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Following controversies over teaching communication strategies, the present study, first, examined the impact of language proficiency and extraversion/introversion on the use of communication strategies (hereafter CSs) by administrating communication strategy questionnaire developed by the researchers on the basis of Dornyei and Scott's (1997) Inventory of Strategic Language Devices and the Persian restandardized form of EPQ to 182 students at elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate levels in a private English Language Institute. The One-way ANOVA and independent sample t-test analyses were performed to examine the effects of language proficiency and extraversion/introversion on the use of CSs. The analyses of the data indicated that language proficiency does not influence the use of CSs and CSs favored by introverts are similar to those favored by extraverts they only differ in the use of a few strategies. Second, the impact of teaching CSs of circumlocution, appeal for help, time-stalling devices, and message abandonment on Iranian EFL elementary students' oral performance was investigated. Four intact classes were selected (3 as the treatment groups with 27 students and 1 as the control class with 20 students). Data were collected through video/tape recording of pre and post tests of picture description, telling a story, and telling a joke and CSs were identified on the basis of Dornyei and Scott's (1997) taxonomy of CSs. The Chi-square analysis of the findings revealed that teaching circumlocution, appeal for help, and time-stalling devices are pedagogically effective. 

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This study presents a preliminary step towards approaching a cognitive-affective course or, in Forgas' (2001) terms, an affect into thought infusion course, which focuses on reading open-ended stories. By relying on the course in which open-ended stories were used as materials to provide the basis for the broad objectives of the study, attempts were made to investigate the impact of a cognitive affective course on learners' self-esteem. The studies in the literature empirically support the positive relationship between self-esteem on the one hand, and academic success, second language performance and language learning strategy use, on the other. This study was based on a quasi-experimental design in which Pre-test post-test method was used.  Eighty intermediate EFL students studying English at Iran Language Institute (ILI) with the age range of 13-15, participated in this study. The participants' self-esteem was measured by Coppersmith's self-esteem scale (1967) before and after a ten-week interval. Meanwhile, the participants in the experimental group were provided with open-ended stories where they were asked to empathize with characters, predict the ending of the story to reflect their own choice and feeling and also connect the themes of the stories to their own experiences. The results of covariance analyses (ANCOVA) indicated that using open-ended stories in the cognitive-affective reading-based course helped the participants improve their self-esteem. Also, this study provided the empirical evidence for the therapeutic role of the cognitive-affective reading-based course in which open-ended stories were used.  

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The purpose of the present study was to develop appropriate scoring scales for each of the defined stages of the writing process, and also to determine to what extent these scoring scales can reliably and validly assess the performances of EFL learners in an academic writing task. Two hundred and two students’ writing samples were collected after a step-by-step process oriented essay writing instruction. Four stages of writing process – generating ideas (brainstorming), outlining (structuring), drafting, and editing – were operationally defined. Each collected writing sample included student writers’ scripts produced in each stage of the writing process. Through a detailed analysis of the collected writing samples by three raters, the features which highlighted the strong or weak points in the student writers’ samples were identified, and then the student writers’ scripts were categorized into four levels of performance. Then, descriptive statements were made for each identified feature to represent the specified level of performance. These descriptive statements, or descriptors, formed rating scales for each stage of the writing process. Finally, four rating sub-scales, namely brainstorming, outlining, drafting, and editing were designed for the corresponding stages of the writing process. Subsequently, the designed rating scales were used by the three raters to rate the 202 collected writing samples. The scores thus obtained were put to statistical analyses. The high inter-rater reliability estimate (0.895) indicated that the rating scales could produce consistent results. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated that there was no significant difference among the ratings created by the three raters. Factor analysis suggested that at least three constructs, –language knowledge, planning ability, and idea creation ability – could possibly underlie the variables measured by the rating scale.  

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This study examined the effect of Multiple Intelligence-based Focus on Form on enabling EFL learners to develop both the grammatical knowledge of the target structures (simple present and present progressive) and the ability to use it in written language context. Three different treatments were employed in three experimental groups: Multiple Intelligence-based Focus on Form (MI-FoF) focused on form, meaning, and use, along with learners' strengths and interests in language learning Focus on Form (FoF) focused on form, meaning, and use Focus on Meaning (FoM) focused on meaning. The control group, Focus on FormS (Fs), focused on explicit grammar instruction. In an intact group design, involving 218 university students, the outcome of the study, based on both direct (multiple choice questions) and indirect (free composition) types of tests, indicated that the performance of the participants didn’t differ significantly in the four groups in the indirect type of test but the performance of the MI-FoF differed significantly from the other groups in the direct type of test. This result can be attributed to the integration of MI into FoF, which enabled learners to engage in meaningful tasks actively, which, in turn, suggests that insights provided by MI can be very decisive in implementing FoF. 

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The current literature on second language pedagogy promotes a return to some form-focused instruction where collaborative tasks are encouraged.  This study reports on the impact of form-focused instruction and peer revision (text-editing collaborative task)on subjects’ final performance in second language writing in two rhetorical modes of narrationand exposition produced by 60 junior and senior students of English divided equally into the controlled and experimental groups. The results confirmed that form-focused instruction has a better impact on simple than complex grammatical elements. The study also confirmed the significant effect of the form-focused instruction on the inter-lingual errors, and it revealed some positive effects of collaborative task especially on more proficient learners. The findings also disclosed that different processes are involved in editing as well as reconstructing expository and narrative genres. The fact that writing narrative texts was more demanding than the exposition for the learners implies the complexity of this genre in terms of cognitive processing and linguistic presentation, hence a more involvement of writing teachers on this genre is recommended. 

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Among the major milestones in the history of psychological attempts and psycholinguistic investigations lies the inception and outbreak of the contentious field of emotional intelligence in the mid 1990s. Although subsequent to its advent a profusion of diverse probes from several neighboring disciplines have been devoted to disentangling the true nature of this rather avant-garde doctrine, some aspects of EQ still seem to have been given scant attention in L2 learning research. One such partially neglected facet is thought to be the investigation of the role of intervention studies in enhancing EFL learners’ emotional intelligence. Thus, the present study aims to somehow bridge this ostensible gap in the literature on the issue by resorting to two innovative techniques of fuzzy thinking and SAFE (Sign-Assisted Feeling Expression). The results gained point to significant leaps in EFL learners’ level of emotional intelligence with regard to some particular subscales of Bar-On's EQ-i which are attributable to the effect of treatment on participants.       

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This small-scale study investigates (a) whether academic vocabulary compares in development with vocabulary breadth and depth for Iranian ESP/EAP learners and, if the answer is positive, (b) whether this trend of development happens across proficiency levels. Fifty-seven graduate students served as the subjects who were also divided into high and low groups based on whether they had acquired the most frequent 2,000 words. Multiple regression analysis results show much shared variance between breadth and depth tests, and academic vocabulary test for the participants as a whole group. Therefore, as learners’ vocabulary breadth and depth increase, so does their academic vocabulary. A similar finding is also observed for the high group and low group. However, the finding for the low group is contrary to our expectation. The results suggest more systematic vocabulary development for the high group, less for the participants as a whole group, and least in the low group. This investigation has some implications for language, and more particularly vocabulary, instruction for ESP/EAP purposes in Iran.
 

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Self-assessment and peer-assessment are two means of realizing the goals of educational assessment and learner-centered education. Although there are many arguments in favor of their educational benefits, they have not become common practices in educational settings. This is mainly due to the fact that teachers do not trust the pedagogical values and the reliability of learners’ self- and peer-assessment. With regard to these points, this study aimed at investigating the effect of doing self- and peer-assessments over time on the paragraph writing performance and the self- and peer-rating accuracy of a sample of Iranian English-major students. To do so, eleven paragraphs during eleven sessions were written and then self- or peer-rated by the students in two experimental groups. The findings indicated that self-and peer-assessment are indeed effective in improving not only the writing performance of the students but also their rating accuracy. After comparing the effects of self- and peer-assessment on the writing performance and the rating accuracy of the participants, peer-assessment, however, turned out to be more effective in improving the writing performance of the students than self-assessment. In addition, neither of the assessment methods outdid the other in improving the rating accuracy of the students.

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Much has been written about the complex textual mechanisms which lie under the structure of academic genre. However, we are still far from a vivid taxonomy of factors that lead to the development of research articles (RAs) as the manifestation of the given genre. Rhetorical structure and thematicity are two of these main parameters. The present study investigates the interaction of the thematic structures and the rhetorical moves of RAs published in the international journals (IJs) and those of the Iranian local journals (ILJs). To this end, a corpus of 120 RA discussion sections of sub-disciplines of Applied Linguistics were analyzed using Kanoksilapatham’s (2007) move analytical model, thematic option (TO) model proposed by Halliday (1985), and the Dane&scaron’ (1974) revised model of thematic progression (TP) in McCabe (1999). The results indicated a significant relationship between the theme types and the generic moves on one hand, and distribution of the theme progressions and rhetorical structures on the other hand. The choice of theme type and thematic progression was found, however, to be, in some cases, influenced by locality of the journals. The findings of the study call for a consideration of a more complex rhetorical profile of RAs than what has to date been assumed. 

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This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of fostering cooperative learning on EFL learners’ overall achievement. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 56 female students of Saba Language School in Tehran were selected from a total number of 90 based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET) and randomly put into two experimental and control groups. The same content was taught to both groups throughout the 24-session treatment. The only difference was that the experimental group was taught through communicative language teaching with the use of cooperative learning activities, which consisted of the three-step-interview, think-pair-share, paired annotations, round robin, and learning together, while the students in the control group were taught through the communicative language teaching approach without the cooperative teaching procedure. An achievement posttest within the content taught was given to the students in both groups at the end of the instruction and the mean scores of both groups on the test were compared through an independent samples t-test. The result showed the rejection of the null hypothesis thus concluding that cooperative learning had a significant effect on the overall achievement of Iranian EFL learners.  

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This study examines the controversial debate of the exclusion of adult learners’ native language by reporting learners’ and instructors overwhelmingly positive perceptions of its use in English for Specific Purpose (ESP) classes. In this study, multiple methods such as class observations, questionnaires and interviews were used. The research was undertaken in 14 ESP classes for the students of Engineering, Sciences and Humanities at Yazd University, Iran. Extensive qualitative and statistical analysis of the questionnaires revealed that a solid majority of learners from different academic majors and instructors responded positively regarding the use of native language as a pedagogic device for teaching various aspects of the target language. Correspondingly, class observations revealed that all the instructors teaching different academic disciplines resorted to the native language as an appropriate medium for cross-lingual, cross-cultural comparisons. Nevertheless, the results from the interview phase of the study revealed that a large majority of learners and instructors were not in favor of using the first language as a facilitating technique and as a means to reduce students’ anxiety.  

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Sitting in the classroom for rather a long time, listening to the teacher and other students, and having occasional responses are what typically happen in the English teaching classrooms around the world. ETS, a big hall with at least three sites as language learning zones, brings about a dynamic method which environmentally simulates communicative occasions to provide the learners with an exciting and intensive practice on the current conversations through role-playing. In this study, the efficiency of ETS was evaluated in an experimental research design. To do so, 34 students of English Language and Literature at Semnan University were taken as subjects in two conversation classes. Upon the completion of the course for 10 sessions, a T-test was applied to see if the method makes any significant improvement. The result showed that ETS was significantly better than the traditional method. To see the students’ opinions about the method, a questionnaire was also conducted with the results revealing students’ positive feedback toward the method.  

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The ever-increasing application of computer and internet mandates a longer domain for computer-mediated-communication (CMC). Internet chat as a principal feature of CMC has attracted tremendous attention among the youths in recent years.  Thus, this study has focused on the written chats of 100 Iranian university students majoring in different disciplines. We analyzed 400 chat samples (composed of 4000 moves) in terms of opening and continuing speech functions based on Eggins and Slade’s (1997) model of casual conversation. We also examined humor and paralinguistic features based on taxonomies of Huffaker and Calvert (2005) and Nastri, Peña, and Hancock (2006). Among the various types of speech functions, nine opening speech functions, seven continuing speech functions and four humor and paralinguistic features were investigated. The analysis of the data shows that the salient opening speech function has been ‘statement: opinion’ which provides attitudinal and evaluative information. Additionally, the outstanding types of continuing speech functions are ‘prolong: extend’, ‘prolong: enhance’, and ‘append: elaborate’. Therefore, it is in order for the participants to offer additional or contrasting information to the previous move or qualify it by giving details of time, place, condition, etc. Moreover, in case of interruption by the other chatter, the participants mostly tend to clarify, exemplify or reiterate the previous move. Furthermore, the participants produced irony, as a humorous element, in a great volume which is indicative of their tendency toward being indirect during conversation. The subjects also used many paralinguistic features such as misspellings and repeated punctuations in order to express their emotions and attract their partners’ attention in the absence of verbal communication.

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Informal fallacies of argumentation as pitfalls of reasoning appear frequently in students' written texts, specially EFL / ESL Learners' argumentative essay writings. The present study examines whether gender could be considered as a determining factor influencing Iranian advanced EFL learners' argumentative writings with regard to informal fallacies of argumentation. The corpus comprised of argumentative essays written by 120 Iranian male and female English language learners. The participants’ age and discipline were also included as independent variables. Nine major categories of informal fallacies were examined in learners’ texts and the observed frequencies were analyzed using MANOVA. The results of the Multivariate Tests for all independent variables and /or their interactions indicated no significant differences for the overall informal fallacies. However, three separate instances of differences were observed. Finally, the findings of the present are discussed in relation to the previous literature and some implications of the study are suggested. 

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The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between test takers’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and their second language reading test performance. The researchers employed the following instruments in order to get introspective and retrospective data from the participants: 1) a multiple-choice test on two reading passages, 2) a checklist of specific strategies for immediate introspective use after each item, 3) a questionnaire on more general strategies for retrospective use at the end of the test. The results showed that test-takers used both contributory and non-contributory strategies to get at the correct answer. The test-takers’ pattern of strategy use revealed a tendency towards the more frequent use of ‘returning to the passage’ as a contributory strategy and ‘guessing’ as a non-contributory strategy. The results also showed that the contributory and non-contributory strategies functioned differently when their use was compared across easy and difficult test passages.  

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Critical discourse analysis (CDA) provides an analytical and political approach to language in context and it concerns with manifestations of ideology and power/dominance relations in society, manifestations of social asymmetry via discourse, racism, sexism and in general segregation and discrimination (Wodak and Meyer, 2001). The present study, applying some of the most agreed upon guidelines of critical discourse analysis, aimed at analyzing the discursive structures of the 2008 presidential campaign speeches of democratic candidates--Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama--to see if they carry and enforce certain ideologies. The methodology used in this study was generally based upon Hodge and Kress’s (1996) framework and the texts were compared and contrasted to find the traces of gender and/or race of the candidates. From among a hundred tapescripts, fifty were randomly selected. The results of the study showed the discoursal features used in the speeches made by the two candidates were significantly influenced by their race and gender.

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This study replicated another research project to find out what factors underlie the Characteristics of Effective English Language Teachers (CEELT) when a large and more representative and homogeneous sample is selected. The CEELT questionnaire compiled by Moafian and Pishghadam (2008) was administered to 1469 Iranian learners of English as a foreign language at various private and public schools in Mashhad, Iran to test three hypotheses addressing the strength of relationship among the characteristics, the number of extracted factors and their cross loadings. The 47 characteristics revealed high correlations among themselves and loaded as well as cross loaded on only five rotated factors when the Principal Axis Factoring was applied to the participants’ responses, i.e., rapport, fairness, qualification, facilitation and examination. The results have several research implications. First, reporting correlation coefficients and the KMO statistic of sampling adequacy is necessary. Secondly, samples consisting of at least 1000 participants should be selected, preferably with a ratio of 30 cases for each item. And finally, cross loading variable must be reported because these cross loadings necessitate adopting a holistic view towards teaching languages and establishing significant relationships between teacher characteristics and learner abilities such as language achievement and proficiency. 

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The present study is an attempt to investigate whether online dyadic text-based discussion can help language learners develop their oral proficiency due to the fact that classroom interaction barriers have been eliminated and a less threatening, less stressful environment for learner-learner interaction has been created. A total of 30 college freshmen students at the University of Tehran participated in weekly online discussions using the 'Yahoo Messenger' platform for dyadic discussions during six consecutive weeks. The results of participants' oral proficiency test showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the learners' scores in the pre-test and those in the post-test. In addition, the results of both questionnaires and oral proficiency tests employed in the present study showed that online discussion (S-CMC) is more beneficial for the linguistically insecure and shy learners as well as those who had positive attitudes toward online discussion. Moreover, analysis of learners' chat logs regarding the number of turns and number of words per student per session indicated that learners' participation in dyadic online discussion was not equal. This is, in fact, in contrast to what has been reported in previous studies done in this field.

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Vocabulary learning is one of main components of L2 teaching. However, there is no consensus on the best method of teaching/learning vocabulary. Recently, some researchers (e.g. Kim, 2008 Keating, 2008) have emphasized the task-based instruction in contrast with the traditional method of Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP). This study investigates the comparative effect of pedagogical tasks (PTs) and PPP instruction on L2 vocabulary learning among Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 72 intermediate EFL learners in the Jahad-e-Daneshgahi Language Centre in Shahrekord participated in the study. They were randomly divided into 2 groups: one group received PPP instruction and the other group received task-based instruction. The participants in the task group were further assigned into 2 PT groups: one of them received “listen-and-do” and the other one received “complete-the-chart” task instructions. To collect data, an L2 vocabulary test consisting of 30 multiple-choice items was used as pre-tests and post-tests. The results of covariate analyses on the vocabulary test scores in a pre-test post-test design showed that the two types of PTs had a significant positive effect on the vocabulary mean scores, suggesting that such tasks were more effective than PPP instruction in vocabulary learning/teaching. However, the treatment effect between the two types of PTs was not significantly different. Finally, pedagogical implications are presented.

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To investigate the effect of different patterns of lexical collocations on the recognition and production of Iranian upper-intermediate learners of English, 34 participants at Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU) in Qazvin were presented with receptive and productive tests of English collocations. To compare the participants' recognition of various patterns of lexical collocations, a one-way ANOVA procedure was used. Results indicated that the participants performed relatively better on 'adjective + noun' and 'noun + noun' patterns of lexical collocations, although the differences among the scores of the participants on the different patterns were not statistically significant. Another one-way ANOVA procedure was used to compare the participants' production of the same patterns. Analysis showed that of the seven patterns of lexical collocations investigated, the participants' performance on the 'noun + verb' pattern was significantly poorer than the other patterns.