Journal of Applied Linguistics Studies
Volume:2 Issue: 1, Winter and Spring 2023

The current research aimed at exploring the dynamic patterns of simultaneous change in EFL teachers and learners’ trait emotional intelligence (TEI) in a language classroom context. A reciprocal effects model was proposed to relate English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to students’ TEI to suggest that there are positive reciprocal relationships between teachers’ and learners’ TEI. The model was tested with 4-wave longitudinal dyadic data (LDD) collected in the first 6 months of an academic year from 229 EFL teachers and 2016 learners. A dyadic curve of the factor model was used to analyze the data. Three research questions were formed to explore, firstly, the growth trajectories for teachers and their students’ TEI over time, secondly, whether the initial levels of teachers’ and students’ TEI predict linear change in TEI of teachers and students over time, and thirdly, whether teachers and their students’ trajectories (initial levels and slopes) of TEI were associated. The overall findings showed a slight increase in TEI in both dyad members over time. Also, a higher initial TEI was associated with more growth in TEI over time in both teachers and students. Finally, teachers who had a higher level of TEI at the beginning of the study showed were more likely to have students with an increasing TEI over time. This study is pioneering in providing longitudinal evidence for interactive emotion transmission between teachers and learners. Implications for prospective research and teacher education are provided.

Schools are among the most important organizations of any society. Lack of trust in colleagues, students and parents damages the relations between teachers and prevents cooperation at schools. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between trust and empowerment considering the mediating role of efficacy among EFL high school teachers. The participants were 155 EFL teachers in Iranian high schools in Golestan province, Iran. These participants were at the range age of 23 – 58 (male = 62, female = 93). The teacher empowerment scale used in the present study is adapted from Short and Rinehart’ (1992) “School participant empowerment scale”. The teachers’ trust scale is derived from the scale of Faculty Trust in Schools developed by Hoy, Gage, and Tarter (2006). Also teacher efficacy scale developed by Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, and Hoy (1998). The result showed there is significant relationship between trust and empowerment, empowerment and efficacy, and trust and efficacy. Also, it was concluded that there is a statistically significant correlation between trust and empowerment and efficacy among EFL high school teachers in Golestan province, Iran.

 Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are referred to as computerized learning environments that incorporated pedagogical, cognitive learning, knowledge representation theories into computational models of tutor, learner, and domain knowledge respectively in order to provide individualized instruction in diverse subject areas. Since they take advantages of many technological artifacts of artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge representation models, and computational linguistics, they have been both object and means of research into AI, pedagogy, psychology, applied linguistics etc. Under the circumstances, the bulk of research findings is expectable and unavoidable. Sometimes researchers are badly in need of conducting first- or second-order meta-analytic reviews. This study first introduces the components of a typical ITS; then provides a descriptive account of the effectiveness, potential, and requirements of ITSs for foreign language teaching and learning (FLTL); and finally and most importantly, as a second-order review, synthesizes and describes the results of some previous meta-analytic reviews in reference to a few prevailing themes in the ITS research area such as the effects of the forms of instruction, subject matter variation, ITSs’ pedagogical features etc. Toward the third end, exclusion and inclusion procedures were applied to select seven target reviews using keyphrases scheme. The thematic meta-synthesis showed that the findings of almost all these reviews are consistent and congruent with some slight variations due to the study features. It is implied that meta-analyses like this can, by implication, inform and advance the science of ITS design, i.e. a theory of ITS design.

Flipped instruction is one of the most important discussions in education. This study aimed to find the effectiveness of using flipped classrooms on learners' attitudes toward learning English and their autonomy. To this end, 68 EFL learners were selected based on their scores on the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The participants were randomly divided into one experimental and one control group. Before the treatment, both groups were pretested by the administration of the learners' attitudes and learner autonomy questionnaires. The participants in the experimental group received the instructional materials through WhatsApp messenger and were asked to study the materials before attending the class. The control group received the materials in the classroom. At the end of the experiment, the two questionnaires were given to both groups once more as the posttests. The findings revealed the effectiveness of the flipped classroom in improving learner autonomy and enabling them to be more autonomous. The results also showed the experimental group's positive attitudes toward English language learning.

This study explored the differential effects of task familiarity and task repetition on EFL learners’ writing performance in weblog-based environment and face-to-face classroom. To this end, 87 Iranian intermediate EFL students from two branches of Islamic Azad University, Iran were volunteers for participating in this study. Subsequently, only 60 students out of these 87 students were chosen based on their preliminary English test scores, and were randomly assigned to two groups (30 students in weblog / 30 students in face-to-face). As well, each group was divided into two sub-groups: 15 students in task repetition group, and 15 students in task familiarity group. During the treatment, the task repetition group performed twelve tasks with the same procedure and exactly the same content.  The students in the task familiarity group were provided with tasks on different topics for the subsequent sessions. Each session, one of these tasks was familiar (e.g., events in Iran) for the learners and the other one was unfamiliar (e.g., events in France. The results of the Two-way ANOVA revealed that there is no significant difference between the writing performance of Iranian EFL learners receiving task repetition compared to those receiving task familiarity. Besides, the results indicated that the writing scores of learners receiving task repetition through weblog-based environment were better than those in face-to-face classroom. Regarding task familiarity, the results of the Two-way ANOVA showed that there is no statistically significant difference between writing performance of learners who receive task familiarity through weblog-based environment in comparison to those in face-to-face classroom. The findings of this study may have implication for EFL teachers and material developers to pay attention to the contribution of blogging to writing achievement, and develop materials, techniques, and procedures that are suitable for blog oriented writing.

The present study followed a quasi-experimental design to examine the probable significant effect of three novel and less-attended techniques of video dubbing, voice recording, and shadowing on improving Iranian EFL learners’ pronunciation. To meet the end, 75 Iranian advanced EFL learners, as the target sample, participated in the study. Initially, 120 language learners participated in the study. Based on the results of the Barron’s TOEFL test, 75 advanced participants were selected, as the homogenous language proficiency sample. Then, they were randomly assigned into three experimental and a control groups. Each of the experimental groups was exposed to 15 hours of treatment on one of the three techniques. The progress of learners’ pronunciation was checked via a pre-test/post-test system. Descriptive as well as inferential statistics were used to examine the research hypotheses. The findings showed that there was a significant difference between the impacts of the three techniques on improving the learners’ pronunciation. Data analysis also revealed that the voice recording proved to be a less effective technique in developing learners’ pronunciation than video dubbing and shadowing. Moreover, shadowing and video dubbing were both equally effective in boosting learners’ pronunciation proficiency. The findings of this study could have various pedagogical implications for improving language learners’ pronunciation.

The unity of texts and readers’ textual interpretation is achieved through cohesive relations across sentence boundaries. Cohesive relations establish links that aid in providing access to linguistic elements and activate information in the readers’ memory. Encapsulation is a cohesive relation, which is very helpful in the text’s development as it condenses and synthesizes textual segments such as sentences, sequences of sentences, and paragraphs. Thus, this study intends to investigate the frequency of encapsulator THIS and syntactic and textual structures of encapsulated segments through THIS. This study also reports on the verbs used with encapsulator THIS. Hence, two corpora of papers from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Paper written by Nursing and Biology students were selected. It encapsulates a variety of textual structures, including sentences, sentence chains, and paragraphs. The results also showed that encapsulated structures used verb forms with different functional processes. In addition, the results highlighted some disciplinary differences concerning encapsulation (frequencies and encapsulated structures) and verbs’ functional processes used in encapsulation. The results of this study are directly applicable in the syllabus designed for writing academic genres.

The present study attempts to compare the efficacy of the Deductive and inductive approaches in teaching Information Structure (IS) of non-canonical sentences and its effect on Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension in college. In this respect, 69 undergraduate Persian-speaking EFL learners (28 males and 41 females, mean age ≃ 21, age range=19-24, years of EFL learning ≃ 8, sophomore); majoring in English Literature and English Translation at the department of English Language and Literature, Arak University, Iran, were chosen in the form of two homogeneous intact groups, namely The Deductive (experimental) and Inductive (control) groups, consisting of 36 and 33 participants, respectively. Providing a six-week training course including twelve treatment sessions of The Deductive vs. Inductive instructions of IS principles, the results of statistical comparisons using paired-samples t-test and independent-samples t-test concerning the participants’ performance of each group indicated a significant improvement in reading comprehension. Concerning the pretest to the post-test phase, the momentum of progress has been sharper in the Deductive group. Regarding the post-test to the delayed post-test stage, deterioration of obtained reading comprehension abilities by EFL learners in the Deductive group has been statistically significant, whereas the findings indicate that the EFL learners of the Inductive group have shown statistically considerable retention of improved skill.