the interactionist approach to DA and learners’ responsiveness to mediation were studied in a microgenetic approach. The qualitative data were then coded in terms of task completion along with errors and struggles and transformed into quantitative data for analysis. The actual, mediated and transfer scores were reported to analyze learners’ Zone of Actual Development (ZAD), Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and the degree of the internalization of mediation. Findings of the study revealed that to have a complete picture of learners’ abilities, actual scores are not self-sufficient. Mediated scores are vital to diagnose learners’ areas of difficulties and to promote learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge. The information from transfer scores also uncovers evidence of learning and data form Learning Potential Score (LPS) predict how learners probably respond to future instruction. Findings of the study indicate that DA is promising in presenting a fine-grained diagnosis of learners’ receptive vocabulary development while also suggesting information related to future teaching and learning.