The main purpose of this paper is to study the impact of INTERACTIONAL feedback on inter language variation in terms of accuracy, complexity, and fluency of learners' discourse in performing planned vs. unplanned tasks. The forty upper-intermediate participants of the study who were both male and female young adult learners were randomly assigned into an experimental and a control group. Every participant of both groups was required to perform both a planned and an unplanned task. The experimental group received INTERACTIONAL feedback while performing each task, but the control group was not provided with any feedback. The results of statistical analysis revealed that the participants exposed to INTERACTIONAL feedback while performing both the planned and the unplanned tasks achieved greater accuracy and complexity, but lower fluency. While feedback hindered fluency in both planned and unplanned tasks, greatest fluency was related to the performance condition in which the participants benefited from a plaJlt1ing time period and were not interrupted with feedback moves. The findings highlight the need to consider INTERACTIONAL feedback as a task implementation condition in task grading and sequencing and the necessity of considering this task condition for accomplishing accuracy, complexity, and/or fluency in task response.

The concept of INTERACTIONAL competence and its assessment as a complex language ability has long been a concern for research. A more recent approach to testing this construct has called for an investigation into the commonly-used concept of washback which refers to the effect of testing on teaching and learning.  This study aimed to investigate the washback effect of an INTERACTIONAL competence checklist on EFL teaching and learning. The study combined qualitative and quantitative research methods within a comparative design between an experimental and a control group of 27 advanced English learners. Data was collected through students’ oral performance, teacher and student surveys, the IC checklist, and classroom observations. The data were analyzed using mixed ANOVA and content analysis using coding schemes and themes to compare the scores obtained before and after the treatment. The study revealed a statistically significant difference in learners’ interactive oral performance before and after the implementation of the checklist. Results indicated positive washback in aspects including familiarity with the checklist, test quality, interpretation and use, motivation, professional development, and learners’ studying habits. The implications for the classroom are that language program administrators and curriculum designers can introduce modifications in developing materials that foreground a focus on INTERACTIONAL competence.

This presentation will introduce the state-of-the-art in Biolinguistics, and the philosophical, theoretical, and descriptive issues that challenge Biolinguistics’s foundations will be mentioned. The current study will benefit from the author’s published articles both in English and Persian and his books published and in press in  Persian to discuss the following topics : (a)  Left periphery in the Minimalist Program and its implications for the theory of language in general and syntax- pragmatics interface in particular, (b) Word order/ constituent order peculiarities of Ancient, Middle, and Modern Iranian Languages undermine the current assumptions in Biolinguistics, and (c) Split alignment is a hallmark of the majority of the Iranian Languages ( past and present). The most common grammatical tool to encode some grammatical functions in these languages is Indexation/agreement. In these languages, three syntactic domains have been grammaticalized (the CP- domain, the VP- domain, and the PP+ V- domain) to host the pronominal clitics, which index the grammatical subject of past tense (transitive) verbs. This topic is interesting because the pronominal clitics are mobile within the relevant syntactic domain, which is grammaticalized by a particular language. Their mobility is sensitive to Information Structure, most specifically focus marking. This study will argue that these observations suggest a strong interdependence (not merely interface) between the syntax module and the information structure, namely the pragmatics module. This presentation will benefit from the findings in items (a)-(c) to argue in favor of a model of language with philosophical, theoretical, and analytic underpinnings which the Biolinguistics Program is not equipped with.

This study investigated the use and functions of metadiscourse markers in English as a foreign language (EFL) virtual classroom during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study examined which metadiscourse markers—interactive or INTERACTIONAL—were used more frequently and how they were employed in an EFL context. It explored two interactive metadiscourse RESOURCES (code glosses and evidentials) and two INTERACTIONAL metadiscourse RESOURCES (attitude and engagement markers). The study utilized a mixed-method approach, using Hyland’s (2004) two-componential taxonomy, to analyze a corpus of 303,148 words from 35 online lectures (90 minutes each) delivered by three university instructors in the UAE. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to determine any significant differences in the use of these RESOURCES and their subcategories. The results revealed that the three instructors used more INTERACTIONAL than interactive RESOURCES. The qualitative analysis showed that code glosses and evidentials were primarily used to manage the flow of information, provide elaboration on propositional content, and provide evidence to support arguments. They were also employed to achieve cohesion and logical coherence in online classrooms. In contrast, attitude and engagement markers were used to engage students and signal the instructors’ attitudes toward their material and audience. The study concludes with pedagogical implications for EFL instructors, students, and syllabus designers to foster social justice and fairness in the online learning environment, ensuring all students feel valued and empowered in their educational journey.