Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics
Volume:6 Issue: 1, Spring 2015

Few, if any, studies have investigated the effect of professional experience as a rater variable and type of assessment as a task variable on raters’ criteria in the assessment of speech acts. This study aimed to explore the impact of nonnative teachers’ professional experience on the use of criteria in monologic and dialogic assessment of 12 role-plays of 3 apology speech acts. To this end, 60 raters were divided into 2 subgroups of raters with under and over 5 years of professional experience and rated the role-plays monologically and dialogically. A content analysis of the raters’ descriptions of the ratings showed 3 groups of criteria: the general criterion (appropriateness), pragmalinguistic criteria (linguistic features, L1 effect, paralinguistic features, directness, and adequacy), and sociopragmatic criteria (politeness, repair, truthfulness, promise, thanking, reasoning, personal trait formality, genuineness, and expression of apology). We also discovered that neither the more experienced nor the less experienced raters paid due attention to the sociopragmatic criteria in the monologic and dialogic ratings of pragmatic performances. Both groups of raters based their ratings primarily on the general criterion of appropriateness in the dialogic ratings. However, in the monologic ratings, the more experienced ones preferred pragmalinguistic criteria, and the less experienced ones opted for the appropriateness criterion. An analysis of the influence of the type of rating on the raters’ application of criteria showed that the raters differed in the use of all the 3 groups of criteria in the monologic ratings, whereas in the dialogic ratings, their difference in the application of criteria narrowed down to the sociopragmatic criteria. The findings have implications for teacher education programs on pragmatic assessment, urge considerations for the role of teachers’ experience in pragmatic assessment, and stress the inclusion of dialogic ratings in the assessment of speech acts for improving the quality of raters’ assessments.

For the vast majority of the Iranian M.A. students of TEFL, thesis writing is the first individual engagement with research. Despite having some pedagogical merits, such an academic activity generally poses some intellectual and affective challenges to such students. During thesis completion, if students are not effectively scaffolded by supervisors and not supported by universities, they are likely to encounter serious problems that might result in their disengagement, frustration, and withdrawal from doing their theses themselves. This study was an attempt to explore the factors that dissuaded some Iranian M.A. students of TEFL from carrying out their theses themselves. In effect, the study aimed to shed light on the reasons why some Iranian M.A. students of TEFL go to other agents to do their theses in exchange for money. Adopting a purposive sampling procedure, we found 13 M.A. graduates who did not do their theses themselves, but they paid some agents to do so in their stead. Semistructured interviews were used to gather the data. Findings revealed 3 dominant themes including supervisor-related, supervisee-related, and higher education-related factors responsible for the issue under investigation.

L2 learners’ individual differences are crucial factors that deserve attention in L2 education. Focusing on 2 main areas of individual differences (i.e., field (in)dependence and multiple intelligences), this study explored their relationships with L2 reading performance. Participants were 64 TEFL undergraduates and postgraduates. To assess the participats’ degree of field (in)dependence and multiple intelligences profiles, GEFT (Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, & Karp, 1971) and McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Inventory (1999) were administered, respectively, and their L2 reading performance was assessed through a task-based reading test (Salmani-Nodoushan, 2003), which measures performance on 5 reading tasks of true-false, sentence completion, outlining, elicitation of writer’s views, and scanning. Data were quantitatively analyzed using Pearson product-moment correlation. Results revealed significant positive relationships between field independence and performance on the 4 reading tasks of true-false, sentence completion, outlining, and scanning. Moreover, intrapersonal intelligence was found to correlate significantly and positively with the scanning performance.

This study investigated the effect of reciprocal teaching (RT) on EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Fifty intermediate learners participated in the study and were sampled as the experimental (n = 25) and control groups (n = 25). Participants were male and ranged in age from 15 to 16. The Reading section of Key English Test (KET, 2010) was used as the pretest to assess the participants’ entry-level reading ability. MANOVA results for comparing the 2 groups’ mean scores in the pretest were not significant, indicating that they were at the same level of reading ability prior to the study. RT strategies (i.e., predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarizing) were taught to the experimental group in reading classes for 6 months. Meanwhile, the control group received conventional reading instruction (i.e, prereading, while-reading, and postreading procedure). The Reading section of KET was used as the posttest to explore the improvement of both groups after the experiment. MANOVA results revealed a significant difference between the general reading ability of the experimental and control groups, in favor of the experimental group at the end of the course [F(5, 44)= 55.740, p =. 000; Wilks’ Lambda =. 136; partial eta squared =. 864]. Moreover, examining Tests of Between-Subjects Effects revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in all 5 parts of the posttest.

This study investigated the utility of all of the above (AOTA) as a test option in multiple-choice items. It aimed at estimating item fit, item difficulty, item discrimination, and guess factor of such a choice. Five reading passages of the Key English Test (KET, 2010) were adapted. The test was reconstructed in 2 parallel forms: Test 1 did not include the abovementioned alternative, whereas Test 2, administered 2 weeks later, included such an alternative. The 2 tests, 32 items each, were administered to 142 high school third-graders. Results, analyzed through 3-parameter logistic model, indicated that the multiple-choice questions, including the alternative all of the above, were easier. Results also revealed that the option all of the above increased the guess factor. Because guess factor is a source of measurement error, it may threaten test validity and reliability.

A term in one language rarely has an absolute synonymous meaning in the same language; besides, it rarely has an equivalent meaning in an L2. English synonyms of seeing and hearing are particularly grammatically and semantically different. Frame semantics is a good tool for discovering differences between synonymous words in L2 and differences between supposed L1 and L2 equivalents. Vocabulary teaching based on synonymous or bilingual equivalents has confused EFL Iranian students. Frame semantics has shown to improve L2 comprehension of EFL learners. Hence, teachers are recommended to either explain the meaning of each word or provide them with synonyms and bilingual equivalents together with complementary explanations concerning the differences between the words.

Nonnative English-speaking scholars have often been reported to be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their English native counterparts when it comes to writing a publishable research article (RA). When they submit their manuscripts to English-language journals, they sometimes receive comments criticizing their faulty English. One area of difficulty for these authors is the grammaticalization of neutrality, impersonality, and objectivity. Relying on systemic functional linguistics (SFL), as the analytic framework, and by comparing the transitivity systems of the manuscripts written by the scholars prior to submission with their after-publication version, this study investigated how this is achieved during the revision process. Results suggest that revisions tend to put the authors in the background of the text. This involves increasing the presence of relational processes and reducing the number of material ones, and as far as voice is concerned, the proportion of passive processes in relation to the active ones increases.