شاداب جبارپور

Teachers' beliefs and their alignment with teaching methods significantly impact students' growth and academic progress. Given the importance of the English language in defense and military contexts at military and Defence universities,, this study aims to explore the beliefs of English language professors and how these beliefs influence teaching methods and associated challenges. This research utilizes a mixed exploratory data collection method. Initially, participants completed a structured questionnaire with closed questions to assess their beliefs in teaching grammar. Subsequently, 15 participants engaged in open and semi-structured interviews. The statistical population comprises 102 English language professors from various universities of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, selected using a non-random method (availability). The findings of this research examine teachers' beliefs regarding learning grammar in seven categories, including the significance of grammar in education, inductive approach, analogical approach, focus on form approach, meaning-based approach, value of practice, feedback, and error correction in grammar. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS software, while qualitative data underwent content analysis. The results suggest the importance of teaching grammar in language instruction and the necessity for teachers to align their beliefs to address educational challenges effectively.

Enhancing one's proficiency in English grammar represents a foremost objective for individuals who are learning a foreign language. In EFL contexts, it is commonly observed that children tend to acquire knowledge of grammar rules incidentally, whereas adults usually require formal instruction to attain a more advanced level of proficiency. Numerous contemporary approaches have undergone substantial investigation, yet comparatively limited emphasis has been placed on the acquisition of grammar learning strategies. This article investigates the perspectives of learners with regards to the utilization of grammatical learning strategies during the duration of an English language course. This research centers on the cognitive and affective viewpoints of individuals participating in a grammar study group. The objective of the research is to investigate the utilization of specific strategies by learners for the acquisition of varied grammar structures. Novel methodologies and empirical investigations have the potential to enhance the comprehension of the educational process and self-regulation. The aforementioned holds the possibility of significant repercussions for individuals engaged in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning process, educators facilitating such learning, and professionals responsible for designing EFL curricula.

This study, conducted in two stages, investigates the effects versus effectiveness of second language instruction (De Graaff & Housen, 2009). Specifically, it analyzes the effect of instruction manner (indirect versus direct correction) on the learner's written lexico-grammatical errors and investigates the effectiveness of such an instruction on learning similar subjects. To that end, a pseudo-longitudinal (Kellerman, 1989) study was designed and the errors in the argumentative writings of 52 Iranian EFL learners of three proficiency levels were identified and classified and then the students were treated with indirect and direct corrective feedback (CF) over a period of six months to see if the feedback types would reduce those errors. The results show that although providing learners with the CF could lead to a reduction of the errors, direct feedback proved to be a more effective strategy. Moreover, t-test results demonstrated that the short-term impact of the CF could not last over time, a finding that confirms Truscott's (2004, 2007; 2009) claims that error correction does not have a positive effect on the development of L2 writing accuracy. The study suggests that provision of corrective feedback can merely bring about superficial and temporary changes to L2 learner's performance, not to their underlying competence and that L2 learners need extensive and sustained meaningful exposure and practice to improve their writing. Teachers need to take a more fine-tuned approach to written corrective feedback and realize that the effectiveness of corrective feedback depends on multiple factors such as error types, feedback characteristics, the learner, the teacher, and the learning context.

This study investigated the effectiveness of individual and collaborative outputbased focus-on-form instructional tasks on the acquisition of English inversion structures by EFL learners. Moreover, it explored the developmental trend of learners’ inversion acquisition. To this end, 60 homogeneous EFL learners were assigned to individual and collaborative output groups. They were exposed to texts encompassing inversion structures for 12 instructional sessions. The task included dictogloss in both groups where the texts were reconstructed either individually or collaboratively. A pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest design was used to examine the effects of the 2 tasks. The learners’ process of acquisition was examined by parallel tests of inversion development. Results showed that collaborative task implementation was advantageous over individual task performance in both immediate and delayed posttests. Results did not reveal a linear additive process forthe collaborative output group; however, the findings suggest that collaborative language production can enhance grammatical acquisition.