Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning
Volume:7 Issue: 15, Spring-Summer 2015

This study compared the effects of two annotation modalities on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate level EFL learners. The two experimental groups under study received treatment on 10 academic L2 reading passages under one of two conditions: One group received treatment on key words in the reading passages through a multimedia environment providing textual annotations. The second group received treatment under a similar environment but received compound glosses. The control group، however، received no treatment and was encouraged to use contextual guessing. The findings revealed that the experimental group who received treatment through compound glosses outperformed the other two groups on the comprehension test، and the group who used textual annotations obtained a higher mean on the post-test than the control group. One explanation is that compound glosses might help learners better decipher the meanings of key words in L2 passages، thus contributing to their deeper understanding of the texts.

Although studies on pragmatics in general and politeness in particular abound in the literature، impoliteness has been largely ignored. In the present study، participants filled out either the Persian or English version of a discourse completion test (DCT). The researchers analyzed collected answers to discover the relationship between impoliteness and power. Furthermore، the researchers compared responses to the Persian version with responses to the English version to see if they diverge regarding the relationship between impoliteness and power. According to the number of impoliteness strategies used، the results show that though there is a positive relationship between impoliteness and power in Persian، there is no relationship in English responses. In comparing the mentioned relationship in two languages، there is a significant difference between them. This led to the conclusion that the learners did not realize the relationship between impoliteness and power in English، whereas in answering the Persian DCT their answers showed the recognition of that relationship.

Teachers are the most important players of every educational system in different societies; accordingly، understanding their personal reflections may help us gain valuable insights into what it means to be a teacher in a specific cultural and social context. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the life and career of 6 non-native English speaking teachers in state educational systems and private institutes in Iran so that a clear image of EFL teacher’s perceptions on their own language learning، teaching experiences، current conditions and expectations، and their possible attempts to innovate in their classrooms would be obtained. By conducting a series of repeated interviews and observations within the period of one year، the researcher collected the required data and examined them through the process of meaning categorization. The outcomes suggested that most teachers either in state or private schools were not satisfied with their current living status or working conditions. Moreover، they were struggling with lots of de-motivating factors in their career and life due to some external and internal policies imposed by authorities. It is discussed that by giving voice to EFL teachers in Iran، their real status would be revealed and، consequently، some improvements would be made towards their essential needs and expectations.

This study aims at empirically furthering awareness of the organization of interaction in EFL classes. Informed by the methodological framework of conversation analysis، it draws upon a corpus of 52 three-hour naturally-occurring classroom interaction to identify classroom interactional contexts based on the structuring of the pedagogic goals in turn-taking sequences. Conversation analytic procedures were then paired with quantitative procedures to explore the distribution of the identified contexts within the macro-context of classroom discourse and to investigate the effect of interaction-external factors، i. e.، teachers’ training and learners’ levels of language proficiency، on the distribution of the identified contexts. Analyses of extracts from the transcribed data led to the emergence of four interactional contexts: form-oriented، meaning-oriented، skill-oriented، and management-oriented. As to their distribution، form-oriented and skill-oriented contexts were found to be constitutive of the bulk of interaction، with meaning-oriented context comprising the smallest proportion. A two-way multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the distribution of all identified contexts was significantly affected by learners’ levels of language proficiency. Teachers’ training had a significant main effect on just form-oriented and management-oriented contexts. The findings of this study draw teachers and teacher educators’ attention to the necessity of a change in the status quo of EFL classroom interaction.

This investigation postulatesVygotsky’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. Thisresearchintends to scrutinizethe socioculturally-oriented mediationalmechanisms utilized in student-student and student-teacher collaborationsin an Iranian EFL writing class. Such scrutinyis 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 sophomoresof 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 exchangesthrough linguistic meanson 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 taskswhich playthe most significant role in establishing new identities and gaining self-regulation، i. e. developing sociocultural identity.