alireza khoram

This study investigated the effects of processing-based instruction (PI) and output-based instruction (OI) on learners’ development in comprehension and production of the English present simple tense. The findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the effects of PI versus OI. Among 70 EFL learners at a private language center in Iran, 40 pre-intermediate learners were assigned to the PI group, and 20 learners were assigned to the OI group (n=20). The PI group received structured processing input activities, while the OI group engaged in structured output activities. Descriptive and analytical statistics revealed that participants in the PI group significantly outperformed the participants in the OI group in receptive knowledge of the target structure. However, both instructional methods affected the participants’ productive understanding of the present simple tense, and the difference between the efficacy of these two types of instruction on participants’ productive knowledge was not significant.

Most of the validation studies conducted across varying test application contexts are usually framed within the traditional conceptualization of validity and therefore lack a comprehensive framework to focus on test score interpretations and test score use. This study aimed at developing and validating a collocational behavior test (CBT), drawing on Kane's argument-based approach to validity. Four types of inferences including observation, generalization, extrapolation and explanation were articulated. To verify the validity assumptions, both theoretical and empirical evidence were presented within the formative and summative stages of test development and validation. Followed from Kane, theoretical evidence was sought through test specification, item construction, and test construction procedures. Empirical support, however, was sought through examining the collocational behavior test (CBT) with a sample of 60 university students majoring in TEFL. Ebel’s criteria, KR-21 reliability and a series of Pearson-Product correlation were applied to analyze the data for both theoretical and empirical phases. The findings refer to the support for the assumptions proposed for test validity, suggesting that the collocational behavior test(CBT)may provide an appropriate and accurate indicator of collocational language ability for EFL learners. The implications for language testing and assessment are discussed

A teacher's language awareness (TLA) is generally believed to exert a tremendous influence on language instruction. However, reviewing literature revealed that it has not received due attention in teacher training centers in Iran. Therefore, this paper reports on an investigation into the metalinguistic awareness of prospective teachers at Teacher Education Universities of Iran training to be junior and senior high school English teachers. The study focuses on the test performance of these prospective teachers as an indication of their explicit knowledge base and also the relationship between the metalinguistic knowledge and their error identification capability. To that end, a metalinguistic knowledge test (MKT) and a grammaticality judgment test (GJT) were administered to 207 student teachers to canvass the nature and extent of their repertoire of explicit knowledge about language and of grammatical terminologies as part of their TLA. The results revealed a moderate level of metalinguistic knowledge and a significant relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and error identification ability. Moreover, the findings of the study shed light on the prominence of metalinguistic knowledge as a means of improving teacher's linguistic proficiency, detected the lacunae in student teacher's knowledge about language and signaled the need for improvement in prospective teacher's metalinguistic knowledge.

This study aimed to gain an insight into whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the form of a digital forum can reflect gendered discursive practices. A great deal of research has now established that computer-mediated interactions embody gendered differences in the use of emoticons, but few studies have examined the potential effect of the gender of the emoticon-receiver on the frequency and type of the emoticons. Drawing on a corpus of 386 posts from 26 interlocutors—both male and female participants—we explored how men and women receive emoticons, not just how they send emoticons. Our analysis of the transcripts focused on coding emoticons by type and frequency of occurrence. Each instance of emoticon use was initially coded based on our own interpretation of emoticons’ potential meaning in their particular surrounding texts. Findings revealed that the male participants displayed more emoticons than the females. Moreover, gendered differences were found in terms of the gender of the addressee: Both the males and females used significantly more emoticons when interacting with interlocutors from the opposite gender.