Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies
Volume:2 Issue: 3, Summer 2015

As far as making errors is an indispensable part of L2 learning process, appropriate and pertinent corrective feedback (CF) is a significant medium for L2 teachers to prevent their learners’ errors from getting fossilized and assist them progress along with their L2 learning process. There are various factors contributing to the efficacy of CF, but proficiency level is of paramount importance. In this study, various oral CF types preferred by L2 learners at intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency were considered. For this purpose, 20 participants were selected for each level. Different types of oral CF were identified, and their distribution in relation to the proficiency levels of the learners was determined. After conducting chisquare tests and comparing the significance values with respect to their preferred CF types, it is observed that the most significant CF types among the intermediate participants were paralinguistic signals and clarification requests. Moreover, for the upper-intermediate participants, recasts and repetition were the most frequent and significant types of CF that assisted them to reformulate their utterances. Finally, with regard to the advanced participants, the results pointed out that as they became more proficient in terms of their linguistic threshold, they would show no significant positive or negative attitudes towards any certain type of CF for treating their errors. The findings suggest that L2 teachers should adjust CF types and correction techniques to their learners’ proficiency levels and provide proper types of CF that can foster a more productive learning milieu to enhance learning quality and speaking ability.

The main purpose of this research was to investigate the role of game-oriented instruction on learning vocabulary of Iranian young beginner students. Ninety public school students were selected to participate in this study. Because of practical limitations, the researchers could not assign students to different groups randomly but the selection of the three groups as control and experimental groups were done randomly. After administration of Key English Test (KET), the groups were homogenized and 18 students were eliminated from this study. The treatment starts with 72 students, each group has 24 students. Before starting a treatment, a 20-item multiple choice test was used as pretest. After administration of pretest, the treatment was started. In the control group, new vocabularies were taught through traditional textbook method. In one of the control group, game was used as a main medium of instruction and in the other one, the combination of game and traditional methods were used. In this group, game was used as a supplementary activity. After treatment, posttest was administered in all three groups. In order to analyze the data, SPSS version 20 was used. Since the design of this study was pretest-posttest, analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used for data analysis. Data analysis showed that there was not significance difference between game group and traditional group, but there was a significance difference between mixed group and traditional group. It means that using game as a supplementary activity has the most beneficial effects on learning new vocabularies.

This study aimed to analyze the Top-Notch series (Fundamentals, Top-Notch 1, Top-Notch 2, Top-Notch 3, Summit 1, and Summit 2) to find out the extent to which these ELT textbooks could represent the six cognitive processes (i.e., remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating), as well as multiple intelligences (i.e., verbal, logical, spatial, bodily, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and existential) drawing on revised Bloom's taxonomy (BRT) and multiple intelligence (MI) frameworks. To this end, content analysis was done to obtain the frequencies and percentages of various cognitive processes, ranging from lower- to higher-order levels, and nine intelligences. Results showed that remembering and evaluating processes received the highest and the least percentages of cognitive processes in all the six textbooks; applying, understanding, creating, and analyzing came in between. Moreover, the higher-order processes (i.e., analyzing, evaluating, and creating) were less frequently represented in the Top-Notch textbooks than lower-order ones (i.e., remembering, understanding, and applying). Furthermore, verbal and existential intelligences received the highest and the least percentages of multiple intelligences in Top-Notch series. The results imply that there is a need to improve the Top-Notch textbooks in terms of higher-order cognitive processes and provide ground to develop various types of intelligences.

Listening has long been the neglected skill in second/foreign language acquisition, research, teaching, and assessment. And managing listening instruction and improving listening comprehension in the classroom are difficult for teachers and EFL learners. In this regard, this study aimed at investigating the effect of group dynamic assessment (G-DA) on Iranian EFL learner's metacognitive listening strategies and listening comprehension. Sixty young EFL listeners were assigned to an experimental and a control group at random. The experimental group (n = 30) was metacognitively instructed based on group dynamic assessment. The students in the control group (n = 30) were orally exposed to the same material without being metacognitively instructed by the same teacher. After ten instructional sessions, a listening comprehension posttest and the metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire (MALQ) were administered to both groups to measure their listening comprehension and metacognitive awareness, respectively. A comparison of pre- and post-test scores of the G-DA group showed that the learners benefited from metacognitive instruction as measured by the listening comprehension test. As well, it was found that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on both listening comprehension and MALQ post-tests.

This study investigated the extent to which two types of scaffolding, namely symmetrical and/or asymmetrical scaffolding could contribute to the acquisition of grammar among Iranian EFL sophomores. To fulfill this objective, 42 female college students whose age ranged between 19 and 24 were selected through convenience sampling and, after taking a pretest, divided into two groups of: symmetrical scaffolding (SS) and asymmetrical scaffolding (AS). The experimental group AS received instruction according to asymmetric strategy, while the experimental group SS was instructed via the symmetric strategy. To answer the research questions, a post-test was conducted, and its results were analyzed using independent and paired test. The results showed that AS scaffolding is a more fruitful strategy in improving participant's grammar achievement. The findings of this study have implications forteachers. Pair work is a central task in any language class and teachers usually do not know how to arrange the pairs. Some teachers arrange them by age, while other teachers arrange pairs by proficiency level. The results of this research indicated that when arranging pairs, teachers need to choose students from differing proficiency levels.

This paper discusses the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ beliefs about writing with their L2 writing self-efficacy and performance. The participants of this study were 70 female and male Iranian undergraduate learners ranging in age from 20 to 35. Among three dimensions of beliefs about writing, recursive, audience orientation and transmission belief, recursive orientation and transmission beliefs had positive significant correlations with learners’ writing performance. This means that those who consider writing as a process but not a product as well as those who regard writing as a means for reporting what authorities think are more successful writers than others. The results showed that beliefs about writing correlate with students’ writing performance. In this study, it was found that no statistically significant relationship between audience orientation belief and learners’ writing performance. In other words, Iranian EFL learners do not pay attention to the needs of their readers. Moreover, there was significant relationship between learners’ beliefs about writing and their L2 writing self-efficacy. Also self-efficacy was shown to have a major impact on the students’ performance in this research. The results help teachers to predict influential effects of students’ beliefs on their L2 writing performance.