Papers by Parviz Alavinia

Describing the trends and developments in language teaching practice and research has been of con... more Describing the trends and developments in language teaching practice and research has been of considerable interest to the practitioners and researchers involved in the field. This study sought to provide a rough outline of Iranian language teaching research by analyzing a large collection of titles from language teaching research reports of Iranian researchers published in English-language academic journals. The 2612 titles came from articles published from winter 2006 to summer 2016. The main source of the articles was 21 journals published in Iran or international journals which featured a considerable number of Iranian authors. In several exploratory rounds of content analysis, the article titles in five language teaching journals were examined to identify their topic areas. Then, by collapsing some of the topics, a final list of topics was prepared. Then, the titles in all journals were examined and the topic area or areas which each covered were tallied. To triangulate this subjective analysis and furnish another frequency report for the topic areas of research in language teaching, the titles were submitted to the text-analyzing software AntConc 3.3.5w (Anthony, 2012), which put out two lists: a frequency-tagged list of two-to seven-word chunks, and a frequency-tagged list of key conceptual words. The subjective content analysis and the machine-based analysis together demonstrated how different sub-fields of language teaching were emphasized and received attention in Iran. The findings help researchers become more informed about the Iranian context and set better priorities. The limitations and weaknesses of the study and some caveats are also discussed.

Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, Jul 1, 2017
Humor in the classroom is a twentieth century phenomenon. Previously, it was considered unscholar... more Humor in the classroom is a twentieth century phenomenon. Previously, it was considered unscholarly to use humor as a teaching strategy or even to show a sense of humor as a personality trait" Korobkin (1988, p. 154) With the advent of humanistic approach to education, notions like whole person learning, learner-centered education (LCE) and edutainment gained more popularity. The outburst of technology-enhanced methods of learning provided more momentum and impetus for more humanistic trends in education prioritizing learner emotions, needs and desires. Thus, the endeavors made by current practitioners and educationalists to create more playful, fun and engaging ways of learning in humor-laden, stress-free and non-threatening learning environments might be regarded as the offspring of both movements referred to above, i.e. humanistic education and technology-enriched learning. The main mission of the book reviewed here, entitled Humor in the Classroom: A guide for Language Teachers and Educational Researchers, is therefore, thought to be two-fold. On the one hand, the book tries to inform teachers of the ways in which humor can be integrated in learning environments, and on the other, it strives to pave the way for more inclusive and fun learning by introducing practical techniques and presenting a researchsupported gamut of available options for implementing such learning. The book comes in nine chapters, all dealing with diverse perspectives of learning with fun. In Chapter 1, titled Language, Communication and Education, after giving an account of how language and communication are viewed in the context of classroom, the authors highlight the newly-Content list available at www.urmia.ac.ir/ijltr

International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies, 2018
Educational system of a country plays a key part in rearing a mentally and physically rich nation... more Educational system of a country plays a key part in rearing a mentally and physically rich nation. The crucial role of teachers in the development of this system and training creative students is undeniable. Teacher creativity research has espoused the role of different factors, including teacher motivation, self-efficacy and burnout in creating more teaching creativity and increased teaching success. However, the findings of research in this regard are still inconclusive. The researchers in the current study embarked on probing the relationship between Iranian high school teachers' creativity on the one hand, and their motivation, self-efficacy and burnout, on the other. In so doing, 100 teachers were recruited as the study participants. To conduct the study, a set of questionnaires-Torrance's (2008) test of creativity, Hackman and Oldham's (1980) teacher motivation scale, Bandura's (1997) teacher Self-Efficacy questionnaire, and Maslach and Jackson's (1981) Bur...

Being of a fuzzy nature, learner-centeredness has been approached and grasped differently by teac... more Being of a fuzzy nature, learner-centeredness has been approached and grasped differently by teachers and teacher educators at various learning contexts. Despite its preponderance in educational arena since roughly half a century ago, learner-centered education (LCE) seems to still be surrounded by a myriad of misconceptions, delusions and uncertainties. Part of this haziness and perplexity in applying LCE appears to have resulted from lack of proper training with regard to its judicious implementation in compliance with the specific contextual features and requirements. Striving to establish a context-sensitive and culturally-responsive approach to LCE in the Iranian educational context, the researchers in the current study embarked on a training program for EFL teachers, in which the basic tenets of a learner-centered methodology were introduced through hands-on practice and involvement. Teachers’ conduct prior and successive to training workshops was screened via preand post-obse...

Though creativity in teaching has always constituted a seminal issue in discussions of successful... more Though creativity in teaching has always constituted a seminal issue in discussions of successful pedagogical endeavours, renewed interest in how creativity can be integrated into teaching practices seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon which has gained increased momentum in the current decade. In an attempt to pinpoint the factors underpinning teacher creativity, the researchers in this study embarked on probing the potential relationship between Iranian high school teachers' creativity, on the one hand, and their autonomy and emotional intelligence, on the other. In so doing, 100 high school teachers were selected as participants based on availability and convenience. To conduct the study, Torrance's (2008) test of creativity, Shutte et al.'s (1998) Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, and Breaugh's (1985) Work Autonomy Scale (BWA) were utilized. Running Spearman rho correlation and Structural Equation Modelling, the researchers came up with a positive relationsh...
Postmethod Pedagogy and Possible Critics
Being raised a consequence of common dissatisfaction with the limitations of the concept of metho... more Being raised a consequence of common dissatisfaction with the limitations of the concept of method, post method pedagogy has introduced three parameters of particularity, practicality and possibility principles to be replaced with the limited concept of method in the era of second / foreign language teaching and teacher education . The theoretical concepts of this new approach are influential but putting them in practice into results in new challenges for language teachers and language educators. Using the library research method, the current paper outlines some potential shortcomings of the post method pedagogy while introducing the possible critics which influence the practicality of this approach. Keywords: Postmethod, pedagogy, critics , practicality

Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 2011
Moving in line with the postulation that metadiscourse (MD) markers help transform a dry and tort... more Moving in line with the postulation that metadiscourse (MD) markers help transform a dry and tortuous piece of text into a coherent and reader-friendly one, the researchers in the current study attempted to investigate the effect different metadiscourse markers might have on Iranian EFL learners’ perception of written texts. To this end, 120 undergraduate English students were given three different texts chosen from the most common textbooks in BA, along with their doctored versions (all MD-removed, interactive-removed, and interactional-removed). Each text duo was then accompanied by an 8-item questionnaire following Ifantido’s (2005) lead. The findings, overall, were indicative of the positive role of metadiscourse markers in bringing about EFL learners’ ameliorated text perception. Furthermore, data analysis via ANOVA and LSD tests revealed that texts with both interactive and interactional resources had more effect on learners’ perception. Moreover, it was found that interactive...

Almost in every stage of their language learning process, the learners have motivation for what t... more Almost in every stage of their language learning process, the learners have motivation for what they do and receive a negative or positive feedback for it. The current study was after finding the would-be effect of motivation on 58 elementary EFL learners’ pronunciation gains successive to teacher and peer oral corrective feedback. To this aim, two intact groups at elementary level of proficiency were employed as the study participants, each of which was exposed to treatment through one type of oral corrective feedback (either teacher or peer feedback type) following the initial administration of a tailor-made recognition test of pronunciation. Thus, following pretest, an adopted motivation questionnaire was assigned to participants in both groups to gauge their motivation type (intrinsic or extrinsic) in learning a foreign language. Subsequent to the treatment applied via teacher and peer corrective feedback methods, the posttest was administered to all the study participants. The ...

The current study was after probing the would-be correlation between emotional intelligence (and ... more The current study was after probing the would-be correlation between emotional intelligence (and its subcomponents), on the one hand, and metacognitive listening strategies used by academic EFL learners, on the other. Benefiting from 72 female and 40 male university students from Urmia University, Urmia Azad University and Salams Azad University, the current study also strived to find the possible effect of gender on the gained results. The main instruments used in the study were Bar-On’s emotional quotient inventory and metacognitive listening strategy use questionnaire. Using Pearson correlation coefficient, the researchers came up with a significant amount of correlation between the use of metacognitive listening strategies and total emotional intelligence score as well as the learners’ scores on the subscales of emotional intelligence (Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, adaptability, and general mood) with the mere exception of stress management. Moreover, the relationship between al...

3 Abstract: The ability to write an effective summary might be regarded as one of the most import... more 3 Abstract: The ability to write an effective summary might be regarded as one of the most important writing skills a college student is supposed to acquire. To gain an adequate level of expertise in summary writing, learners need to draw on sound strategies, among the least-heeded instances of which mention might be made of the use of overriding move patterns that configure any piece of academic writing. In an attempt to bring the educational/academic stakeholders into closer terms with the implications of move analysis for the partially- neglected, yet prominent skill of summary writing, the researchers in the current study amassed a corpus of 141 written summaries of 4 short stories from 55 BA English Literature students at Urmia State University. Resorting to a top-down approach in analysis of discourse, the researchers, then, went about the analysis of the obtained data based on the Swalsian definition of move. Later, in their hunt for the possible impact of writing power on th...

Parviz Alavinia (Corresponding Author) Faculty of Humanities, Urmia University Urmia, Iran ABSTRA... more Parviz Alavinia (Corresponding Author) Faculty of Humanities, Urmia University Urmia, Iran ABSTRACT Though not a novel topic, supervision and its contribution to teachers‟ professional development has been given renewed attention in recent years. The constructive/destructive role supervision might play in teachers‟ instructional path has been addressed by a plethora of investigations, and the frequency and effect of different kinds of comments and feedback on teachers‟ conduct has also been explored in previous research. However, the findings of research on supervisory feedback and their effect still seem to be blurred. Informed by this need for further research into the issue, the researchers in the current study strived to investigate the proportion of comments given by supervisors to language teachers. In so doing, the researchers analyzed an existing corpus of supervisory report on 30 EFL supervisees, at a Language school in Gonbad-e-Kavoos, Iran. The sample was composed of 16 m...

Though privileges ascribed to various facets of language learning strategy training have long bee... more Though privileges ascribed to various facets of language learning strategy training have long been espoused with regard to varied language skills and components, the role some individual variables such as emotional intelligence might play in this respect seems to have received very scant attention. The researchers in the current study embarked on a probe into the impact of metacognitive strategy training on Iranian EFL learners' argumentative writing performance, in the light of individuals' emotional intelligence and gender differences. To this end, a total of 69 advanced EFL institute learners were selected as the participants of the research. The experimental group members were, then, treated through the application of O'Malley and Chamot's (1990) CALLA (Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach) for metacognitive writing strategy training. Moreover, Bar-On's (1997a, 1997b) Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) was administered to learners to gain insight in...

The current study examined the effect of EFL teachers’ emotions on different aspects of their ide... more The current study examined the effect of EFL teachers’ emotions on different aspects of their identity development including instructional, vocational and local identity as well as their teaching strategies. Following interval-contingent diary writing through a narrative approach, the stories of four novice EFL high school teachers were examined in the course of two months. Through content analysis and theme categorization of participants’ diaries, interview data as well as classroom observation results suggested that teachers’ emotional experiences affected their identity and instructional approaches that varied across different contexts. The results revealed four main themes: desperation and anxiety about student misbehavior affected teachers’ instructional and vocational identity, frustration with low salary and status affected their vocational identity, and frustration with lack of freedom of action as well as feeling of discomfort with school administration behavior influenced ...

Soon after its debut in the wake of 1980s, the notion of interculturality, delineated as "communi... more Soon after its debut in the wake of 1980s, the notion of interculturality, delineated as "communication between people from different ethnic, social, gendered cultures within the boundaries of the same national language" (Kramsch, 1998, p. 81), turned to a popular catch term among ELT research community. Among the most prominent publications addressing this avantgarde concept, one may refer to the recent work of Dervin and Risager, entitled Researching Identity and Interculturality. Successive to the Introduction chapter, in which the editors demarcate the distinctions between research method and research methodology (via elaborating the five major components of research methodology opted for in studies of identity and interculturality), the main content of the book is arranged in four sections. The first section of the book, titled Identity and Interculturality: Studying Narratives, is composed of three chapters. The focus of the introductory chapter is on the influence of interculturality on the intra-subjectivity of the participants in their narratives about life in Greece. The authors are interested in the transformation of the participants' identities. In so doing, they opt for a three-stage dialogical analysis of the data gathered through narratives, episodic interviews and focus group discussions. The second chapter embarks on a close analysis of discourses of belonging in interactions by Latin American migrant and transmigrant women in the United States. Throughout the chapter, De Fina goes through two narratives told by two Latin American women who are involved in low-skilled careers in the United States. What the author concludes in this paper, particularly on the basis of the second narrative in which the interviewee takes on a non-defensive role, is that even within situations that prescribe stereotypical positioning for migrants, attempt to counteract these

International Journal of Instruction, 2019
This study investigated the impact of task types on English learners' receptive and productive vo... more This study investigated the impact of task types on English learners' receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. A total of 125 (70 female and 55 male) first year ELT students from eight intact classes taking Academic Reading Course in the winter semester of 2017-2018 were assigned to four experimental groups randomly and a control group randomly assigned to one of five tasks of learning 45 target words. The design of the tasks was based on the involvement load hypothesis (ILH) arguing that learning of unfamiliar words to be contingent on the amount of task induced involvement. The components of involvement in ILH include need (N), search (S), and evaluation (E). In this study, the tasks induced the same or different involvement loads regarding the presence and strength of each component: writing (+N, +S, ++E), combining (+N, -S, +E), fill in the blank (+N, -S, +E), definition (+N, -S, +E), and control (-N, -S, -E). After the last treatment session, both receptive and productive knowledge of the target words were measured. Moreover, an unexpected delayed post-test was administered 1 month later. The results revealed that all output tasks were more effective than the control task in enhancing the participants' receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge.

Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2018
Aimed to change the way input is perceived and processed, processing instruction (PI) tends to he... more Aimed to change the way input is perceived and processed, processing instruction (PI) tends to help learners focus on particular grammatical forms and alter their inappropriate processing problems so that they make a better form-meaning connection. As an attempt to extend the existing research on the use of PI, the present study was carried out to examine 40 elementary EFL learners’ grammatical achievement having been exposed to PI-based structured input activities. Two groups of learners, namely, PI (n = 20) and traditional instruction (TI, n= 20) were instructed the simple past tense –ed using PI-guided structured input activities and the conventional deductive method, respectively. Findings obtained from a set of interpretation and production tasks in pre- and post-test stages (immediate and delayed) revealed the superiority of the PI group both in the short term and the long run when compared to their peers instructed through the conventional deductive approach. Furthermore, wit...

Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning, 2016
This pragmatic study investigated the speech act of thanking as used by non-native speakers of En... more This pragmatic study investigated the speech act of thanking as used by non-native speakers of English. The study was an attempt to find whether the pragmatic awareness of Iranian EFL learners could be improved through explicit instruction of the structure of the speech act of "Thanking". In fact, this study aimed to find out if there was a significant difference between the performances of EFL learners in using the speech act of thanking when they were taught through explicit instruction of speech acts compared with implicit instruction. To this end, 30 Iranian intermediate EFL learners at Pars language institute were chosen, and they were classified as experimental and control group. The researcher adopted a discourse completion test (DCT) to gather the necessary data. The results showed that those learners who were taught explicitly outperformed those to whom implicit instruction was used.

The Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Jun 28, 2012
Once regarded as the author's passive message produced to be decoded by the readers, the written ... more Once regarded as the author's passive message produced to be decoded by the readers, the written text is now viewed as a dynamic entity through which the notion of interactivity between the writer and the readers is thought to be made feasible. Based on the argument that metadiscourse markers help transform a dry and tortuous piece of text into coherent and reader-friendly prose, the researchers in the current study attempted to investigate the effect different metadiscourse markers might have on Iranian EFL learners' perception of written texts. To this end, 120 undergraduate English students were given three different texts chosen from the most common textbooks in BA (in TEFL), along with their doctored versions (all MD-removed, interactive-removed, and interactional-removed). Each text duo was then accompanied by an 8-item questionnaire adopted from . The statistical analysis of the data pointed toward the positive role of metadiscourse markers in bringing about ameliorated text perception on the part of EFL learners. Furthermore, the comparison of the results gained in each separate phase of the study, processed through the application of ANOVA and LSD tests, revealed that texts with both interactive and interactional resources had more effect on learners' perception of written texts. Moreover, it was found that interactive and interactional resources had more or less the same effect on learners' reactions to texts. To summarize, in line with the findings of the present study further evidence is gathered in favor of the argument holding that metadiscourse markers bring about an increased amount of coherence and reader-friendliness in texts.

The Use of Word Association in Learning/Expanding Vocabulary Knowledge by Iranian EFL Learners
Advances in Asian Social Science, Jul 28, 2012
Abstract – The current study investigated the relationship between vocabulary size and word assoc... more Abstract – The current study investigated the relationship between vocabulary size and word association knowledge in the Iranian EFL context. In tandem with the main underlying tenets of the investigation, the researchers strived to find whether instruction through word association offers any potential advantages as to the Iranian EFL learners' retention and expansion of vocabulary knowledge. To this aim, 50 senior EFL learners were initially given a vocabulary level test (2k, 3k, 5k, and the university word level) to gauge their vocabulary size. Having examined the learners’ vocabulary size, a word association test was given to the testees to examine their word association knowledge more deeply. Afterwards, a questionnaire was given to the testees in order to further investigate the ways and techniques learners use in associating different words to particular words. Finally, some testees were interviewed in order to elicit any other individual techniques employed by the learners. The analysis of word knowledge and word association tests indicated that word association as a technique has a positive and effective role in learning or expanding vocabulary knowledge. The results obtained from the questionnaire further revealed that learners made use of word association technique more than other ones in learning or expanding their knowledge of vocabulary. In addition, the analysis of the interviews substantiated the gained upshots, in that word association was found to be one of the mostly utilized techniques by the learners in the process of vocabulary learning.

3L Language Linguistics Literature, Mar 27, 2013
Around 3 decades of scrupulous work, theorizing and experimentation in the realm of differentiate... more Around 3 decades of scrupulous work, theorizing and experimentation in the realm of differentiated instruction (DI) has provided it with an unprecedented and ever-increasing splendor. Yet, the fuzziness, in terms of methodological and practical concerns, with which the theory was once characterised, has not yet completely been tackled. The present study is, hence, an attempt to partly diminish this aura of blurredness and imprecision surrounding DI, particularly for novice practitioners by implementing and running a differentially instructed class. The study sets out to investigate the impact of DI on EFL learners' proficiency. A small sample size of academic freshmen (totaling 60, out of which only 47 remained to the end of the study), was selected through convenience sampling and rearranged under distinct groups based on learning styles using learning style inventory. The results reveal, contrary to the study postulations, no significant proficiency differences resulting from differentiated task-based instruction between the experimental and control groups.
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Papers by Parviz Alavinia