Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies
Volume:7 Issue: 3, Summer 2020

The increasing interest in new technologies and collaboration has created innovative ways in learning. Among these, computer-supported collaborative learning has received much attention where collaborative learners interact with their peers in a meaning-making process with the help of computer technologies. The present study attempts to understand the interaction pattern among collaborating intermediate EFL students who use augmented reality and virtual reality learning resources in the meaning-making process of abstract genre awareness. Augmented reality integrates the virtual with the real environment, while virtual reality immerses the learners in the virtual world. To this end, twelve intermediate proficiency pairs were randomly assigned into three scaffolding groups: Augmented reality, virtual reality, and traditional. Each group was supposed to write an abstract upon the provided resources which were prepared based on the sub-moves of Hyland's (2000) move analysis model. The augmented reality group used Ownar mobile application and the virtual reality group used VR HeadSet virtual reality. The audio recordings of the participants' interactions during their collaborative abstract writing with the help of the assigned scaffoldings confirmed Hsieh's (2017) collective scaffolding in achieving high quality collaboration: Peer to peer, multi-directional, and individual scaffolding pattern. The augmented reality group demonstrated peer to peer scaffolding pattern; the virtual reality group demonstrated multi-directional pattern, and the traditional group demonstrated individual scaffolding pattern. It is implicated that practitioners can reinforce these types of scaffoldings in order to enhance assistance, co-construction, and accuracy among the peers through using augmented reality, virtual reality, and traditional group scaffolding, respectively.

The number of online users has unprecedentedly increased in recent years. The rapid advancement of technology has seen the growth of social media usage and this has made a huge impact on today’s educational system. However, to what extent has social media played an important role in the teaching and learning process particularly in the English Language Teaching (ELT) is still unclear. This is due to the fact that in most cases, social media is used for the purpose of entertainment and personal usage. The current study attempted to explore the nature of communications via social media and how they can be used in improving students’ language skills. Participants in this study consisted of fifteen undergraduate students who were into their second year of the TESL program. They were involved in completing a grammatical task through the use of Facebook Messenger, an online platform where they engaged in chat activities. The discussion which was moderated by the researcher lasted 45 minutes for each session and five sessions were conducted where sentence combining activities were also done using the Facebook Messenger. Results obtained from the discourse analysis done which examined the participants’ accounts of their experiences, as well as the pedagogical features of the online platform, clearly show that this platform can be used as a pedagogical tool in improving language skills.

The present study aimed at investigating the efficacy of the implementation of technology-mediated reading comprehension tasks to develop learner autonomy and metacognitive strategy use of Iranian intermediate EFL learners in a reading comprehension class. To this end, a quasi-experimental design was used in which 80 participants were selected based on their performance in a placement test (Oxford Quick Placement Test), and were assigned on a random basis to experimental and control groups. Learner autonomy questionnaire as well as metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory (MARSI) version1.0. were used as pretest. After 20 sessions of reading comprehension instruction in the form of technology-mediated task-based instruction in the experimental group and traditional explicit instruction for the control group, the aforementioned questionnaires were administered again as posttest. The obtained pretest and posttest scores were analyzed statistically using ANCOVA. The results indicated that technology-mediated task-based instruction was more effective in enhancing learner autonomy and metacognitive strategy use in comparison to the traditional explicit reading comprehension instruction. The results of this study bear implications for teachers, teacher trainers and material developers as they can use the tasks implemented in this study to change the role of learners from passive recipient of information to autonomous learners who resort to strategies facing a problem. Further, using these tasks in a class of reading comprehension, learners are not only input receivers but also output producers.

This study aims at investigating the effect of writing strategy-based instruction (WSBI) on the use of metasocial and social strategies in Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ essay writing. Using Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) diagnostic test, 60 homogeneous subjects were selected in two groups of 30 each. Prior to treatment, all subjects wrote an essay writing task for a bar chart description as a pre-test and filled out a writing strategies questionnaire, too. During an academic term-long intervention the groups were taught to apply metasocial and social writing strategies adapted from Oxford’s (2011) strategic self-regulation (S2R) model in their essays through writing strategies-based instruction (WSBI) for experimental group and process writing instruction (PWI) for control group. Following the treatment, the participants of both groups wrote a second essay on another bar chart description as a posttest followed by the administration of the same questionnaire. The essays were evaluated by two raters using the IELTS writing marking scheme. The results of independent samples t-test revealed a significant difference in experimental learners’ writing performance favoring more metasocial strategies than social strategies. The findings also stressed the usefulness of WSBI for EFL learners’ writing, requiring that teachers, material developers, and syllabus writers consider the prominent potentials of metasocial and also social strategies for the development of EFL learners' essay writing.

The present study investigated the accuracy of writing, amount of feedback and comment category (global and local comments) of twenty-eight intermediate EFL students providing peer-peer feedback on writing in a computer-based and collaborative handwritten based format. Following administration of a proficiency test, the participants wrote a composition on a topic for the pretest, completed three writing tasks, and wrote on the same topic for the posttest (as in the pretest). During the treatment sessions, students in the computer-based group provided peer-peer feedback using word processor tools and the students in the handwritten group provided collaborative handwritten peer feedback to each other. The results indicated that the accuracy of the collaborative handwritten group significantly improved from pretest to posttest; however, no significant difference was found in the writing accuracy between the two groups. The qualitative analyses of the data collected during the treatment sessions indicated that the amount of feedback in the collaborative handwritten group was considerably higher than that of the computer-based group. Moreover, considering the comment category, it was revealed that the students of both groups predominantly focused on providing local comments. It can be concluded that applying collaborative handwritten peer feedback might be beneficial in providing more elaborated feedback, conducive to L2 writing development.

Previous research has shown that the construction of multiple-choice (MC) items is a very difficult task. As such, textbook writers have proposed some guidelines to help item writers to write more effective items. However, such guidelines reflect the intuition of their writers, and most of them are not necessarily supported by empirical research, and what is preached may not be practiced. The purpose of the present study was, therefore, to analyze the attitudes of language teachers in an EFL setting to better understand if they follow the guidelines when developing MC items. To that end, a 28-item, 5-point Likert type, researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data from 661 Iranian language teachers. The data were analyzed using SPSS (version, 25). Results from frequency tallies and percent values showed the significance of the majority of the guidelines in the construction of MC items. However, mixed results were reported for one of the guidelines, and another guideline was considered unimportant. Findings from factor analysis yielded four major factors underlying the guidelines: Developing plausible distractors, editing and proofreading guidelines, formatting and refining items, and avoiding clues to the correct response. Drawing on the findings, we discuss the pedagogical implications for how to best develop and fine-tune MC guidelines.