Papers by ali M Fazilatfar
The present study examines the role of Gal’perin’s Concept-based Instruction (CBI) as a pedagogic... more The present study examines the role of Gal’perin’s Concept-based Instruction (CBI) as a pedagogical approach in teaching cognitive grammar-based (CG-based) concepts of tense and aspect to EFL students. Following the sociocultural theory of L2 Acquisition (SCT), arming L2 learners with scientific concepts can lead to L2 development by deepening their understanding and raising awareness of L2 structures. To this end, over the course of eight weeks 28 third grade middle school students (14 years old) received the concepts in the CBI framework and 30 third grade middle school students received a traditional type of instruction. There were three sets of data including definition of the concepts of tense and aspect before and after CBI, concept verbalization data during CBI, written discourse performance plus responses to a set of grammatical questions before and after CBI. It was found that although both groups improved significantly after receiving the instruction, the students who rece...
This paper focuses on the impact of an asynchronous online discussion forum on the development of... more This paper focuses on the impact of an asynchronous online discussion forum on the development of students‟ ability in and attitudes toward writing in English. Two groups of third-year students (N = 60) majoring in English were assigned to two treatment and control groups, each receiving different types of feedback. Students in the treatment group were required to participate in an online learning environment and exchange feedback with their peers, whereas students in the control group received the traditional face-to-face feedback provided by the teacher. The results of a pre-test, a post-test, and a survey revealed that students‟ writing in the treatment group significantly improved, both semantically and syntactically, and they expressed more positive attitudes toward writing. The findings also indicated that as a result of engaging in the asynchronous online discussion forum and exchanging feedback with peers, students exhibited more control over their work, involved more effect...
Audiovisual material accompanied by interlingual subtitles is a powerful pedagogical tool which c... more Audiovisual material accompanied by interlingual subtitles is a powerful pedagogical tool which can help improve the vocabulary learning of second-language learners. This study was intended to determine whether or not the mode (standard and reversed) of subtitling affects the incidental vocabulary acquisition of Iranian L٢ learners while watching TV programs. Forty-five participants were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions: (a) watching an English movie with original soundtracks and without subtitles (non-subtitling), (b) watching the same movie with foreign language in sound track and native language in subtitles (standard subtitling), and (c) watching the movie with foreign language in subtitles and native language in sound track (reversed subtitling). The study was carried out using a ١٥minute-long episode of an animated cartoon about a group of ants trying to confront grasshoppers. The results were clearly suggestive of the paramount and fundamental role of subtitling
International journal of research in English education, Jun 1, 2021
Research on the characteristics of effective EFL teachers integrates many constructs, which are t... more Research on the characteristics of effective EFL teachers integrates many constructs, which are treated independently in most cases. Consequently, the present study aims to explore the perspectives of teacher educators, teachers, and learners with regards to teacher effectiveness as an attempt to reduce the mismatches. To meet this aim, 34 teacher educators, 39 teachers, and 161 learners engaged in the context of university and language institute were selected on the basis of convenience and criterion sampling to respond to the 30 items on a 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised of items related to subject matter knowledge, teachers' personal and interpersonal aspects, and approaches to language teaching. While the English questionnaire was distributed among the teacher educators and teachers, the Persian version of the questionnaire was handed over to the learners in the institute to be returned within a week's time. Moreover, the questionnaire was available online to enrich the data collected. The ANOVA results indicated that the perceptions of teacher educators and teachers were quite similar, but were significantly different from the perspectives of the learners. Additionally, based on MANOVA analysis, it was revealed that the differences existed mostly in the category of 'subject matter,' whereas there was a strong agreement regarding 'personal and interpersonal features' of effective EFL teachers. The findings of the study may be fruitful for EFL curriculum developers, administrators, teacher educators, teachers and language learners.
Iranian EFL teachers’ reflective ability, their teaching experience, and learners’ motivation: exploring possible relationships
Reflective Practice
Frontiers in Psychology
Academic emotions can play a major role in students’ learning in their English classes. The liter... more Academic emotions can play a major role in students’ learning in their English classes. The literature about emotional scaffolding strategies is not widely developed; most of the studies merely focus on negative emotions in EFL contexts. However, in today’s world of varied psychological elements, it is more critical than ever before to scaffold students’ positive emotions to provide more opportunities for their classroom engagement. This study is to explore teachers’ strategies of enhancing students’ positive emotions in English classes in Iran. To investigate the correspondence between students’ and teachers’ views on the effective emotional scaffolding strategies of English teachers, an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design was conducted. First, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 high school students of Salami School in Kazeroun to collect in-depth qualitative data. Then, the interview-based Likert scale questionnaires were distributed and completed ...
Persian and Arabic Students' L3 Acquisition of English Plural Marking: Language of Contact Instruction Matters for Cross-Linguistic Influence
This study aims at comparing the effects of order of acquisition (L1 vs. L2) and language of cont... more This study aims at comparing the effects of order of acquisition (L1 vs. L2) and language of contact instruction on third language acquisition (L3), exploring whether the context of acquisition affects learners’ knowledge of the L3. To this end, four groups of L3 English learners were selected: The first and the second groups had Persian as their first language (L1) and Arabic as their second language (L2). The participants of the first group were students of Persian language and literature, while the participants of the second group were students of Arabic and literature. The third and fourth groups had Arabic as their first language and Persian as their second language. The participants of the third group were students of Persian language and literature, while the participants of the fourth group were students of Arabic language and literature. The Knowledge of English plural marking was elicited via a grammaticality judgment correction task and a picture description task, aimed a...
East African Journal of Education Studies, 2022
This study investigated the EFL teachers’ conceptualisations of the use of PBLT in EFL instructio... more This study investigated the EFL teachers’ conceptualisations of the use of PBLT in EFL instruction. Thirteen EFL teachers selected from two higher education institutions in Burundi participated in the inquiry. The inquiry set out to assess participants’ beliefs and attitudes towards three constructs, namely the use of philosophical questions in the EFL classroom, the use of the EFL classroom as a community of inquiry, and the impact of PBLT in developing the EFL students’ speaking skill. A background information questionnaire, a Likert scale questionnaire, and an online structured interview were used to collect data from participants. The findings revealed participants’ positive views and attitudes towards the role of PBLT in EFL instruction. The use of philosophical questions in the EFL classroom as well as the use of the EFL classroom as a community of inquiry in enhancing EFL students’ productive and receptive skills was found to be highly favoured among participants. Furthermore...
New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Humanities and Social Sciences, 2017
The current study seeks to explore the effects of generating questions and raising discussion, on... more The current study seeks to explore the effects of generating questions and raising discussion, on the improvement of critical reading of English learners. 53 participants were divided into 3 groups, one control group and two experimental groups. For one experimental group the strategy of question generation was selected and for the other the strategy of raising discussion. After conducting the pre-test, the instructional session and the post-test, the writings of the learners were scored by two raters. ANOVA was the selected test. Result indicated that the two strategies have positive impact on the enhancement of critical reading of the participants (F 2, 50 = 26.491, p = .0001<.05). The study has some implications for language instructors and material developers to assist promoting critical reading and critical thinking of the EFL learners.
One of the most important language skills affecting students' success in academic settings is... more One of the most important language skills affecting students' success in academic settings is reading comprehension and the ability to read fluently in a second language. Japanese EFL learners' less than satisfactory performance in standard English tests led Shinozuka, Mizusawa, and Shibata (2014) to design the read-aloud method. This study investigated the effectiveness of this newly designed method on Iranian EFL Learners' reading comprehension. The aforementioned method with its high priority on reading aloud enjoy four main activities: chunked reading practice, read-aloud practice, cloze test, and concurrent read-aloud and summarization. Participants of this study, selected through convenience sampling, were 140 undergraduate students whose English reading comprehension was considered poor based on the pretest. Then, the subjects were assigned in two groups of control (N=40) and experimental (N=100). The subjects in experimental group received 8 teaching sessions, wh...
Applied Linguistics, 2010
This study examines the controversial debate of the exclusion of adult learners’ native language ... more 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 ...
Globally occurring changes in an ever-shrinking world acknowledge the goal of making effective co... more Globally occurring changes in an ever-shrinking world acknowledge the goal of making effective communication between people with various cultural backgrounds (East, 2012; Jin, 2014; Kramsh, 2013; Zheng, 2014) and hence the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in EFL context respectively. This longitudinal study based on mixed method sequential design, and random sampling procedure strived to investigate male and female Iranian pre-service teachers' intercultural communicative competence. It also tried to assess the effect of mentor teachers on pre-service teachers' ICC and to see how and to what extent those perceptions are reflected in their classroom practices. This investigation was done in two academic semesters with participation of 49 pre-service teachers (M= 29, F=20) who were in their last year of their teacher education program in Farhangian university of Esfahan, one of the biggest teacher training centers in Iran. the second group of the par...
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2016
Vocabulary learning has been one of the important issues in the English Language Teaching. A Vari... more Vocabulary learning has been one of the important issues in the English Language Teaching. A Variety of ways has been employed to teach lexical items of a language. The current study demonstrated the use of multimedia instructional technology for effective vocabulary teaching. To this end, Oxford Quick Placement test was administered to 50 female and male students studying at a private institute in Iran, Rafsanjan. Thirty pre-intermediate participants were selected. Thirty target words were selected to be taught to four groups of mixed gender via different methods. The experimental groups were provided with multimedia dictionary software. The control groups were assigned to use traditional teaching materials. Data were collected over the course of six sessions via a pre /posttest, and a delayed posttest to measure the participants' long term retention of vocabulary. The findings of ANOVA tests revealed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control ...
The present study was an attempt to investigate the differential effect/s of three different plan... more The present study was an attempt to investigate the differential effect/s of three different planning time scenarios (i.e. 0 min, 10 min, & 20 min), as well as three task conditions of (1) topic given, (2) topic and ideas given, and (3) topic, ideas and macrostructure given on EFL learners L2 writing complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF). One-hundred-eight male and female participants were randomly assigned to three time-conditions, each with 36 members. Each time-condition group was itself divided into three smaller groups of 12, each with a particular task condition. The results of the comparison of the groups who were engaged in the argumentative writing task revealed that planning time significantly influenced the complexity of the essays, and the writers in the 20-minute planning time group produced more complex texts compared with those in the zero-minute planning time group. However, no significant effect of task conditions, as well as no interaction between planning time an...
The Effect of Academic Context of Learning on L3 Acquisition of Iranian Bilinguals
The present study aimed to investigate the effect of learning context on the acquisition of plura... more The present study aimed to investigate the effect of learning context on the acquisition of plurality agreement in English noun phrases by Iranian L3 learners of English. To this end, 64 elementary learners of English were chosen from among the students of Arabic language and literature and Persian language and literature of Ahvaz university and Yazd university via the Oxford Quick Placement test. The participants were assigned to four groups to be compared in terms of the comprehension and production of plurality agreement via a grammaticality judgment correction task and a picture description task. The first and the second groups had Persian as their first language (L1) and Arabic as their second language (L2) but differed from each other concerning their language of contact instruction, Persian and Arabic, respectively. The third and fourth groups had Arabic as the L1 and Persian as the L2 but differed from each other concerning their language of contact instruction, Persian and ...
Applied Linguistics, 2018
Despite the abundance of research on ELT teachers, little is known about teacher language awarene... more Despite the abundance of research on ELT teachers, little is known about teacher language awareness (TLA) with focus on its impact on pedagogical practice in the EFL context. To fill this gap, an in-depth study was conducted to examine the procedural dimension of TLA among eight EFL teachers with different teaching experiences (novice versus experienced) related to teaching grammar at Iranian language institutes. Data were collected through non-participant classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews (of at least 7 lessons per teacher) from eight EFL teachers at three private language institutes in Iran. The findings revealed the experienced teachers‟ application of TLA in their pedagogical practices in comparison to their novice counterparts. Most importantly, the application of TLA in classrooms was affected by factors, such as context, time constraints, learners‟ emotions, and previous experiences as learners and teachers. This study may expand the current understandin...
English Language Teaching, 2019
Although there is a myriad of theoretical and pedagogical research studies into L2 grammar, the i... more Although there is a myriad of theoretical and pedagogical research studies into L2 grammar, the instruction in this area remains traditional and there have been calls for more usage-based approaches that can fill the gap between theory and practice. Accordingly, this quasi-experimental compared the effects of two pedagogical frameworks, namely Systemic-Theoretical Instruction (STI), derived from Vygotsky’s ideas and proposed by Gal’perin and discovery learning (DL), derived from Piaget’s ideas mainly proposed by Bruner, on learning English tense-aspect system. To this end, 71 Iranian low-intermediate EFL learners, aged 12 to 19, were instructed in three groups through STI, DL (experimental) and traditional method (comparison). They took a pretest, a posttest and a delayed posttest consisting of grammar tests checking their receptive and productive grammar knowledge. Results of one‐way repeated‐measures analyses of ANOVA revealed that all groups improved significantly in both the ent...
Perfectionism, Self-Efficacy Components, and Metacognitive Listening Strategy Use: A Multicategorical Multiple Mediation Analysis
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2020
The present investigation examined the effect of perfectionism on metacognitive listening strateg... more The present investigation examined the effect of perfectionism on metacognitive listening strategy (MLS) use through the components of self-efficacy (initiative, effort, and persistence) among a sample of 117 Iranian English as a Foreign Language university students. Cluster analysis was utilized to identify the perfectionistic clusters. The resulting analysis yielded a three-cluster solution (adaptive, maladaptive, and non-perfectionist). Multicategorical multiple mediation analysis was then used to explore the relative direct, indirect, and total effects and to test the postulated hypotheses of the study. Results indicated that adaptive perfectionism was associated with higher levels of effort and persistence, leading to greater MLS use. Regarding the initiative subscale, no significant differences were observed among the three perfectionist groups. Maladaptive perfectionists showed high levels of effort investment but not persistence. Mediation analysis did not support self-efficacy components as the mediators of the relationship between perfectionism and MLS use. Among self-efficacy components, only effort exerted a positive effect on MLS use. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research and classroom practice.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, Jul 3, 2016
The present study investigates Iranian EFL learners' subjectivity in single-subject retrospective... more The present study investigates Iranian EFL learners' subjectivity in single-subject retrospective verbal reports that allow the examination of the changes in the cognitive, social and affective processes involved in L2 pragmatic production. To this end, eighteen EFL learners at three proficiency levels produced verbal reports after the administration of a written discourse completion task eliciting requests and apology in asymmetrical (status-unequal) relations in institutional discourse. Qualitative analyses of students' responses indicate that sociocultural, socio-psychological and socioaffective aspects of the discourse situations influenced both their pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic choices and negotiation of lexical and grammatical choices in planning the speech acts of requests and apologies. Apparently, the degree of sociocultural accommodation to the L2 pragmatic norms may be a matter of choice as of ability.
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Papers by ali M Fazilatfar