JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES
Year:2010 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

Traditional and modern vocabulary instruction techniques have been introduced in the past few decades to improve the learners’ performance in reading comprehension. Semantic mapping, which entails drawing learners’ attention to the interrelationships among lexical items through graphic organizers, is claimed to enhance vocabulary learning significantly. However, whether this technique suits all types of learners has not been adequately investigated. This study examines the effectiveness of employing semantic mapping in vocabulary instruction to EFL learners with different perceptual modalities. A modified version of Reid’s (1987) perceptual learning style questionnaire was used to determine the learners’ modality types. The results indicate that semantic mapping in comparison with commonplace approaches significantly enhanced EFL learners’ vocabulary achievement. Although visual learners slightly outperformed other types of learners on the posttest, no significant differences were observed among intermediate learners with different perceptual modalities employing semantic mapping for vocabulary practice.

The present study attempted to discover the impact of reduction recasts on the improvement of the speaking ability and on the repaired grammatical uptake rates of Iranian intermediate level EFL learners. After administering a language proficiency test, 52 homogeneous students were randomly assigned to the experimental and control group. The comparison of the two groups on the speaking pretest confirmed the homogeneity of the subjects before the instruction. During 12 sessions of instruction, the experimental group received reduction recasts and the control group received non-reduction recasts. The whole sessions were video-recorded for further analysis of the students’ errors, the teacher’s feedback to such errors (reduction or non-reduction recasts), and the students’ responses to the recasts (uptakes). After the treatment, both groups took part in the speaking posttest. The results indicated that the performance of the subjects in the experimental group was significantly better than that of the control group. Furthermore, the comparison of the repaired grammatical uptake means between the experimental and control groups revealed that the former group had outperformed the latter to a great extent.

This study focused on the effect of teaching collocations on the awareness of two affective dimensions, evaluation and potency dimensions, of deep vocabulary knowledge as well as the general vocabulary knowledge of EFL students. Sixty intermediate EFL female adult learners participated in this study; they were chosen among 90 students through the PET and a general vocabulary knowledge test. They were thus randomly divided into two groups, experimental and control, each consisting of 30 students. As for the treatment, modifiers describing people’s characteristics were taught with their collocations to the experimental group, whereas these words without their collocations were taught to the control group. At the end, students took a vocabulary achievement test and a test of awareness of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge. A t-test was run to analyze the data from the vocabulary achievement test. Results showed that teaching collocation has great influence on the students’ general vocabulary knowledge. To see if the independent variable had significant effects on awareness of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge, a MANOVA was run revealing that teaching collocations significantly improved learners’ awareness of the two dimensions.

Portfolios as a means of constructivist learning appear to show great promise in enhancing diverse dimensions of learning and promoting learner motivation. This study is an investigation into the effectiveness of portfolio development on the reading comprehension and academic motivation of undergraduate students majoring in English Literature in Iran. In order to answer the research questions, a quasi-experimental design in the form of a pretest (treatment) posttest control group was utilized in this study. Participants included two classes of reading comprehension at Tehran’s Alzahra University. Learners in the experimental group were required to develop a portfolio containing 10 selfgenerated concept maps based on the content of the readings as their artifacts. The instruction in the control group was conducted in the traditional teacher-directed manner. Two TOEFL tests and an Academic Motivation Questionnaire were administered to both groups. Results of the statistical analysis proved that students benefited from the portfolio development in the form of concept map generation both in their reading comprehension and their motivation levels.

Convictions are strong that multimedia courseware holds great promise for enhancing learning efficiency among learners. This study thus aimed at comparing the effects of the multimedia programs introducing 100 vocabulary items through pictures and streaming video with those of teacher instruction on increasing EFL learners’ vocabulary repertoire. A total of 120 subjects were identified as intermediate-level students based on the scores they obtained on the reading and listening sections of an IELTS and were randomly assigned to four equivalent groups. One group served as the pilot group, two as the experimental groups, and the other as the control group. The pilot group participated in the pilot study of the vocabulary test that was designed by the researcher as the pre- and posttest. The two experimental groups received treatment on teaching the vocabulary items through a Motion-Picture Multimedia Program (MPMP) or a Still-Picture Multimedia Program (SPMP). The control group received a treatment on the same vocabulary items through teacher instruction. The results favored the use of the multimedia programs, albeit the multimedia program drawing on streaming video proved to be more effective than the one using still pictures. Therefore, the findings revealed that dual coding of vocabulary might occur at different degrees across different methods of vocabulary teaching, resulting in varying degrees of the learning success.

This paper seeks to find out the degree of the rhetorical variation between the introduction sections of research papers published in English for international journals and those published in Farsi in the area of computer sciences. To this end, a corpus of 100 Farsi and 100 English research papers were collected and analyzed sentence by sentence based on Swales’ 1990 CARS model. The results revealed that the introduction sections of Farsi research papers in this field differ from those written in English in terms of Move 3 which introduces briefly the research: this move was less observed in Farsi papers compared with the English ones.However, some degree of convergence was found, mostly in the frequency of occurrence of Move 1 where the general dimensions of the area of study is presented. The same was found also to be true about Move 2 by which the readership is sought to be convinced that there is enough justification for the study to be carried out. The study generally concluded that there was a significant difference between the frequency of moves and steps applied in the introduction parts of English and Farsi research papers in the area of computer sciences.

This study focused on investigating the impact of keeping oral dialogue journals on EFL learners’ oral fluency. Sixty participants were selected out of 80 undergraduate freshmen who were studying English Translation at Sanandaj Islamic Azad University and pre-intermediate students at Passargadeh Jam Language School based on their scores on a piloted proficiency test. They were then randomly divided into two equal groups undergoing control and experimental conditions. Prior to the treatment, an oral interview was conducted for all the participants of the study. The results of a t-test demonstrated no prior significant difference between the oral fluency of the participants in the control and experimental groups. After the treatment period, during which the experimental group experienced keeping oral dialogue journals but the control group received the same instruction without the practice of dialogue journals, another oral interview was administered. The results of the comparison of the oral fluency mean ratings of the two groups revealed that the participants in the experimental group had a significantly higher oral fluency compared to the ones in the control group. It was concluded that keeping oral dialogue journals significantly affected the oral fluency of the EFL participants.

This study sought to investigate the impact of a critical literacy teaching program influenced by a combination of Freire’s critical literacy pedagogy for social justice and the Vygotskyan ZPD on adult EFL learners’ reading comprehension and critical awareness. A number of 60 intermediate EFL learners were chosen from 80 students. Once they were assigned to the control and experimental groups, the latter were given a series of textual analysis on texts with alternative endings followed by the opportunity to hold discussions and exchange views on how texts represent issues of gender, social class, race, ethnicity, etc. with the aim of enhancing their critical awareness and simultaneously improving their reading ability. The data analysis which was conducted prior to and following the treatment in both groups demonstrated that the critical literacy package was indeed successful in meeting its objectives, i.e. significant improvement of reading comprehension and critical awareness.