Iranian Journal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume:8 Issue: 3, Summer 2019

Innovative mobile-based tools have made new opportunities for learners to spend more quality time inside the classrooms. Keeping this in mind, the present study sought to examine the effect of the flipped classroom on developing EFL learners’ speaking and listening skills. To do so, 60 EFL students from two universities in Iran were assigned into one of the classes of flipped and conventional groups. Telegram app was used as the online platform for the flipped group's participants through which the listening materials, including Ted-talk videos and students' book's videos were posted prior to the class, and the speaking activities were done via open discussion forums in the Telegram group. To elicit the required data, multiple sources of data collection, including an Oxford Placement Test (OPT), a listening test, a speaking test, a perception questionnaire, and a written self-report survey were used. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the flipped group's participants significantly outperformed those in the conventional group in the post-test. The results of the questionnaire also indicated that most participants of the flipped group were satisfied with learning English in the flipped classroom, and found this modern technology improving their listening and speaking skills. Furthermore, they found Telegram a suitable platform for learning language.

Task variation is an integrative method aiming at the importance of learner-to-learner interactions in a wide range of learning contexts and fostering authentic use of language and meaningful communication. This study investigated the impact of task variation on the accuracy and complexity of Iranian EFL learners’ oral speech. In so doing, 80 intermediate EFL learners, majoring English at the Islamic Azad University, Tonekabon branch, were randomly assigned to four equal groups based on their scores on OPT: Experimental Group 1 (EXG1), treated by a variation of three tasks, i.e., dialogue completion, group dialogue, and dialogue unscrambling; Experimental Group 2 (EXG2), treated by a variation of two tasks including dialogue completion and dialogue unscrambling; Experimental Group 3 (EXG3), instructed through a single task (dialogue unscrambling), and the Control Group (CONG), instructed through teacher routine or conventional method. The speaking part of the Preliminary English Test (PET) was administered to the groups as a pretest and posttest. The four groups received their required instructions for ten sessions. The results of the ANOVA and Post Hoc analyses indicated that the three task variations were effective on two features of accuracy and complexity. It was also revealed that the EXG1, treated through a variety of three tasks, outperformed the other three groups in terms of accuracy and complexity. Task variation is hence advised to be incorporated in EFL teaching and testing contexts as a useful tool to improve learners’ oral performance on accuracy and complexity.

As a response to the shortcomings of communicative language teaching (CLT), the arena for focus on form (FonF) instruction has been established. The present study aimed to investigate the rate of uptake following learner-initiated and teacher-initiated preemptive focus on form in an aviation English class. To this end, 20 sessions, 90 min each, of an aviation English class in Iran were observed and audio-recorded. In addition, another elicitation tool called uptake sheet was employed to gauge the effectiveness of preemptive focus on form. In so doing, the uptake moves following all instances of teacher-and learner-initiated preemptive Focus on Form Episodes (FFES) were counted. The audio recorded data were then checked against the data from the uptake sheets. The findings revealed that uptake moves took place more frequently after teacher-initiated preemptive FFES. FonF has not been investigated in aviation English; therefore, the implication is that in aviation English classes, ESP teachers should try to be well aware of FonF episodes as their initiation leads to more uptake. It can be concluded that teachers should be aware of ESP development through FonF in teaching ESP. This includes allocating enough lesson time for FonF in ESP classes, use of different FonF strategies to facilitate mastering ESP, and acknowledging the fact that learners can play an important role in facilitating their own language development when provided with opportunities to take greater control.

The current study set out to investigate the impact of the participatory approach on the language proficiency of EFL learners. Moreover, the study aimed at probing into the effect of the participatory approach on learning grammar and vocabulary. Additionally, the study sought to explore the attitudes of teachers in this regard. The initial participants of the study were 60 Iranian EFL learners from two intact classes. Out of the original 60 students, 39 participants whose scores on the language proficiency test fell within ±1 standard deviation of the mean, attended all treatment sessions and completed all test booklets included in the final analyses. For fourteen sessions, regular teaching practice through the conventional book-based method of conducting an English class ensued. In the experimental group; however, the participatory approach tasks and activities were adopted, in which various participatory approach-based techniques, activities, role play, problem-solving activities, group work and collaborative tasks in the classroom instruction were implemented. The results of statistical analyses indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the performance of the participatory approach group and the conventional approach group on the language proficiency test. However, the results of further statistical analyses revealed that the participatory approach had a positive effect on the participants’ knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Results of the interview with the teachers revealed that they had positive attitudes towards implementing the participatory approach and they were willing to use at least some of the tasks and activities in their future courses. Based on the findings of the present study, EFL teachers are encouraged to use participatory activities in teaching English.

The present study was conducted to investigate the existence of any possible relationship between multiple intelligences (MI) and vocabulary learning strategies. The participants in this study were 90 students of Bandar Abbas English language Institutes. The instruments for data collection consisted of MI questionnaire and Vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire. After gathering the data, correlation and regression analyses were done on the obtained data. The results indicate that among 5 categories of strategies (determination, social, memory, cognitive, and metacognitive), determination, social and memory strategies can be strongly predicted by bodily, natural and interpersonal intelligences, respectively; while the natural intelligence is found to be a negative predictor of social strategies. More specifically, there is a significant relationship between several categories of strategies and different domains of intelligences.  Moreover, among 5 categories of strategies, there is a significant relation between determination, memory and social strategies on the one hand, and several domains of MI on the other.

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness, its subscale features, and their general and specific pragmatic motivation. In this regard, the speech act of refusal was selected as a target speech act because of its face-threatening feature. Eighty-two participants took part in the study, of whom 78 were Iranian EFL learners, and the rest (N=4) were American native speakers. All participants were required to complete a multiple choice meta-pragmatic awareness questionnaire (MPAQ) consisting of 12 situations representing refusal to four topics. Refusal scenarios were balanced in terms of interlocutors’ social status, degree of familiarity, and degree of imposition. Iranian learners were then asked to complete 48 items of general and specific pragmatic motivation questionnaire adopted from Tajeddin and Zand-Moghadam (2012). Analyzing data using Pearson correlation indicated that there was a significant correlation between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness and their general and specific pragmatic motivation. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between meta-pragmatic awareness and severity, familiarity, and degree of imposition or severity. Moreover, employing Path Analysis through Amos 24 to examine whether meta-pragmatic awareness and its subscales could predict general and speech-act-specific pragmatic motivation demonstrated that all three sub-constructs of meta-pragmatic awareness predicted general and specific pragmatic motivation positively and significantly. This study is of immense importance as it helps teachers consider the importance of maintaining face in a conversation to help learners increase the motivation of learning making refusals.