Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice
Volume:8 Issue: 17, Fall- Winter 2015

This study was planned to investigate the effect of explicit teaching of some Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) techniques on Iranian EFL learners' Reading Comprehension. It was attempted to explore any change in the students’ abilities in revealing the implied meaning of the texts. Any change in the students’ views toward learning English was also explored in this study after critical reading instruction through CDA techniques. To this end, two news articles were selected from online sources. The participants were 60 undergraduate students of Law at Bandar Anzali Azad University. They were assigned to two groups of 30 students. The experimental group were required to hand in a reflective essay on each reading article. They also responded to a questionnaire to reveal any change in their attitudes toward English language learning or any increase in their motivation to learn it. The results revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group after being instructed to read between lines through CDA. Their motivation also increased in learning English after becoming familiar with the field of CDA.

This quasi-experimental study set out to examine the effect of peer corrective feedback on feedback givers and receivers in L2 writing. The forms in focus were a/an, the, and the past tense.The study was conducted in an EFL classroom setting with 45 learners of English in three writing classes which served as the feedback givers, receivers, and the control group.  Over four sessions of treatment, the givers reviewed the writing of the receivers with two functions of English articles (a/an as the first mention and the as the anaphoric reference) and simple past tense (regular and irregular) as the features in focus without receiving any comments from others on their writing. The receivers received feedback from peers, but were excluded from giving any feedback to others. The control group neither gave nor received any peer feedback. The study followed a pretest, immediate post-test, delayed post-test design. Statistical analyses run on the data obtained from a picture description task and a grammaticality judgment task indicated that the givers group improved significantly more than the receivers group and the receivers group, in turn, improved significantly more than the control group in terms of the forms targeted. The results obtained imply that learners’ involvement in peer writing correction can result in significant L2 writing accuracy.

The present study was an attempt to compare the effect of three VLSs, namely word-part strategy, word-card strategy and context-clue strategy on immediate and delayed English vocabulary retention of Iranian third grade high school students. To this end, 90 students, studying at three high schools in Tabriz, in three intact groups, were considered as the participants of the study. In order to ensure their homogeneity, the researchers administrated a Preliminary English Test (PET). Based on the results, 20 students in each class were selected as the participants of the study. These three intact classes were then randomly assigned to three experimental groups, each receiving one type of vocabulary learning strategy. Then, 60 words were given to the students as a pretest in order to sort out 40 unknown words to teach. At the end of the last session of the treatment, an immediate posttest and after four weeks a delayed posttest were given to each group, and then, their mean scores were compared through ANOVA. The analysis of the results revealed a significant difference in the efficacy of context-clue strategy in contrast to both word-part strategy and word-card strategy in the delayed posttest. The findings of the present study can have important implications for EFL teachers and learners.

This study attempted to compare the relative frequency of the occurrence of Language Related Episodes (LREs) in the dyadic talks of pairs who were homogeneous and heterogeneous in terms of English proficiency.  LREs are those parts of the conversations where the interlocutors explicitly focus on linguistic form. The study was carried out with 60 Iranian university students of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) who were divided into two groups of homogeneous and heterogeneous pairs based on their scores in a standardized English proficiency test (FCE).  The pairs were required to collaborate and talk to carry out nine writing tasks. The participants’ talks while they were doing the pair work were recorded and transcribed, and the relative frequency of LREs for each pair talk was found.  The frequency values for the two groups were compared through the independent samples t-test, and it was found that the heterogeneous pairs had significantly more LREs in their dyadic interactions.  The results of the study were explained in relation to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, and several pedagogical implications were finally offered.

Thanks to the development of the concept of metadiscourse, it is now widely acknowledged that academic/scientific writing is not only concerned with communicating purely propositional meanings: what is communicated through academic/scientific communication is seen to be intertwined with the negotiation of social and interpersonal meanings. While a large number of so called metadiscoursal resources contribute to the simultaneous negotiation of propositional and interpersonal meanings, the present study aimed at investigating the functions self-mention forms can fulfill in academic/scientific communication. Two of Stephen Hawking's scientific books were selected as the corpus of the research, and based on Tang and John's (1999) model, the constructed corpus was analyzed in terms of the functions self-mention forms can fulfill in academic/scientific writing. The findings revealed that from among the different roles identified by Tang and John, the representative role constituted the most frequent self-mention function in the corpus. The remarkably heavy presence of representative role in Hawking's scientific prose was interpreted as a further evidence for the claim that scientists are more likely to persuade readers of their ideas if they frame their messages in ways which appeal to appropriate community-recognized relationships.

Underlying any learning and teaching process is a set of preferred Learning Styles (LSs) and Teaching Styles (TSs) which epitomize the overall educational policy and identification of which is sine qua non for any reform of the educational system. This ex-post-facto study scrutinized preference of Iranian EFL teachers' for Expert, Formal Authority, Personal Model, Facilitator, and Delegator TSs and their students' tendencies towards Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic student LSs. We collected the research data based on Grasha's (1996) Teaching Style Questionnaire administered to 30 Iranian EFL teachers and the Barsch Learning Style Questionnaire (1991) administered to 300 Iranian EFL learners. Descriptive statistics of the research data revealed that majority of Iranian EFL learners opt for the visual learning style and teachers highly favour facilitating foreign language learning. However, Visual and Delegate Learning and Teaching Styles reflected the lowest frequencies.  The findings underscore the need to raise teachers’ awareness of LSs so that they can modify their teaching according to their students’ preferences.

This study was an attempt to investigate what metacognitive strategies are specifically employed by English learners when it comes to different speaking task types.60 students at advanced level (female) were randomly selected and given an OPT as a test of homogeneity. They were assigned to experimental and control groups. The MS questionnaire (Oxford, 1990) was also administered to see what MS they employed in speaking tasks. The control group was traditionally taught to practice one-way and two-way speaking tasks in a conventional way. The experimental group, however, practiced one-way and two-way speaking tasks after receiving MS instruction. After administering the posttest, an ANCOVA comparison of the mean ratings of the two groups on the posttest revealed a significant difference between the speaking ability and MS use of the two groups. The results indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group leading to the conclusion that instruction in MS use prior to oral tasks had a significantly higher impact on EFL leaners’ speaking ability. Statistically, the results obtained from descriptive statistics (ANCOVA) and the chi-square revealed that the difference between MS employed by participants in one-way speaking tasks versus two-way speaking tasks were significant.

This study investigated whether Iranian EFL learners are aware of different varieties of English spoken throughout the world and whether they have tendency towards a particular variety of English. Likewise, it explored the attitudes of Iranian EFL learners towards the native and non-native varieties of English. Moreover, it made an attempt to investigate whether such attitudes are gender-oriented. To this end, 30 intermediate male and female Iranian EFL learners whose age ranged from 22 to 30 formed the sample population of this study. They responded to three questionnaires. Then, the collected data were subjected to a one-way repeated measure ANOVA, Fisher's LSD post hoc test, and independent-samples t-tests. The main conclusion of this study was that Iranian EFL learners do not believe in a single world English anymore; instead, they gradually believe in "world Englishes". They are indeed receding from that perfect English accent and are accepting other Englishes for their communication with people around the world. In addition, although the participants accepted non-native varieties, having tendency towards American and British accents reveals the fact that they have positive attitudes towards language learning.

This research study was an attempt to explore hidden cultural components in an ELT textbook from Oxford University Press (OUP) titled 'Cover to Cover'. Two research methodologies were relied on to unveil the western ideologies in this series: Firstly, a qualitative review over its reading textbooks was undertaken for authenticating the hidden western values for Iranian contexts. At this stage, analyses over randomly chosen units of the three-volume CTC book were managed via qualitative content analysis using inductive category formation techniques. In a second stage, a focus group including English language teachers indulged in teaching this series were interviewed to enrich the data with lived experiences. Overall, the findings revealed that the hidden values in the sampled texts might transmit some counter-local perspectives against Iranian leaners' local culture. Pedagogical suggestions as to improving critical cultural awareness practices for non-native students in the light of material development practices for EFL settings were discussed at the end.

The major aim of this study was to explore the nature and frequency of the reading strategies used by the EFL learners while reading academic texts. Normally, students tend to read all the information provided in reading materials. This study explores whether learners use reading strategies to assist them in reading comprehension. There was a sample of 45 English language (EFL) learners from Islamic Azad University, Falavarjan Branch. The instrument utilized in this study was a survey questionnaire with 30 items including 13 global reading strategies, 8 problem solving strategies and 9 support reading strategies. The survey was going to signify how much EFL learners use each of these strategies while reading academic texts. The findings indicated that the participants used global reading strategies more (44.5%) than problem solving strategies (29.0%) and support reading strategies (26.5%). The results of the present study will let the instructors improve the reading strategies which are not used by EFL learners frequently. It also helps learners to promote the ability of using reading strategies and utilize the strategies in an appropriate and effective way.