Iranian Journal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume:11 Issue: 3, Summer 2022

The affordances of technological devices for L2 teaching and computer-mediated communication (CMC) effect for all corrective feedback types in itself has drawn attention in the literature. However, there is a paucity of research to address the interplay between pronunciation, word stress, rhythm and intonation generated corrective feedback and educational synchronic software involved in ESP courses. In order to bridge the gap in this investigation, framed in a quasi-experimental design, the researchers selected 60 participants registered in guidance and counseling course in Islamic Azad University in a northern branch through convenience sampling design. They were randomly assigned into experimental/intervention & control group (n=30) in each group. In the control group, however, the lecturer corrected the students’ mistakes in respect to segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation traits. In the experimental group, the software (App) detected the students’ segmental and suprasegmental mistake and it gave them a chance to correct themselves. The software was designed in such way that the participants had to pronounce the given content and they pronounced a word or a sentence several times in order to pronounce it accurately.  The MANCOVA was utilized to analyze the data. Findings showed that providing online generated feedback by online educational synchronic Application in the experimental group could develop the ESP learners’ suprasegmental instructional targets (especially 'Word stress' (p = .01), 'Intonation' (p = .000), and segmental instructional target i.e., ‘pronunciation ' (p = .004), but not ‘Rhythm' (p = .14, p > .05) significantly. The present study has some ramification for ESP instructors to find innovative ways i.e.  the use of online educational synchronic to develop students’ pronunciation skill, especially suprasegmental.

Although decades of research have documented teachers’ interactive pedagogical decisions and reasoning in education, decisions and their underlying reasoning by English for specific purposes (ESP) teachers have remained under-explored. This qualitative multiple case study sought to explore cabin crew ESP teachers’ decisions and their underlying pedagogical reasoning in reading instruction. Four ESP teachers, including two language teachers and two content teachers, were selected through purposive sampling from different aviation training centers. The videotaped recordings of eight sessions of ESP reading instruction and the related field notes were analyzed deductively based on areas of teachers’ decision-making, and the transcriptions of audiotaped stimulated recall interviews were analyzed inductively based on teachers’ underlying pedagogical reasoning for each category of decisions. The findings revealed a distinctive difference between the two groups of ESP teachers’ decision-making and pedagogical reasoning. The focus of language teachers’ decisions and reasoning was on helping learners to improve their language achievement. On the other hand, content teachers put more weight on teaching required concepts based on learners’ needs in order to improve their occupational performance. These findings have implications for the collaboration of language teachers and content teachers to bridge the instructional gaps in ESP instruction.

Prompted by increased concerns regarding the shortcomings of traditional assessment, the current study used the unorthodox qualitative method of phenomenography to disclose significant constraints to the implementation of dynamic assessment (DA), which has robust theoretical, practical, and empirical foundations. To this aim, 19 university teachers were selected purposively from different language disciplines. A semi-structured interview was designed and participants' perceptions regarding the constraints were investigated. The interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, and analyzed based on principles of relevance, frequency, position, and pregnancy and then coded systematically under relevant categories. To make findings more concrete, the most relevant excerpts from the participants accompanied each category. Member checking strategy and respondents’ validation were employed to secure the results' credibility and validity. Findings revealed that constraints to implementations of DA fall into three central categories technical constraints (scoring issues, validity issues, discriminating power of the test, fairness issues, consequential credibility, and concept load), practical constraints (demanding implementation, attitudinal issues, feasibility (practicality) issues, oral nature of feedback, and examiners’ literacy), and contextual constraints (conservative nature of Iranian context, and resource constraints). The phenomenographic procedure used and findings have implications for language practitioners. This study had some limitations in sampling and enactment.

The present study followed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design in two phases to investigate the effects of cognitive and metacognitive strategies on developing Iranian EFL learners’ writing assessment performance. For the quantitative stage, the researchers conducted a quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent pretest-post-test control group design. To this aim, 41 upper-intermediate EFL university students were selected from two intact classes based on convenience sampling from the Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch. The classes were randomly assigned to a Cognitive-based Assessment Instruction Group (CAIG) and a Metacognitive-based Assessment Instruction Group (MAIG). A general proficiency test administered before the treatment verified the participants’ homogeneity. The Metacognitive Awareness Writing Questionnaire was administered before and after the intervention to measure the participants’ metacognitive awareness levels and self-regulation. MAIG used metacognitive strategies such as planning, monitoring, and revising to assess English essays. CAIG performed assessments based on cognitive strategies and a Writing Rubric. After the treatment, the participants took two writing posttests on rehearsed and unrehearsed topics. Results of the Mann-Whitney U test and Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) indicated that MAIG outperformed CAIG in both posttests. Raising metacognitive awareness regarding self-regulation and metacognitive strategies could significantly enhance the participants’ writing assessment performance. In the final stage, online semi-structured interviews were performed, the findings of which were strengthened through content analysis. The study has implications for test and materials developers, EFL teachers and students, and syllabus designers in expanding their understanding of raising metacognitive awareness and its application in writing assessment.

The present study aimed to determine the relationships between Iranian male and female EFL learners’ emotional intelligence (EI), listening comprehension, and language achievement. Moreover, it sought to determine the possible differences between these learners in terms of their listening comprehension, language achievement, and EI. Some 400 intermediate-level English learners were selected (i.e., 200 male & 200 female) from among 753 English learners of a private language institute in Rasht (Iran) based on their performances on a proficiency test. Second, the researchers administered the EI questionnaire (Bar-On, 1997), listening comprehension test (Richards & Trew, 2011), and achievement test of the study to the participants. Finally, they analyzed the obtained data with the help of the Pearson product-moment correlation test and independent-samples t-test. The researchers used SPSS software to perform the data analysis. Based on the results, there were significant positive correlations between EI, listening comprehension, and language achievement. Moreover, the female learners surpassed the male learners in terms of EI and language achievement. Lastly, no significant difference was found between the male and female learners’ listening comprehension. The results of the study may provide EFL teacher educators, syllabus designers, and teachers with guiding principles regarding the various learner factors in foreign language contexts.

Today's world requires non-native English speakers and writers to speak and write acceptably and correctly in any communication. Hence, speaking and writing are two crucial skills in teaching and learning English. Different factors affect the proficiency of these productive skills among English learners. This study investigates the relationship between the syntactic knowledge of EFL intermediate students and their proficiency in writing and speaking to find whether the syntactic knowledge of students can affect their productive skills. In order to conduct this research, 50 Intermediate male and female students, between 18 to 25 years old, were selected. Four tests, including one placement test and one syntax test from Oxford University Press for intermediates‒in the form of multiple-choice tests, i.e. one writing test, and one speaking test, were used. The data consisted of four sets of scores. The main aim was to calculate the correlation between syntax, writing and speaking. For the current study, a correlational/descriptive design was selected because the data was quantitative; and based on the scores of students, the researcher decided to discover the relationship between syntax scores and writing and speaking scores. The Pearson correlation and t-test proved that there is not any meaningful relationship between syntax and writing as well as syntax and speaking. Moreover, the results of this study showed that the relationship between syntactic knowledge and writing proficiency is not different from the relationship between syntactic knowledge and speaking proficiency.