عباسعلی زارعی موینی

Many language learners in foreign language contexts leave their courses halfway before reaching advanced levels of proficiency. Despite a large body of research on dropping out of school or higher education programs, few have delved into this multi-faceted phenomenon in language institutes and tutorial language courses. The current study, utilizing a qualitative approach, aimed at investigating EFL learners dropping out of face-to-face language classes in Iran. To this end, 20 participants were interviewed to explore their main reasons for abandoning classes in 44 dropout instances. The interviewees’ responses were analyzed and reported through six phases of data familiarization and note-making; systematic data-coding; initial-themes generation; themes development and review; themes refinement, definition, and naming; and the report writing. Forty-nine major reasons were found which were classified into 5 themes of satisfying need for higher priority, teacher-induced dissatisfaction, administrator-induced dissatisfaction, satisfied language-class-related need, and improvement-related dissatisfaction. Administrator-induced dissatisfaction, however, was specific to public classes in language institutes – not private ones. Since English is taught mainly for academic purposes in Iran, the findings have implications for both research and practice purposes concerning any foreign language.

Finding effective ways to improve L2 idioms recall has been a long-standing concern of many practitioners. This study compared the effects of meaning-focused and form-focused tasks with varying involvement load indices on EFL learners' recall of L2 idioms. One-hundred eighty intermediate level EFL learners participated in this study and were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental groups. In three form-focused groups, the participants received multiple-choice, sentence-completion and sentence-making tasks with involvement indices of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. In three meaning-focused groups, they were asked to perform summary writing, writing with glossary, and writing without glossary with involvement degrees of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. A 30-item test in fill-in-the-blank format was administered to all groups to assess their recall of idioms after the treatment. To analyze the data, a two-way ANOVA and a series of independent-samples t-tests were used. The results showed that the tasks with higher degrees of involvement were more efficient on the recall of idioms. The results also revealed that although form-focused tasks were significantly more effective than meaning-focused tasks at lower loads of involvement, at higher involvement load, the difference between form-focused and meaning-focused tasks was not significant. The findings of the present study can have theoretical as well as pedagogical implications for learners, teachers, textbook designers, and curriculum developers.

This study examines the level of familiarity with instances of plagiarism among postgraduate students of English language programs at Iranian universities and its relationship with religiosity. The paucity of research on the relationship between culture and religiosity, and plagiarism in Iran justifies this study. Participants included 173 MA and PhD students in English language teaching, English literature, and English translation selected through convenience sampling. The participants voluntarily agreed to respond to the researcher-made questionnaire. The findings showed that the rate of familiarity with various instances of plagiarism among students is high. The two-way analysis of variance showed that religiosity does not make a significant difference in the degree of familiarity and perception of the seriousness of the various instances of plagiarism between male and female students. In addition, the effect of religion on familiarity with plagiarism was not significantly different between MA and PhD students. These findings can have theoretical and practical implications for postgraduate English language learners, academicians, and researchers.

This study compared the effect of four reading models on reading comprehension, foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA), and reading self-efficacy. In order to do so, 184 female Iranian senior high school EFL students at intermediate English reading level were selected through convenience sampling in three high schools and one language institute in Zanjan. The participants were in four intact groups. Each group was randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions— ‘Direct Activities Related to Texts’ (DARTs), Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), ‘Read, Ask, and Put into your own words’ (RAP), and ‘Title, Headings, Introduction, Each first sentence, Visuals, End of each part, Summary’ (THIEVES) models. These models were taught for eight sessions. Data were collected using the reading comprehension part of the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP), Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS), and Reading Self Efficacy Questionnaire (RSEQ). The collected data were analyzed using three one-way ANCOVA procedures. The results showed that the four models did not significantly differ in terms of their effect on foreign language reading anxiety and reading self-efficacy. However, there was a significant difference between the effect of THIEVES and RAP on reading comprehension in favor of RAP. Besides, only RAP and PALS improved reading self-efficacy. Moreover, DARTs, THIEVES, and RAP improved reading comprehension and decreased reading anxiety, whereas PALS increased reading anxiety and negatively affected reading comprehension. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.