Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice
Volume:10 Issue: 20, Spring - Summer 2017

This study investigated learning style preferences among professional translators. The purposes of the study were to (a) find the prevailing learning style among the Iranian professional translators; (b) reveal any significant difference in the translators’ learning style preferences in terms of gender; and (c) find any significant difference between individual learning style and translation competence of the male and female translators. To this end, 110 professional translators from 35 translation centers in three Southern Provinces of Iran (Fars, Hormozgan, and Bushehr) were selected through non-probability sampling. The data pertaining to learning style were collected through an adaptation of Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, and translation competence was examined through a text that the participants translated. Findings revealed that the translators’ predominant learning style was Reflector, followed by Pragmatist, Activist, and Theorist, although those preferring the Theorist style showed better performance. Furthermore, the findings did not show any significant difference between translators’ gender and learning style preferences. Finally, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference across the groups in terms of learning style preferences and translators’ translation competence. Some pedagogical implications were also discussed.

The present study attempted to discover whether there is a significant relationship between EFL teachers' critical thinking ability and their teaching success.To this end, 113 Iranian male and female English teachers were required to fill out Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal. Besides, their students were asked to answer the Characteristics of Successful EFL Teachers questionnaire. The statistical analysis of the data showed that there was a significant correlation between EFL teachers’ critical thinking skill and their teaching success. Besides, findings revealed that there was a significant difference between male and female teachers regarding their critical thinking skills, and that BA teachers differed from AS teachers with regard to critical thinking skills. More specifically, male BA teachers took the most advantages from critical thinking skills than others.

This study has aimed to compare the effects of two types of form-focused instruction, i.e. de-contextualized focus-on-forms instruction versus meaning-centered contextualized focus-on-form instruction, on the development of grammatical knowledge of Iranian high-school students. Two groups of male high-school first graders participated in this study.  One group was taught through de-contextualized deductive grammatical explanation, while the other group received enhanced input and contextualized grammar instruction embedded in meaning-centered activity based on dialogs. The results indicated that de-contextualized instruction as it is normally practiced in high-school contexts failed to promote successful use of the auxiliaries do, does, and did in a written production test. In contrast, adding the design features of meaning-based contextualization and enhanced input to instruction did result in better performance on a written production grammar test involving the use of the auxiliaries under study. In the delayed posttest, contextualized meaning-based instruction appeared to have a durable effect, but the effect was not significant enough to warrant any claim for the durable superiority of this form of instruction.

Vocabulary is one of the essential components of language and learning phrasal verbs as part of vocabulary is quite challenging for foreign language learners. The present study aimed at investigating the effects of visual and auditory input enhancement on learning non-congruent phrasal verbs. The participants of the study were 90 intermediate English language learners who were divided into two experimental and one control groups. The first experimental group received visual input enhancement and the second experimental group auditory input enhancement, and the control group no enhanced material. All three groups were tested on their knowledge of non-congruent phrasal verbs before and after the treatment, using a non-congruent phrasal verb test developed by the researcher. The results of the data analyses indicated that both visual and auditory input enhancement were effective in learning non-congruent phrasal verbs by Iranian EFL learners, and that both groups outperformed the control group in their achievement.

The present study investigated differential effect of two types of feedback namely, computer-mediated and metalinguistic, on Iranian EFL learners’ writing accuracy. To this end, based on Nelson Proficiency Test (300 A), 69 Iranian advanced EFL learners, including 45 males and 24 females, aged between 17 and 24, learning English in language institutes in Salmas, were selected randomly out of the total population of 121 EFL learners and then divided into three groups. The participants in the two experimental groups received metalinguistic and computer-mediated feedback separately while those in the control group received no feedback. The analyses of the results obtained through a pre-test and a post-test indicated that both feedback types significantly influenced learners’ writing accuracy. However, analysis of the participants’ performances on the post-test demonstrated that metalinguistic group outperformed computer-mediated one. Thus, the effect of metalinguistic feedback was more than that of computer-mediated feedback. In addition, both of them were more influential than no-feedback instruction. The findings of the present study can be fruitful for syllabus designers and EFL teachers.

The present study aimed to investigate the reliability and factor structure of the self-regulating capacity in vocabulary learning strategies scale (SRCvoc) in the Iranian EFL context. To this end, the original (SRCvoc) questionnaire (Tseng, Dornyei, & Schmitt, 2006) was translated into Persian, using a translation/back-translation procedure. Then, the Persian version of the SRCVOC was piloted to 43 high school students and showed acceptable internal consistency reliability (α = .81). In the main phase of the study, a sample of 1167 high school students (grades 9-12) from fifteen high schools in three Iranian cities completed the Persian SRCvoc. Based on the results, the Persian version of the scale demonstrated acceptable internal consistency reliability (α = 0.81). The factor structure of the translated version of the measure was investigated through a series of factor analyses. The results showed that the translated SVLSQ is composed of one dimension with five subcomponents, with a different factor structure as compared to the original questionnaire. The findings of the study suggest that the Persian version of the SVLSQ is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring self-regulatory vocabulary learning strategies in Iran.