جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "speaking performance" در نشریات گروه "ادبیات و زبان ها"

The present study was conducted in order to investigate the effect of role-play technique on Iranian female junior high school students’ speaking ability, anxiety, and motivation. This research attempted to clarify whether or not using role-play activities in English classrooms and EFL contexts might enhance a more acceptable speaking ability and also motivation and decrease the anxiety of students in grade 8 in Nasle Payam Junior High School. To answer this question, 60 pre-intermediate students were selected through convenience sampling method. After homogenizing, finally 40 students were selected. Then, the participants were divided into experimental and control groups, 20 students in each group. A pre-test of speaking, speaking anxiety questionnaire (FLCAS), and speaking motivation questionnaire were administered to both groups. Then, the experimental group was instructed speaking through role-play technique while the control group was taught with respect to the existing methods. After two months of treatment, the post-test of speaking was administered in which the participants in both groups were asked to answer the posttest questions. Also, the questionnaires of anxiety and motivation were administered to students at the end of the treatment. The data obtained from this study was analyzed through ANCOVA. The results indicated that role-plays teaching technique has a significant effect on female EFL school learners’ speaking performance, however, it has not a significant effect on female EFL school learners’ speaking anxiety and motivation.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the perceptions of cognitively more and less active EFL learners about using the ENGAGE Model, as an innovation, in the EFL classroom. The participants of the study were 10 intermediate level male EFL learners in a language institute in Iran who were randomly selected out of 60 homogeneous participants of the study. Of the 10 participants, 5 were cognitively more active and 5 cognitively less active individuals. They were selected based on their answers to a validated cognitive profile questionnaire. An interview guide was used to elicit the perspectives of cognitively more and less active EFL learners on the ENGAGE Model in the EFL classroom. The findings of the study showed that the cognitively more active learners enjoyed the ENGAGE Model class more than the cognitively less active ones. Likewise, the cognitively more active learners benefited from the course more than their counterparts in the cognitively less active camp. They assessed themselves more positively in terms of L2 speaking and writing. Both cognitively more and less active learners mentioned that they liked the ENGAGE Model classroom and found it more engaging than the other methods they had experienced before. However, the cognitively less active learners reported exhaustion, saying that the assignments were beyond their ability and that they could not cope with all of them. The findings have practical implications for EFL classrooms.

Most of the models accounting for L2 oral production have deemed a significant role for vocabulary knowledge in this process. Previous studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between different aspects of lexical knowledge and performance or proficiency of second language skills including the speaking performance. Meanwhile, the findings have suggested a determining role for the task type used for measuring speaking performance when one or more aspects of lexical knowledge are in focus. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the EFL Learners’ deep vocabulary knowledge (DVK) and speaking performance by scrutinizing the mediating role of task type. To this end, 102 bachelor ELT students were given Word Associate Test to measure their DVK, and a planned presentation task and unplanned tasks of description, narration and reasoning to elicit speaking performance. The elicited samples of speaking performance were transcribed and analyzed in terms of fluency, accuracy, lexical complexity and grammatical complexity. Structural equation modeling indicated a lack of causal relationship between DVK and aspects of speaking performance as measured with both planned and unplanned tasks. However, mixed results were obtained in the case of the correlations of fluency, accuracy, grammatical complexity and lexical complexity with DVK across different tasks. Although the findings do not provide evidence for a strong relationship between DVK and speaking performance when DVK is analyzed in isolation from other aspects of vocabulary knowledge, the variation witnessed in findings provide further proof for the importance of task effectiveness in the study of lexical access.

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.