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Most of the studies in Interlanguage Pragmatics have focused on the performance and acquisition of speech acts by nonnative speakers, considering politeness only as a subsidiary issue. The present study pertains to linguistic politeness and attempts to investigate the effects of different teaching methods on the acquisition of English politeness strategies (PSs). Eight groups of freshman and junior English majors were randomly assigned to three experimental groups (enhanced input, explicit teaching, and role play) and one control group (mere exposure). The participants took a TOEFL test, a pretest, and finally a posttest after a seven-week treatment of a list of PSs. The results indicated that instruction has a significant positive influence on the acquisition of PSs and explicit teaching is significantly the most effective method. Role play and input enhancement were the second and third most effective. Moreover, it was shown that although the level of language proficiency significantly influenced the knowledge of PSs (the ability to recognize appropriate PSs for each social context), it did not affect the acquisition of PSs. The findings imply that the instruction of PSs can be started at intermediate level and explicit teaching alongside role play activities will greatly benefit language learners.

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In L2 instruction and assessment, the application of research findings that adopt an integrative, psycholinguistic approach to explore the information-processing and speech-management facets of fluency seems necessary. This paper reports on a study that drew on Levelt’s (1989, 1999) speaking-specific model to probe the problem-solving mechanisms (PSMs) of fluent and nonfluent L2 speakers through a speaking-oriented questionnaire and a series of output-related retrospective interviews. The fluent and nonfluent L2 speakers were identified using a newly-developed analytic fluency scale and the task-related speech samples of 200 participants. The results revealed that the fluent L2 speakers employed cognitive, linguistic, and interactional PSMs more frequently and with greater facility than the nonfluent participants particularly to compensate for deficits in their conceptual repertoire, bridge communication gaps, and negotiate the intended meaning with their interlocutors. Specifically, they efficiently reshaped the preverbal plan to avoid failure, adeptly employed a variety of fillers and hesitation devices to maintain the communication flow, and attentively monitored the conversation. However, the nonfluent L2 speakers entirely abandoned or completely changed their original speech plan after running into deficiencies in their own outputs that made their speech utterly disjointed. Still at times, they struggled to self-correct their speech but failed due to deficient linguistic and interactional competence, which adversely led to more disfluencies. The findings suggest that further research into the cognitive, linguistic, and interactional processes underlying (non)fluent speakers’ use of PSMs can be useful in explaining speech disfluencies or learners’ differential L2 fluency.

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         This study was conducted to find out to what factors Iranian EFL language learners at high schools attribute their successes and failures. To this end, 708 Iranian high school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and gender were selected. These participants were asked to take an attribution questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of four parts: Emotion, Self-image, Intrinsic motivation, and Language policy. Mainly, ANOVA and Post-hoc tests were employed to analyze the data. The results demonstrated that Intrinsic motivation is the primary attribution, and gender does not play any role in attribution. Moreover, significant differences were found among students of different social classes. Students from high socioeconomic background scored highest in Emotion and Self-image and students from rural areas outscored in Intrinsic motivation and Language policy. Finally, the results were discussed in the context of language learning and teaching.

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This study explored the effect of using Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) instruction on the persuasive writing and self-efficacy of Iranian EFL learners and compared the effectiveness of such instruction with nonstrategy-based (i.e., traditional) instruction. In so doing, this study followed the SRSD model, using a mnemonic and transition word chart, essay examples, and a graphic organizer. To achieve the objectives, 60 Iranian EFL undergraduate students at two universities participated in this study, which used a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. The analyses of covariance on the persuasive essays and self-efficacy tests in the control and experimental groups revealed that both SRSD and non-SRSD instructions had a positive impact on the participants' persuasive writing ability. But the effect of SRSD instruction was significantly greater on the participants' writing (i.e., format and content, organization and coherence, sentence construction and vocabulary in writing). In addition, the self-efficacy of the SRSD group improved, but the difference in posttest self-efficacy scores between the SRSD and non-SRSD groups was not statistically significant. The findings draw language instructors' attention to the metacognitive dimension of writing and importance of teaching self-regulatory strategies as a way for achieving autonomy and self-efficacy in writing. 

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The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of task-based language teaching (TBLT) on EFL learners’ pragmatic production, metapragmatic awareness, and pragmatic self-assessment. To this end, 75 homogeneous intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to three groups: two experimental groups and one control group. The 27 participants in the pre-task, post-task pragmatic focus group (experimental group one) received pragmatic focus on five speech acts in pre-task and the post-task phases. The 26 participants in the scaffolded while-task group (experimental group two) only received pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic feedback and scaffolding during task completion. However, the 22 participants in the mainstream task-based group (control group) were not provided with any sort of pragmatic focus. The EFL learners’ pragmatic production, metapragmatic awareness, and pragmatic self-assessment were measured using a written discourse completion task (WDCT), a metapragmatic awareness questionnaire, and a pragmatic self-assessment questionnaire. The findings showed that the three groups enhanced their pragmatic production to almost the same degree at the end of the treatment. Furthermore, the results revealed the development of metapragmatic awareness among the EFL learners in the two experimental groups only. In addition, the two experimental groups managed to develop their pragmatic self-assessment more than the control group. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of tasks within the framework of TBLT, with or without pragmatic focus in any of the three phases, helps EFL learners develop pragmatic production, while the development of metapragmatic awareness and pragmatic self-assessment can be attributed to pragmatic focus and feedback.

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The development of different sub-competences of second/foreign language is affected by a variety of cognitive, personal, and social factors (Ellis, 1994). As for personal factors, a wide range of emotional variables have been incorporated into second language acquisition (SLA) studies however, emotional intelligence (EQ) is relatively new to this domain (Pishghadam, 2009). Given that EQ seems to affect EFL learners' interlanguage pragmatic competence (ILP) development due to the face-threatening nature of some of the speech acts involved and in an attempt to explore the nature of the tentative interrelationship, the researcher administered the Bar-On EQ-i (1996) questionnaire as an EQ measure, two ILP competence tests, and a TOEFL test to 52 Iranian EFL majors. The analyses results did not reveal any significant correlation between EQ, ILP competence and general English proficiency despite the evident strong correlation between the ILP and general English proficiency. Furthermore, the results did not feature EQ as an effective predictor of EFL learners' general English proficiency and ILP competence development level. The findings imply that EQ as a seemingly construct irrelevant factor to EFL learners' both foreign language proficiency and ILP development might not be rightly considered as an effective personal variable in EFL educational contexts.     

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The present study reports the processes of development and use of an Analytic Dichotomous Evaluation Checklist (ADEC) which aims at enhancing both inter- and intra-rater reliability of writing evaluation. The ADEC consists of a total of 68 items that comprises five subscales of content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. Eight raters assessed the writing performance of 20 Iranian EFL students using the ADEC. Also, the raters were asked to rate the same sample of essays holistically based on Test of Written English (TWE) scale. To examine the inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of the ADEC, multiple approaches were employed including correlation coefficient, the dichotomous Rasch Model, and many-faceted Rasch measurement (MFRM). The findings of the study confirmed that the ADEC introduces higher reliability into scoring procedure compared with holistic scoring. Future research with greater number of raters and examinees may provide robust evidence to use analytic scale rather than holistic one.   

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This study aimed to examine the impact of three different journal writing techniques namely, individual journal writing, collaborative journal writing with peers, and collaborative journal writing with the teacher, on the self-regulation of Iranian EFL learners. One hundred and fifty female English learners studying in a language institute were asked to answer the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (ASRL-S). Out of the initial participants, sixty upper-intermediate learners whose scores on ASRL-S pretest fell one standard deviation from the mean were chosen and randomly assigned to four groups. The ASRL-S was administered again after the treatment to the participants. The results of a one-way analysis of variance of the ASRL-S posttest indicated that collaborative journals that provide the chance to benefit from their teacher’s or peer’s feedback could significantly boost learners' self-regulatory skills. The learners who kept a reflective journal but did not share it with either their teacher or their peers were also found to outperform the ones who did not use the reflective technique. Therefore, the findings of the study also confirmed the individual journal writing as a form of reflective practice to improve learners' self-regulation significantly.

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Academic writing has tended to focus on research articles far more than on post-graduate theses (Bunton, 2005 Swales, 1990). Of the studies based on theses, relatively little research has focused on the generic structure of Suggestions for further research. To supplement the sparse knowledge in this area, the current study investigated the schematic structure (i.e., moves and steps) of Suggestions for further research andexplored the metadiscoursal features commonly used in this section of theses. The corpus included 80 PhD dissertations and 80 MA theses from Iranian universities in applied linguistics. The moves and the corresponding steps were identified and, for a detailed analysis, Hyland’s (2005) classification of metadiscourse was used. Findings revealed four moves in this part genre, named, Justification of the present study, Suggestions for repetition of the current study, Implications of the study, and The researcher’s hopes. The MA and PhD theses showed differences in the use of them. The results can broaden the understanding of the nature and function of this part genre and the way the metadiscoursal features are realized accordingly, the study can have important implications for students’ thesis writing. 

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This article examines various features of classroom discourse in a communicative EFL classroom. The class was observed and audio-taped during five class sessions with the total recordings of 4 hours of classroom interactions. An analytic framework was developed to examine these features in four major areas of teaching exchanges, characteristics of input, error treatment, and question types. The analysis revealed that the database comprised 52 teaching exchanges, of which 73% contained the F-move with evaluative function, that the teacher modified his speech in accordance with the learners’ language proficiency level, and that there was a clear preference for recasting (51%) and explicit correction (22%), leaving little opportunity for other effective corrective feedback strategies to encourage learner uptake and self-repair. The database was also examined for question types.  Although referential questions are believed to be valuable in promoting communicative interactions, it was found that the teacher asked proportionately more display questions (57%) than referential questions (21%).

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The major aim of the study was to determine the roles of psychological and sociological factors in general and social/cultural capital and cognitive/metacognitive aspects in particular in English language learning. To this end, 143 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners were asked to take an IQ test, a metacognitive questionnaire along with a social and cultural capital scale. Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized to analyze the data. The results demonstrated that both psychological and sociological factors contribute to foreign language achievement, however social and cultural capital was found to be more influential in English language learning. In the end, the results were discussed in the context of English language learning and some suggestions were made. 

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Evidence suggests that variability in the ratings of students’ essays results not only from their differences in their writing ability, but also from certain extraneous sources. In other words, the outcome of the rating of essays can be biased by factors which relate to the rater, task, and situation, or an interaction of all or any of these factors which make the inferences and decisions made about students’ writing ability undependable. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the issue of variability in rater judgments as a source of measurement error this was done in relation to EFL learners’ essay writing assessment. Thirty two Iranian sophomore students majoring in English language participated in this study. The learners’ narrative essays were rated by six different raters and the results were analyzed using many-facet Rasch measurement as implemented in the computer program FACETS. The findings suggest that there are significant differences among raters concerning their harshness as well as several cases of bias due to the rater-examinee interaction. This study provides a valuable understanding of how effective and reliable rating can be realized, and how the fairness and accuracy of subjective performance can be assessed. 

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