Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies
Volume:9 Issue: 4, Autumn 2022

Given the significant role of studying history in casting light on the past and present of events and providing future insight, the present study aimed to investigate the history of English teacher preparation programs offered in five famous private language institutes established in the second post-revolutionary decade (about thirty years ago) in Iran. Precisely, the study investigated the past and present of the programs in terms of their internal aspects as well as their response to external or sociopolitical associations of English language teaching (ELT) from their establishment. Two administrators, nine TPP (teacher preparation program) designers who were also teacher instructors, and two teachers were purposefully sampled. Data was gathered through conducting semi-structured interviews, in addition to analyzing documents available on the website of the institutes and those provided by the participants. Analyzing data through phronetic iterative approach manifested the related history in terms of five constant features including methodological directions as content, transmission approach in teacher preparation, providing teachers with external opportunities for professional development, insisting on monolingualism in ELT, and disregard for bringing the inclusion of local culture in ELT to the attention of prospective teachers, as well as three major changes comprising inclusion of teaching practice (TP), inclusion of technology education for ELT purposes following the outbreak of covid-19 pandemic, and enhancement of TPP duration. Specifically, the constant features disclosed lack of attention to external association of ELT in designing the programs while the major changes exhibited their internal development. Findings have implications to develop teacher preparation programs based on postmethod pedagogy.

The current study investigated whether autonomy-supportive teaching (AST) could predict EFL learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC), self-regulation (SR), academic engagement (AE), and perceived locus of control (LOC). To this end, 120 intermediate EFL learners were selected based on convenience sampling. To ensure the participants’ familiarity with autonomy supporting strategies, they received instruction based on Reeve’s (2009) model in 18 sessions. Oxford Quick Placement Test, Learning Climate Questionnaire, Willingness to Communicate Questionnaire, Academic Self-regulated Learning Scale, Academic Engagement Questionnaire, and Index of Internal Locus of Control were utilized to gather the data. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was evaluated on path coefficient estimates, t-value, the effect sizes (f2), and the coefficient of determination (R2). The overall model fit SRMR < 0.080 < HI95 supported the postulated model. The f2 values for the weight of the magnitude effect size predicted a significant effect size in the structural model. The results of R2 revealed significant positive paths from AST to SR, AE, WTC, and LOC implying that the observants merged in coalition with each other in a contingent context to predict the viability of autonomy-supportive teaching. Further significant paths were identified from SR to WTC and AE, and from AE and the LOC to WTC. The findings also indicated that AE and SR indirectly influence learners’ WTC via LOC. The study offers theoretical and pedagogical implications to EFL teachers and students.

Effective teaching of reading comprehension has been a great concern for language teachers, leading to the emergence of strategies in developing students’ reading skill. This study examined the effects of raising text structure awareness (TSA) through face-to-face and computer-based reading instruction (CBI) on students’ reading comprehension. The participants included 87 undergraduate students of Humanities from Guilan, Iran who were at the upper-intermediate level concerning their foreign language proficiency and took part in the pretest and the posttest of reading comprehension that were taken from sample IELTS. They were randomly assigned into one control and two experimental groups. The first experimental group received instruction on text structure within face-to-face classes (TSA) and the second experimental group worked through computer-based instruction (TSA+CBI) while the control group benefited from their routine conventional reading activities. The results of the one-way ANCOVA indicated that the second experimental group that received instruction on text structure awareness through CBI outperformed the first experimental group that simply practiced text structure awareness in face-to-face classes and the control group. In addition, the difference between the two treatment groups was statistically significant. The results verified the effectiveness of text structure awareness in improving the students’ reading comprehension in TSA+CBI groups. Language teachers can benefit from providing students with text structure awareness and facilitating their reading comprehension through applying technology.

The present study examined the impact of critical discourse analysis (CDA) on EFL undergraduates’ reading comprehension ability across different proficiency levels. Through Oxford Placement Test, 96 EFL undergraduates participating in this study were divided into three different proficiency levels of high, mid, and low. A journalistic reading comprehension test selected from a series of TOEFL tests were administered to all of them as a pretest. They received the same test after a treatment of van Dijk’s model instruction in the class. The analysis of results of the posttest through one-way ANCOVA indicated that CDA has a positive influence on learners’ reading comprehension. Then, a post hoc comparison using the Bonferroni test showed that the high proficiency group was significantly different from the low and mid proficiency groups. Also, the mid proficiency group significantly differed from the low one. Taken together, these findings suggested that CDA training had an effect on L2 learners’ reading comprehension for high and mid groups. Thus, language proficiency has a positive mediating role in the extent to which a CDA model awareness can improve learners’ reading comprehension ability. The findings of this study can inspire the curriculum designers as well as the teachers to include critical discourse analysis techniques both in students’ textbooks and in teacher training courses.

The present study was carried out to compare the effects of prelistening activities of cultural awareness-raising, strategies-based instruction, and linguistic support on listening comprehension as well as listening anxiety of EFL learners. The participants were 90 students (40 males & 50 females) majoring in English Language Teaching and Translation at Gonbad-e-Kavous University. The participants were selected out of 126 learners using the standardized Preliminary English Test (PET). The listening section of a PET and a listening anxiety questionnaire were given as both pretest and posttest to measure the level of listening comprehension and listening anxiety of the participants before and after the treatments. The participants were categorized into three groups. Each group was given listening instruction for ten sessions using one of the above mentioned prelistening activities. Data were analyzed using one-way ANCOVA. The results indicated that cultural awareness-raising and linguistic support were more effective in improving the listening comprehension and reducing the listening anxiety of the participants. Although the strategies-based instruction was positively effective on both variables, it was the least effective activity. The findings of the study can benefit material developers and teachers in making informed decisions about the type(s) of activities to implement in the listening courses.

The present study investigated the probable effects of asynchronous direct and metalinguistic computer-mediated corrective feedback (CMCF) on the writing ability (WA) and willingness-to-write (WTW) of upper-intermediate L2 learners. To this aim, a convenient sample of 90 upper-intermediate L2 learners volunteered to participate in this study. In the next stage, they were assigned into 3 intact groups. Intact experimental groups received asynchronous direct CMCF and metalinguistic CMCF on the different aspects of their writings, whereas the control group did not receive any CMCF. To check the (probable) impact of asynchronous direct and metalinguistic CMCF on the participants’ WA, the researchers assessed the participants’ WA before and after the treatment. Furthermore, participants filled out a previously developed and validated WTW questionnaire before and after the treatment, which measured their WTW. In the last stage, 16 participants of the experimental groups were interviewed to provide an in-depth understanding of factors affecting the participants’ WTW. ANOVA results revealed that the participants’ WA significantly improved due to both asynchronous direct and metalinguistic CMCF, with no significant difference between the efficacies of the CMCF types. Besides, the results indicated that both CMCF types resulted in an improvement in the participants’ WTW. Furthermore, the theme analysis of interview findings suggested that the participants perceived CMCF to be facilitative. The interview results were in agreement with those of the quantitative analyses. The findings of this study may contribute to understating L2 learners’ needs and considering pedagogical decision-making for course developers and instructors.

Learning of English collocations has been found quite demanding for many language learners in general and for the Iranian EFL learners in particular. Recent second language educators have proposed two crucial perspectives for teaching collocations: the corpus-based view and the traditional methods. This study examined the mixed effects of explicit instruction, collaborative output, pushed output, corrective feedback, and visual input enhancement through a set of corpus-based instructional materials for the learning of English collocations. Using a quasi-experimental research design, the data were obtained through a pretest, a posttest, and a delayed posttest. Participants included 125 intermediate EFL students, who were assigned to 4 experimental (E1, E2, E3, and E4) groups and 1 control group (n = 25 for each group). Fifty collocations were selected as the teaching materials in both control and experimental groups. Experimental groups were taught the collocations through corpus-based materials, and the control group was taught through a conventional method. One-way ANOVA and a series of post hoc Scheffé tests were performed on the obtained data. Results indicated that all the combined procedures had positive effects on the learning of the English collocations. Also, the results showed that all the experimental groups could retain their collocational knowledge. Final conclusion led us to the idea that the input-output and corpus-based instructions were the learners’ strategies in solving the problem of understanding the collocations. The results may also have some pedagogical implications for ESL/EFL practitioners, too: The input-based and output-based instructions can assist L2 teachers to employ successful techniques to raise their learners’ knowledge of collocations.

Contingency has been claimed to be the central component of scaffolding. By contingency, a calibrated amount of help is provided for the learner. Different methods have been used to study contingency. In this study, contingency has been examined from the conversation analysis perspective in dyadic teacher-learner scaffolding interactions. To reach this aim, a convenience sample of Iranian novice and experienced English language teachers were studied in a non-governmental language institute in Tehran. Three novice and three experienced teachers were video-recorded for a 90-minute session each to yield a 9-hour corpus. After meeting official protocols, the recordings were transcribed using conversation analysis conventions. The results revealed differences between novice and experienced language teachers. Novice language teachers were less contingent towards their learners as they used more high-support moves like exposed corrections while the experienced language teachers used more low-support moves. Novice language teachers initiated more other-initiated-other-repair interactions but experienced language teachers initiated other-initiated-self-repairs. The claims of understanding were also treated differently in the scaffolding interactions. Novice language teachers treated claims of understanding as demonstrations and they did not follow them while experienced language teachers followed learners’ claims of understanding to ensure learning. Implications for language teachers and educators are then discussed.