Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:4 Issue: 1, Spring and Summer 2020

This study examined whether metacognitive and cognitive strategies of self-regulation capability in English as a foreign language (EFL) learners can predict their written lexical retrieval ability in English. The participants were 93 intermediate Iranian EFL learners. Pintrich’s self-regulated learning (SRL) model was adopted as a basis in this research. There are cognitive, metacognitive, affective, motivational, social, and environmental factors at play in this model. The data were collected through Written Productive Translation Task (WPTT) and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ); however, only its learning (metacognitive and cognitive) strategy use scale was analyzed. The results of multiple regression analyses showed that both metacognitive and cognitive strategies of self-regulation could significantly predict the participants’ ability to retrieve English written words, but the role of metacognitive strategies was larger. This can guide EFL teachers on how to promote lexical learning, retention and retrieval ability of their students through explicitly teaching them cognitive and particularly metacognitive strategies.

Since little is known about how EFL learners experience and understand effective English language classroom, this study was an attempt to find out about the Iranian EFL learners’ experiences of an effective English language classroom at the tertiary level. The design of the current research drew on a phenomenological study in which the lived experiences of EFL learners concerning the effective English language classroom were explored. The primary data collection method was in-depth interviewing with seven Ph.D. candidates (two males and five females) who had been studying English for years and were selected through purposive sampling. The data were coded and explicitated using Colaizzi’s seven-step coding strategy. The three major resulting themes were a) Teacher characteristics, b) Classroom interaction, and c) Class performance. In addition, key findings from the study suggest that two elements of personal experiences and personal beliefs constitute effective English language classroom from the Iranian EFL learners’ perspectives. Recommendations are provided for EFL researchers as the current study reveals.

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a theory for teacher knowledge for effective and creative teaching which has created opportunities for research on teachers’ professional development. This sequential explanatory mixed methods study sought to investigate the impact of a TPACK-focused online professional development course on EFL teachers’ TPACK through employing TPACK theory and explored their views on their experiences of attending the course. Regarding  the quantitative stage, 30 EFL teachers (15 novice and 15 experienced) attended the course through volunteer sampling. Prior to course initiation and after its completion, the TPACK-EFL survey was administered and re-administered as pre-test and post-tests, respectively. Concerning the qualitative phase, 12 EFL teacher participants voluntarily attended a semi-structured interview. The Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and paired sample t-test results suggested that the online course had significantly affected EFL teachers concerning their TPACK except in PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) of the novice group and CK (Content Knowledge) of both groups. Experienced teachers could benefit more from the course in terms of TPACK and PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge). Regarding the qualitative results, it was revealed that all interviewees expressed positive attitudes toward the course. Also, themes related to distinctive features of the course, challenges they encountered and aspects of TPACK they had improved emerged in their responses. The results of the study offer precious educational implications for TTC educators, education course developers, EFL teachers, administrators, supervisors, policy makers, and stakeholders.

Although all human beings share the same bio-psychological features in the learning process, their preferences concerning the ways of giving meaning and acquiring information may vary considerably. In fact, these are the individual-specific differences which play key roles in learning process. The more we know about these differences, the better we can analyze the learning process. To determine whether those who are academically more successful, favor a particular learning style and/or have necessarily high degree of self-efficacy, among the various individual-specific differences, the learning styles and self-efficacy have been addressed in this study. A number of 110 advanced Iranian EFL learners studying English at a Language Institute in Tehran took part in this study. The homogenized sample of the study was selected with respect to their scores on the Oxford placement test (OPT). Then, the Kolb’s (1984) learning styles inventory, the general self-efficacy scale designed by Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1995), and the achievement test were administered to the participants. The results of the study showed that there was a significant relationship between learners' self-efficacy and their achievement test scores. There was not a significant relationship between learners’ vocabulary scores and their self-efficacy though. The results of the regression analyses showed that 15% of variability in reading comprehension score and 27% of variability in grammar score were predicted by Iranian EFL learners' self-efficacy. The results of ANOVA omnibus test of different groups of learning style revealed that there was no statistically significant correlation between Iranian EFL learners' learning styles and their achievement test scores. In the end, implications and suggestions for further research were proposed.

Politeness plays an important role in ini tiated e-mail requests sent from students to faculty. One such feature of requests susceptible to politeness is the degree of imposition, which is one of the important variables in speech act production. Although the literature on requests is abundant, there are few studies on low- and high-imposition requests, in general, and on Iranian L2 learners’ low- and high-imposition requests, in particular. Through analyzing L2 learners’ requests, this study was an attempt to explore the distribution of pragmalinguistic means when writing English e-mail requests with low- and high degrees of imposition. For the purpose of this study, a corpus of 208 e-mail requests was collected for a rigorous qualitative analysis. The e-requests were classified into 4 categories: information, validation, feedback, and action. They were, then, coded and analyzed. It appeared that, though similar in many ways, the distribution of request type, openings, head act strategies, and internal and external modifiers were relatively conditioned by the degree of imposition. The findings can have valuable resources for future studies of potential interlanguage pragmatics studies, which are concerned with L2 learners’ performance and pragmatic competence in L2 learning.

Vocabulary learning is and indeed has always been one of the major concerns in foreign language teaching and learning. Among different aspects related to vocabulary learning and teaching, the sense relations play an important role. These relations can be found in two dimensions as the horizontal axis represents syntagmatic relations-like collocations, fixed expressions and idioms, while the vertical axis represents paradigmatic relations-such as synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms. The present study was an attempt to investigate the effects of horizontal and vertical axes on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary learning regarding the cognitive domain levels. To this aim, 84 Iranian high school students (second grade) were chosen through a PET as the homogeneity test. These participants were also pretested through a researchers-made vocabulary test and were divided into three homogeneous groups to represent the horizontal axis group (HAG), vertical axis group (VAG), and control group. The participants went through the processes of pretesting, treatment, and post-testing. The results of data analysis (MANOVA and Independent T-test) indicated that the horizontal group significantly outperformed the vertical group on the posttest of vocabulary, while both VAG and HAG outperformed the control group. It was also revealed that the components of cognitive domain; i.e. comprehension, application, synthesis, and evaluation, except knowledge, were significantly impacted by the horizontal training method. Therefore, syntagmatic relations or horizontal axis can be considered successful in helping EFL learners improve their vocabulary. The findings are fruitful for EFL teachers and syllabus designers to develop efficient vocabulary teaching procedures.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has recently gained prominence because of its potential to engage learners in learning process and to encourage deep meaningful knowledge construction. This quasi-experimental research, hence, aimed at implementing PBL in an EFL context to investigate its impact on participants’ engagement and reading comprehension. Two groups of elementary level students, one as experimental group (N = 40) and one as control group (N = 40) whose homogeneity in language proficiency was examined by Key English Test (KET) were selected. The experimental group received PBL and the control group received lecture-based method. The two groups completed pre- and posttests of PETALS engagement instrument (PEI) and reading comprehension. The results, based on multivariate analysis of covariance and one-way analysis of covariance, indicated that the PBL group had higher engagement and more enhanced reading comprehension ability. To have highly engaged successful learners in reading comprehension classes, practitioners in EFL context should pay special attention to student-centered methods like PBL.

This study was carried out to investigate the relationship between burnout, personality traits, and psychological distress among Iranian EFL teachers. Moreover, it was an attempt to examine the effectiveness of five personality factors in predicting burnout aspects among EFL teachers. To this end, a sequential mixed-methods design was utilized. Maslach Burnout Inventory, Personality Traits Scale, and Psychological Distress Scale were the instruments administered to 110 Iranian EFL teachers working in private English language institutes in Tehran. Additionally, a semi-structured interview was conducted to delve into the teachers’ opinions regarding the reasons and repercussions of teachers’ burnout. The results of the study revealed that teachers’ burnout aspects were associated with both psychological distress and personality traits. The results also found a significant negative correlation between the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization aspects of burnout and the four personality traits involving openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Finally, the results of the study indicated that the rise in neuroticism led to an increase in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization aspects of burnout. The results of independent-samples t-test revealed that teaching experience contributed to teachers experiencing less burnout. The results of the study can enlighten teachers as to what extent teachers’ burn out can be predicted by psychological distress, and personality traits, which, in turn can encourage teacher training programs to concern themselves with the mental health and preparedness of trainees to teach.

The present qualitative study narrates the challenges and identity changes experienced by an Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher taking her initial steps in developing second language reading materials through recreating the anecdotes of a Persian classic poet. Her descriptive and analytic field notes while designing the materials, feedbacks received from two advisors and six language teachers, and various drafts of the developed materials as documents formed the data for this self-study. Meticulous analysis of the data revealed the ways by which the practicing materials developer revisited a number of normative assumptions which had permeated her cognition; started to see materials development as art; and practiced self-reliance, creativity, respect, and ownership. Given the paucity of narrative enquiries focusing on materials developers’ identity (re)-construction, the present study is hoped to provide a richer understanding of the processes involved in generating classroom materials.

Following an ethnographic approach, this study was intended to investigate how children transfer meaning in their drawings, as a manifestation of their visual literacy competence. To this end, 32 six- and seven-year-old Iranian male children were observed for six class sessions as they engaged in learning activities that involved drawing. Building upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) theoretical framework of Visual Grammar, children’s drawings were analyzed. Field notes were also used to describe experiences and observations the researcher made while participating in the class. Furthermore, children’s descriptions of their own drawings were used as complementary evidence to the analysis. The results of the analyses revealed that drawing upon a variety of visual resources, such as talks, written texts, gestures, and objects, children made ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings in their drawings. Furthermore, although each drawing was uniquely created by different types of interests and provided the specific context for the visual structures and forms, some features such as use of space and line framings, diagonal lines, curved/bent figures, profile form, and tilted body position were shared by most children in their meaning-making act. The findings can help educators and practitioners promote children’s visual literacy, and propose pedagogical and practical implications.

The purpose of this study was to find the Iranian less and more experienced EFL teachers' beliefs in marking students' errors in writing, their preferred types of written corrective feedback, the most useful kind of teachers' written error correction feedback, and the differences between what they believe and what they actually do in giving feedback. The study was done by the cooperation of 120 available university teachers (53 less experienced and 67 more experienced) teaching writing to EFL learners at different universities in Iran. A written feedback questionnaire was employed in this descriptive survey in which both quantitative (closed-ended questions and paper investigation) and qualitative (open-ended questions) ways of data collection were used. Descriptive statistics including frequency and percentage were estimated in the quantitative data analysis. The results revealed that in error marking and in finding the most useful kind of error correction, less and more experienced teachers had different preferences; and for pointing out the errors, they also had different ideas. The reviewing of the open-ended questions for the qualitative data showed no belief discrepancies in teachers’ responses to the closed-ended items and open-ended questions of the questionnaire. However, the investigation of teachers’ error correction on learners’ actual papers indicated that both groups’ beliefs were different from their actual paper correction. The implications of the study are for teachers, policymakers, and decision-makers in educational settings.

The way people perform a speech act differs across cultures. People from different cultures may have different perceptions of similar social factors and interpret them differentially. These differences can lead to cross-cultural miscommunications when language users perform a given speech act such as request. Based on the request analysis categories introduced by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989b) and Schauer (2009), the present study examined Iranian EFL learners' deviations in utilizing internal and external modifications from native speakers' norms and explored how Bloom-based instruction can contribute to the acquisition of internal and external modifications. To this end, a researcher-developed Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) was utilized to collect data from 61 participants: a. treatment group (20), b. control group (23), and c. native speakers (18). The data were categorized based on a framework adapted from Blum-Kulka et al. (1989b) and Schauer's (2009) coding schemes for internal and external modifications. The results suggested that, in the pretest, Iranian EFL learners’ use of request modification strategies differed significantly from native speakers’ norms. It was found that that after the Bloom-based ILP instruction, the treatment group progressed towards native speakers' norms in the application of several modification strategies. These findings imply that the employment of Bloom’s Taxonomy, with specific focus on high order thinking skills in the development of pragmatics tasks and activities can help EFL learners approach native speakers’ norms.