Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies
Volume:10 Issue: 4, Autumn 2023

This study aimed at investigating teachers’ behaviours that co-occur with the oral corrective feedback strategies and their influence on the students’ responses to oral corrective feedback (OCF) in teaching English in Tanzanian secondary schools. In Tanzania English is a foreign language, even though it serves in various government domains such as secondary and post-secondary education, international trade, and the High Court, among others. The study was qualitative, and applied classroom non-participant observation and interviews to collect data which were analysed thematically. It involved 901 students from two secondary schools (at the general certificate level) in Form I to Form IV classes and six English language teachers. Using the the Vygotskyan Sociocultural Model, the findings of the study showed some teachers’ behaviours that frequently accompanied the oral corrective feedback strategies which then influenced students’ uptake in the classrooms. These behaviours include nonverbal actions; oral corrective feedback implementing styles, translanguaging, and the use of negative comments. These behaviours influenced students’ uptake by leading to no uptakes, hesitations in response to feedback, repetition of the same errors, random peer-responses which subsequently discouraged self-repair of errors. Findings contribute to knowledge on OCF and the students’ uptake in to ELT classrooms especially on students’ error treatment atmosphere.

Recent research favors specific academic word lists over a general academic word list for preparing university students to read and publish academic papers in English. Although researchers have developed word lists for various disciplines, some academic fields do not enjoy a well-developed technical word list. The present study aimed at developing and evaluating a specific academic word list for political sciences. A 3.5-million-word corpus of political sciences research articles was created and analyzed in order to develop the Politics Academic Word List (PAWL). The list consists of 2000 word families which were selected across and beyond the BNC/COCA word list based on frequency and range criteria. The word families enjoying an aggregate frequency of a hundred or more in the corpus and a minimum frequency of 10 in at least four of the seven sub-corpora were incorporated into the word list. The PAWL accounted for over 88% of the running words in the Politics Academic Corpus (PAC) and outperformed the list of GSL plus AWL words in coverage by 3 percent, despite containing 556 fewer word families. The study corroborates the value of a subject specific word list as a more fruitful source for academic vocabulary learning. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Although many ESL university students know grammar rules, most cannot write competently. Meanwhile, effective writing would affect students' overall academic performance. This article examined the written errors of the Indian Tamil learners of English as their Second Language (ESL). The study adopted a cross-sectional research design and collected data through written essays. The participants were studying Master of Arts in English second-year integrated class. The participants were purposely selected. The study assessed errors as they occurred in students' written essays. Data were descriptively analysed in which they were categorised based on the themes. The findings showed several errors, categorised as subject-verb errors, word order patterns, spelling errors, and omissions. Findings have depicted error cases in word order errors, unnecessary insertion, misplaced inversion and sentence fragment errors. The results have shown that some students made apparent errors that could be termed as negligent ones, while others could be associated with transfer from the first language. In addition, other errors are associated with the way the English language is taught. Based on the results, this study recommends that ESL teachers focus their teaching on these problematic areas and provide the students with many writing tasks that would improve the writing of the Tamilians, whose English is their second language.

The importance of studying teachers’ identity is to guide teachers to choose an appropriate methodology to teach as well as to lead learners to learn the target language which is related to notion of identity. The present study was an attempt to develop and validate an identity questionnaire regarding English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers. In doing so, 350 Iranian EAP teachers from Azad and State universities of Tehran, Qazvin, and Zanjan were selected. Semi-structured interviews were randomly done with 100 teacher participants. In order to develop the EAP Teachers’ Identity Questionnaire (EAPTIQ) in the Iranian context through individual, pedagogical, and social dimension, the related literature was taken into account. A total of 51 items were extracted to develop raw factors of EAPTIQ. They were then factor-analyzed in order to remove the communalities and develop the final version of the questionnaire and determine the main components. Factor analysis resulted in the development of 44-item EAPTIQ with three components: 1) Identity and EAP Teachers’ Self-Efficacy, 2) Identity and EAP Teachers’ Pedagogical Issues, and 3) Identity and EAP Teachers’ Social Issues. Findings of the study can be useful for some people who can benefit from the results namely EAP teachers and researchers. The results contribute to researching EAP teachers’ identity and inform teacher education to provide them with the sufficient and adequate raised awareness to self-develop their identity.

There seems to be a link between the type of corrective feedback students receive in the classroom and their personality styles. The current study investigated the effect of peer corrective feedback on the reading comprehension of extroverted and introverted Iranian elementary L2 learners. At first, a Quick Oxford Placement Test (QOPT) was used to select thirty-three elementary EFL students as participants. Then, based on their responses to the Persian translation of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) questionnaire, the participants were classified as extroverted and introverted learners. The participants were also divided into two groups; peer corrective feedback–extroverted learners and peer corrective feedback–introverted learners. In terms of the quantitative part of the study, a pre-test (a reading comprehension test), eight treatment sessions (peer corrective feedback sessions), and a post-test (the same as the pre-test) were administered in reading comprehension classes over the course of a semester. As the qualitative part of the study, there was an interview session to assess the participants’ attitudes towards the provision of peer corrective feedback. The quantitative data analysis results revealed that both groups benefited from the intervention. Although there was no statistically significant difference between the groups, introverted students outperformed extroverted ones. The findings of the qualitative data analysis revealed that the majority of the participants agreed with the provision of peer corrective feedback in reading comprehension classes. According to the study’s findings, using peer corrective feedback in reading comprehension courses improved both extroverted and introverted L2 learners’ reading comprehension.

This study explored the effect of three models of flipped learning through shad application on lexical and grammatical knowledge of Iranian high school EFL learners. 120 male pre-intermediate English learners took part in the study. They were placed in four groups (three experimental and one control) based on their performance on a placement test. The control group received conventional methods of teaching while experimental group one was taught through traditional flipping, experimental group two through demonstration-based instruction, and experimental group three through double-flipped instruction. Data were collected using pretests and posttests of lexical and grammatical knowledge. The results of ANCOVA showed that generally, the learners in the three experimental groups performed better than the control group, suggesting that using flipped instruction was effective in teaching lexical items and grammatical structures. The findings of this study can have valuable implications for those who are involved in learning and teaching English, materials preparation, and curriculum development.

Despite paradigmatic research advancements and movements in applied linguistics, the issue of rhetoric, which serves as one of the fundamental pillars of each paradigm, remains largely unaccounted for. Considering the commensurability of argumentation and meta-analysis, coupled with the increasing rate of meta-analytic studies in the field of applied linguistics, there arises a need to examine the argumentation behavior of applied linguistics’ meta-analysts. As such, following research synthesis techniques and an argument mining approach, we examined the academic argumentation genre of meta-analysis published in leading applied linguistics journals through argument-mining techniques in light of the modified Toulmin framework proposed by Qin and Karabacak (2010). The current study, employing the modified Toulmin framework, examined the argumentative writing components represented in the introduction section of 54 meta-analytic studies published in leading journals of applied linguistics through argument-mining techniques. Our findings highlight the complexity and argumentativeness of the meta-analysis genre. We further found that the Modified Toulmin Model is implementable for the task of argument mining, which can have a great impact on argumentation, meta-analysis, and argumentative academic writing. Implications and recommendations for academic argumentative writers and meta-analyzers are discussed.

The writing process is founded principally upon language learners’ decision making behaviors that are believed to be under the influence of their first language (L1) experiences. Hence, the main objectives of this study are (a) to investigate the extent to which activating cognitive processing strategies can improve second language (L2) learners’ writing skills, and (b) to explore whether L1 writing experiences are transferable to L2 writing situations. Therefore, a class of 33 sophomore students, in Advanced Writing course was selected. They were asked to write a short Persian paragraph on six different topics using different methods of paragraph development such as comparison and contrast, description, cause and effect, narration, process, and classification. Then, the whole term was divided into two main teaching periods, i.e. the Baseline and Treatment phases. Each teaching period consisted of three 2-week time intervals during which a particular type of paragraph development was practiced. To avoid order effect, the paragraph types assigned to Baseline and Treatment phases were randomly selected and assigned. Hence, paragraph types narration, classification, and comparison and contrast were administered during Treatment intervals and description, process and cause and effect were used for the Baseline intervals. The results indicated that triggering the proper cognitive processing and planning strategies would ameliorate the quality of written texts with various rhetorical purposes. However, the findings did not support the second objective of the study, i.e. L1/L2 transferability. This can indicate that teachers should focus on developing a number of strategies, keeping in mind that resorting to L1 composing abilities may not be the only and the best solution.