Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 1
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 2
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251 - 6204
www.mjltm.com
Editor – in – Chief
Hamed Ghaemi, PhD in TEFL, Islamic Azad University, Iran
Editorial Board
Abednia Arman
, PhD in TEFL, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
Azizi Masoud
, PhD in Applied Linguisitcs, University of Tehran, Iran
Basiroo Reza
, PhD in TEFL, University of Tehran, International Campus, Iran
Elahi Shirvan Majid
, PhD in TEFL, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Fernández Miguel
, PhD, Chicago State University, USA
Ghaemi Hamide
, PhD in Speech and Language Pathology, Mashhad University of Medical
Sci-ences, Iran
Grim Frédérique
M. A., Associate Professor of French, Colorado State University, USA
Izadi Dariush,
PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Kargozari Hamid Reza
, PhD Candidate in TEFL, Payame Noor University of Tehran, Iran
Kaviani Amir
, Assistant Professor at Zayed University, UAE
Kirkpatrick Robert
, Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Shinawatra International
Uni-versity, Thailand
Morady Moghaddam Mostafa,
PhD Candidate in TEFL, University of Tabriz, Iran
Ndhlovu Finex,
PhD, Linguistics Programme, University of New England, Australia
Raddaoui
Ali Hechemi,
PhD, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Wyoming
in Laramie, USA
Rezaei Saeed
, PhD in TEFL, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Rolstad Kellie,
PhD, Associate Professor of Education, University of Maryland, USA
Shahbazirad Mohammad
, PhD in English language and Literature, Yerevan State University,
Armenia
Weir George R. S.,
PhD in Philosophy of Psychology, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Zegarac Vladimir
, PhD, University of Bedfordshire, UK
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
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Abstracting and Indexing
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 4
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 5
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 6
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE IMPACT OF METAPRAGMATIC INSTRUCTION ON SPEECH ACT AWARENESS OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNER………11 Fatemeh Abdollahizadeh Masouleh
Masoomeh Arjmandi Fereidoon Vahdany
HOW IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS PERCEIVE THE EFFECT OF WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN THEIR WRITING PERFORMANCE……….…….18 Batoul Ghanbari
Sara Amiramini,
Mohammad Reza Shamsoddini
CULTURAL NATIVIZATION VERSUS CULTURAL PREVIEW) ON THE READING COMPREHEN-SION OF INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS………..………23 Fereidoon Vahdany
Hoda Divsar Marzieh Arzaghi
THE IMPACT OF PRAGMATIC – FOCUSED INSTRUCTION ON SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS………30 Zahra Asvad
Firooz Sadighi
THE EFFECT OF USING ACROSTIC DEVICE ON IMPROVING IRANIAN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE AND RETENTION……….36 Tohid Yousefi
Alireza Bonyadi
ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE SPEAKING ANXIETY AMONG UNIVERSITY OF TECH-NOLOGY STUDENTS IN TAIWAN………..44 Cheng-Chang Tsai
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE IN READING COMPREHENSION TEST PER-FORMANCE………..………..49 Seyede Zahra Hashemi
Amin Borhani
METACOGNITIVE ONLINE READING STRATEGIES AMONG GRADUATE STUDENTS: DOES THE PROFICIENCY LEVEL MAKE ADIFFERENCE?...57 Mojtaba Eghlidi,
Seyed Jamal Abdorrahimzadeh Mohammad Amin Sorahi
THE ROLE OF VERBAL INTELLIGENCE IN L2 GRAMMAR LEARNING……….71 Elaheh Farsinejad
L2 LITERACY PROFICIENCY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY USE……….77 Mahzad Gholami
Seyed Jamal Abdorrahimzadeh Fatemeh Behjat
IN-CLASS DOUBLE-STUDENT PEER REVIEW PRIOR TO SUBMISSION: THE PROS & CONS………....91 Ronnie Goodwin
ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE THE USE OF PROVERBS TO DEVELOP FOREIGN LANGUAGE SKILLS...107 Halis Gözpınar
EXPLORING IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ READING COMPREHENSION TEST PERFORMANCE: THE ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE OF READING STRATEGIES AS AN INTERNAL FACTOR………..112 Seyede Zahra Hashemi
Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri
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PERCEPTION OF PICTORIAL METAPHORS IN CROSS-CULTURAL ADVERTISEMENTS……….…123 Jaleh Hassaskhah
Maryam Danaye Tousi Parva Mojaveri
THE IMPACT OF CREATIVITY ON THE COGNITIVE AND META-COGNITIVE STRATEGIES IN EFL READING COMPREHENSION………...131 Seyedeh Negin Hosseini
Mostafa zamanian Amin Karimnia
INVESTIGATING POLITENESS TRANSFER STRATEGIES IN TRANSLATION OF JAIN AUSTEN’S NOVELS WITH A FOCUS ON NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION………..…144 Akbar Afghari
Hosein Hoseini
THE IMPACT OF CONFERENCING ON EFL LEARNERS' CRITICAL THINKING………..153 Zahra Jafari
Samira Yavari
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-REGULATION AND CRITICAL THINKING AMONG IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS………..….157 Parvaneh Kahrizi
Majid Farahian
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WEBSTER'S DADDY LONG LEGS TRANSLATION FOR PUBLICATION AND ANIMATION: INSIGHTS FROM VAN DIJK 'S IDEOLOGY FRAMEWORK OF CRITICAL DIS-COURSE ANALYSIS……….…163 Leila Sharifi
Amin Karimnia
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE AND LEXICAL AWARENESS: EVIDENCE FROM ADULT IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS………170 Mohammad Saber Khaghaninejad
Seyedeh Masumeh Hosseini
INSTRUCTORS’ PERCEPTIONS ON TEACHING ESP: LANGUAGE SPECIALIST INSTRUCTORS VS. DOMAIN SPECIALIST INSTRUCTORS………...……182 Elham Khanian
Abdolhamid Delshad Nader Barzegar
THE EFFECT OF CRITICAL THINKING ON IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ SPEAKING ABILITY……...196 Mohammad Reza Khodashenas
Somayeh Kishani Farahani
AN INVESTIGATION INTO PERSIAN AND TURKISH PARAMETRIC DIRECTIONALITY (HEAD-INITIAL, HEAD-FINAL) AND PASSIVIZATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF X-BAR SYN-TAX………..…………203 Hamideh Marzban
Firooz Sadighi
AN EVALUATION OF TWO SPEECH ACTS IN ‘TACTICS FOR LISTENING SERIES’ SERIES:
(APOLOGY, REQUEST)……….213 Fereshteh Masoudi
Ali Asghar kargar
Seyed Jamal Abdorahimzadeh
GROUNDED THEORY: AN OVERVIEW……….….221 Rahele Mavaddat
THE EFFECT OF WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH PREP-OSITIONS………227 Shahla Morsali
THE FEATURES OF AN APPROPRIATE TEXTBOOK: AN EVALUATION OF JACK C. RICHARDS’ INTRO BOOK………...244 Asghar Moulavi Nafchi
Rokhsareh Ghorbanimoghadam
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Leila Safarpoor
COMPENSATION STRATEGIES: A CRITICAL OVERVIEW……….252 Behzad Nazari
Sahar Niknejad
L’UTILISATION DU LOGO DANS L’APPRENTISSAGE DU F.L.E ………...266 Maryam Soudipour
Shahrzad Pendar
LE ROLE DE L’EMPATHIE ET L’ATTITUDE EMOTIONNELLE ENTRE LES ENSEIGNANTS DU FRANÇAIS ET LES APPRENANTS IRANIENS………...274 Maryam Soudipour
Fereshteh MohammadZadeh Pishevari
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH MULTIPLE-SYLLABLE WORD PRONUNCIATION ACCU-RACY AMONG IRANIAN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS OF UMANITY AND NATURAL SCI-ENCE………...………280 Safura Purrezaey
Mohammadreza Khodareza
THE IMPACT OF FREQUENT EXPOSURE TO AUTHENTIC AUDIO VISUAL MATERIAL ON EN-HANCEMENT OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION ABILITY……..….…286 Touran Ahour
Samira Rahbar
THE PERCEPTION OF IRANIAN HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS OF LANGUAGE POLICY IMPLEMENYTATION………...293 Ashraf Rastkerdar
Behzad Barekat
PREFERENCES OF EFL TEACHERS AND STUDENTS TOWARDS CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN WRITING………..…308 Elham Salehfard
Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri
MEDICAL SCIENCE GRADUATES’ OPINIONS ABOUT THE ESP MATERIALS USED IN COLLEGE AND THEIR LANGUAGE NEEDS AT WORKPLACE………320 Marzieh Shahriari
Fatemeh Behjat
REVISITING ETHICS IN LANGUAGE TESTING SYSTEM: AN IGNIS FATUUS!...332 Nima Shakouri
Reihane Sheikhy
INVESTIGATING THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FIRST AND SECOND LAN-GUAGE LEARNING: EXPLORING FACTORS CONCERNING CPH………...338 Sayed Javad Tabaeifard
THE APPLICATION OF DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT REGARDING TO THE ACQUISITION OF APOL-OGY SPEECH ACT BY IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS……….342 Arezou Razavi
Omid Tabatabaei
COLLOCATION INSTRUCTION, VOCABULARY LEARNING, AND READING COMPREHENSION AMONG IRANIAN HIGH SCHOOL SOPHOMORS……….350 Omid Tadayon,
Seyed Jamal Abdorrahimzadeh Ali Asghar kargar
THE IMPACT OF TEACHING VOCABULARY THROUGH THEIR STORIES ON MOTIVATION, AT-TITUDES OF IRANIAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS………...358 Mohammad Tayebi Safa
Habib Soleimani
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND AMBIGUITY TOLERANCE OF EFL LEARNERS………363 Samira Yavari
Zahra Jafari
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EMP STUDENTS’ USE OF READING STRATEGIES AND THE IMPACT OF STRATEGY INSTRUC-TION ON MEDICAL TEXT COMPREHENSION……….367 Maryam Khoshbouie
Seyed Jamal Abdorrahimzadeh Mohammad Amin Sorahi
ON THE CORRELATION AMONG IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS' EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, SELF ESTEEM, AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ANXIETY……….…384 Moharram Sharifi
Touran Ahour
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THE IMPACT OF METAPRAGMATIC INSTRUCTION ON SPEECH
ACT AWARENESS OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNER
Fatemeh Abdollahizadeh Masouleh (corresponding auther)
Department of English Language, Guilan Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Guilan, Iran.
Masoomeh Arjmandi
Department of English Language, Islamic Azad University, Rasht Branch, Guilan, Iran. [email protected]
Fereidoon Vahdany
Department of English Language, Payame-Noor University, Guilan, Iran.
ABSTRACT
This study dealt with the application of the pragmatics research to EFL teaching. The study explored the re-lationship between metapragmatic instructions and the use of speech acts of intermediate EFL learners. The speech act of request was selected as the focus of teaching. Teacher-fronted discussions, cooperative group-ing, role plays, and other pragmatically oriented tasks were used to promote the learning of speech acts. A total number of 60 Iranian students based on OPT (Oxford Placement Test) test were selected for the study. Discourse Completion Test was developed as a pretest and posttest to measure the effects of instruction on the pragmatic awareness of the learners. The need for language learners to utilize a form of speech acts such
as request which involves a series of strategies was considered to be significance of the study. The present
article reveals the researcher’s interest in a set of strategies in which native speakers of target language use for performing speech activities. Consequently the results of the data analysis revealed a significant differ-ence between the pretest and posttest scores of the use of request speech act in experimental group.
KEYWORDS: Metapragmatics, Speech act awareness, Sociolinguistics, pragmatic competence
1. Introduction
One of the most compelling notions in the study of language is the notion of speech acts. A speech act is created when speaker/writer S makes an utterance U to hearer/reader H in context C. It is agreed upon that speech act theory is built on the foundation laid by Wittgenstein and Austin. Speech act theory originated directly from the work of J L Austin, and particularly from William James Lectures delivered at Harvard in
1955, and published later as How To Do ThingsWith Wordsin 1962. John Searle then improved this theory.
The speech act is an utterance that expresses an intention. The speech act can be a sentence, a word or a phrase. When somebody speaks, they perform an act. So speech does something and speech act stresses the intent of the act as a whole. Searle believes understanding the speaker’s intention is essential for capturing the meaning. Without the speaker’s intention, it is impossible to understand the words as a speech act. Searle proposes that there are five basic kinds of action that one can perform in speaking, by means of the following five types of utterance:(1) representatives (example: asserting, concluding, etc) (2) directives (example: re-questing, questioning) (3) commissives (example: promising, threatening, offering) (4) expressives (example: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulation) (5) declarations (example: declaring war, christening, firing from employment). Likewise, apologizing and requesting, two of the specific forms of utterance, have taken a lot of attention among linguists and those who are concerned with pragmatic studies. In fact, most works of apologizing and requesting up to now have been done in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics, as part of the CCSARP (Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns) project. The project was done by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), aiming at investigating the realization patterns of two speech acts (requests and
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apologies) in different languages and cultures in order to establish similarities and differences in these pat-terns linguistically and between native and non-native usage to the same social constraints. The investigated languages were English, French, Danish, German, Hebrew and Spanish.
Trying to get the meaning across, nonnatives may simply translate speech acts from their mother tongues to the second language. The communicative aspect of the language can be said to be realized as ‘pragmatic competence’, which refers to “the ability to perform language functions in a context” (Taguchi, 2008, p. 34). This competence involves the contextual meanings and purposes of the utterances, that is, the speaker’s in-tention and the hearer’s interpretation (Winkler, 2007). Lin (2008) identified three factors causing pragmatic failure, namely, cultural differences, pragmatic transfer, and the lack of pragmatic knowledge. The first fac-tor, the differences between the L1 culture and the target culture, may cause negative transfer, or errors in-duced by the speakers’ mother tongue. The next factor, pragmatic transfer, involves the effects of L1 speech patterns used when producing L2 utterances; for example, using a direct speech act where a native speaker may use an indirect one. The third factor, the lack of pragmatic knowledge, is mainly an important factor affecting the inefficient communication. To achieve the communicative goals efficiently, therefore, both lin-guistic and pragmatic competence are required. Pragmatic failures often pass unchecked by the teachers or, worse, they are attributed to some other causes, such as rudeness. So language teachers teach the rules of appropriate language use.
2. Literature Review
Pragmatic competence is considered to be “an understanding of the relationship between form and con-text that enables us, accurately and appropriately, to express and interpret intended meaning” (Murray, 2010, p. 293). Mastery of pragmatic competence, therefore, involving ability to “employ different linguistic formulae in an appropriate way when interacting in a particular social and cultural context” (Uso-Juan & Martinez-Floor, 2008, p. 349), is very challenging for students, especially in EFL contexts. “Learners of high grammatical proficiency will not necessarily possess comparable pragmatic competence” (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Bouton, 1996; Kasper 1997). Even advanced learners who are competent in grammar may use language inappropriately and show differences from target-language pragmatic norms. “The development of communicative competence should be the goal of language teaching” (Bouton, 1996). He proposes three major directions that researchers can take in order to further contribute to the theory of communicative competence: (1) the refinement of the study of speech acts which occur in different cultures, (2) an investigation to determine the extent to which explicit instruction can increase the rat e at which nonnative speakers develop different factors of their pragmatic competence, and (3) the contribution pra g-matics can make to the presentation of different functions of a language in textbooks designed for second language learners.
Recently, international scholars and practitioners from different foreign language contexts investigated the role of pragmatics for teaching purposes, for learning purposes, as well as for testing purposes. In order to learn pragmatics in foreign language contexts, DuFon (2008) examined Language Socialization theory in relation to acquisition of pragmatics in FL classrooms. Hassal (2008) considered language learners’ percep-tions in relation to pragmatic performance. Further Nikula (2008) investigated learning pragmatics in con-tent-based instructional settings, whereas Gonzales-Lloret (2008) examined computer-mediated learning of L2 pragmatics.
Regarding teaching pragmatics in foreign language contexts, Kondo (2008) explored the effects of aware-ness-raising instruction on pragmatic development of refusals by Japanese EFL learners, while Eslami and Eslami-Rasekh (2008) were concerned with enhancing of the pragmatic competence of non-native English-speaking teacher candidates in an EFL instructional context. Moreover, House (2008) considered using trans-lation to improve pragmatic competence.
Concerning testing pragmatics in foreign language contexts, Yamashita (2008) explored testing of
interlanguage pragmatic ability. Brown (2008) investigated raters, functions, item types, as well as the de-pendability of L2 pragmatics tests, whereas Roever (2008) examined rater, item and candidate effects in Dis-course Completion Tests.
Teaching speech acts enables EFL students to become aware of the sociolinguistic conventions of language use and cultural differences which constitutes appropriate use in English as opposed to their first socio-linguistic systems. This study made contribution in the area, namely, effect of instruction on pragmatic com-petence.
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The main aim of the study was to find out the effect of metapragmatic instructions on speech act aware-ness of intermediate EFL students at institute level. The minor aim of the present research was to show the possibility of teaching pragmatics in an EFL setting with the assumption that this problem can be overcome by giving the students the tools to make the processes of pragmatic decision-making explicit. It is claimed that helping students to make the process of pragmatic decision making explicitly will help in successful communication and appropriate use of the second language and will hopefully promote cross-cultural
un-derstanding and appreciation.
This study was planned and conducted to investigate strategies of request speech acts dealing with explicit teaching of its behavior. Considering request as an important component of speech act is vital since to un-derstand a language, one must unun-derstand the speaker’s intention. It is an utterance that expresses an inten-tion. The study is hoped to shed light on the area of speech act and actions to be taken in EFL schools and universities to train potentially intelligible learners. This research is an attempt to present a profound answer to the question whether formal instruction of request speech act enhance Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ use of it or not.
3. Methodology
3.1 The Design of the Study
A quasi-experimental design was employed in which a control group, an experimental group and the manipulation of three basic characteristics: 1) a pre-test, 2) a treatment during the course of study, and 3) a final measurement of the treatment (posttest) were used. Teaching metapragmatic instructions as an inde-pendent variable divided the participants into two groups, the experimental group that received the instruc-tions, and the control group that was just taught according to the institute’s syllabus. The use of the request was measured by the extent to which participants answered the twenty given questions. Each correct item was awarded one mark, and the maximum score a participant could achieve on the test was 20.
3.2 Participants
The participants who took part in the study were 60 EFL learners from 4 branches of Shokouh English Institute in Rasht, Iran. Participants of all classes were all above 18 year old, and they were all Persian native speakers. Altogether 60 respondents answered all the required discourse completion questionnaires in writ-ten English.
3.3 Data Collection Instrument
Three research instruments were used in the study. The first was the grammar part of the OPT (Allan, 2004) administered at the beginning of the study to ascertain the proficiency levels of the students. The test included 50 items, and the scores above 25 that was the average score of the participants were chosen for the purpose of the study. The second instrument was informative papers prepared by the researcher from dif-ferent sources. They were downloaded from difdif-ferent sources on Internet or taken from original English text books. During 10 treatment sessions, the participants of the test were asked to become familiar with the im-portant and useful points involved in the articles and use them in their role plays. The third instrument was a questionnaire that consisted of a Discourse Completion Test for the use of request speech act. The DCT-questionnaire developed by (Jalilifar, 2009) included 20 situations followed by a blank space in which the participants were asked to write a request accordingly. It was in written form so that the learners could give their replies without any language difficulties. While choosing the items composing the task, the most im-portant criterion was the situations’ relevance to a university student’s life, so that the subjects would not have difficulty in imagining the situations described in the scenarios (Bardovi-Harlig, 1998; Jernigan, 2007). This questionnaire was designed to explore the realization patterns of the speech act of request in English and the strategies EFL learners used in given situations.
3.4. Data Collection Procedure
Before starting to fill in the questionnaires, the participants were explained in detail about the main objec-tive of the investigation as well as how to answer each question. 30 students were assigned randomly as con-trol group and 30 students as experimental group. The experimental group received teaching materials cov-ering ten classroom sessions of 30 minutes; each was developed on the basis of deviance find in the answers to the questionnaire. The explicit metapragmatic instructions for the experimental group began by a teacher-fronted discussion of various meanings that a single utterance might convey in different contexts (e.g., the
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menu please). Examples of request speech acts were provided, emphasizing the fact that a specific form can have several functions in the language, and a function can be realized through different forms depending on contextual variables.
After the teacher started the discussion, students were divided into different groups and asked to come up with examples of the request speech acts in their first language and second language and to discuss the dif-ferences and similarities in the realization patterns of the speech acts in their first language and the second language. Volunteer students were asked to do role plays of the intended speech acts for the whole class.
Frequent sociopragmatic or paralinguistic deviations, observed in the learners’ examples, were taken as
teaching points and pertinent metapragmatic information or comments on the intended speech act set were provided to the whole class. Necessary reference was made to the instructional materials which students had in order to further establish and internalize the relevant metapragmatic knowledge for any patterns and strategies of the request speech act. The materials were prepared by the researcher based on the available literature on the request speech acts. The students were then provided with dialogues in English and asked to extract the request speech acts performed by the native speakers in those dialogues and to compare them with their own strategies. In the control group classrooms, no explicit metapragmatic instruction was given. The students were just taught in accordance with the usual instructional programs of the institute. The post teaching questionnaire was given after ten teaching sessions and was the same as pre-teaching phase of the request speech act. During the investigation, the participants were asked to keep silent and were not allowed to communicate with each other, and no time limit was set for them.
The research was conducted based on teaching the request speech act for the experimental group and just instructing the syllabus of the institute (not teaching request speech act) for the control group. During 10 ses-sions, learners became familiar with different aspects of request and their questions were answered by the researcher. This process helped the participants to have a correct understanding of request speech act. Fur-thermore, the data were collected by the researcher in the same classes where participants studied in the in-stitute after 10 sessions of practicing. This familiar environment helped the students feel that everything is normal. They were given the test that they received at the beginning of the study and answered them under the same conditions that they had experienced.
3.5 Data Analysis Procedure
Two dependent and independent factors were considered in this study. The independent variable was the explicit teaching materials, and the dependent variable was request speech act awareness. Moreover, a set of independent t-tests were utilized to compare the mean scores of the two groups in the pretest and posttest. It also clarified the effect of the instructions on the experimental group.
In order to increase the reliability and stability of the test scores, the researcher used the test and the retest method. The test and the retest were taken at the beginning and at the end of the term.
4. Results
As the participants were selected based on administration of a proficiency test, they were considered to be homogeneous and no pre-existing difference in terms of general English proficiency was taken into ac-count. Apart from general proficiency, participants needed to be tested regarding their request abilities at the beginning of the study to make sure the results obtained from the study was due to the treatment. In analyzing the data, a statistical package (SPSS) was used to generate the frequencies, percentages of each variable and the relationships between them. Independent sample T-test was applied between the scores of
pre-test of two groups and the results achieved. In terms of the use of request speech act, the meanof the
pretest of the control group was 16.30 and that of experimental group was 17.10. The p value, a predeter-mined significance level to be compared with observed level, was 0.05 in the study. The p value (0.070) > 0.05 revealed the fact that the two groups were not significantly different at 0.05 level in terms of the use and awareness of request. It demonstrated that the two groups were not significantly different in both pre-tests for the use of request speech act at the commencement of the study prior to the treatment. It proved that the two groups were homogeneous.
Table 1. Group statistics of the pre-test scores of experimental and control group
Group N Mean Std. deviation Std. error mean
Control 30 16.3000 1.93248 .35282
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Experimental 30 17.1000 1.91815 .35021
In terms of the use of request speech act, the mean of the post test of the control group was 14.63 and that of experimental group was 18.30. A significant difference was between the two groups in terms of the mean. In addition, the p value of 0.00 < 0.05 indicated that the two groups were different significantly. In all of the post tests of the use of request speech acts, the observed t (9.299) exceeded the critical t (2.00) (observed t > critical t = 9.299 > 2.00) as well. So by 95% confidence, it was obvious that there were differences between control group and experimental group.
Table 2. Group statistics of the post test scores of experimental and control group
Group N Mean Std. deviation Std. error mean
Control 30 14.6333 1.75152 .31978
Experimental 30 18.3000 1.26355 .23069
4. Discussion and Conclusion
The results of the data analysis of the study confirmed the claim that explicit metapragmatic instruction facilitates interlanguage pragmatic development. Although the study ignored the ‘sequence’ of obtaining speech act patterns and strategies, it illustrated that explicit metapragmatic instruction in these specific
pat-terns and strategies makes significant contributions to the students’ speech act comprehension processes.
The findings showed that pragmatic competence develops as a result of explicit metapragmatic instruction.
In a study by Salmani (2008) on Persian requests, it was found thatPersian speakers used conventionally
indirect (CI) strategies in their requestive speech acts. The results supported the claim that L2 learners may not detect relevant input features in purely meaning-based L2 use (c.f., Schmidt, 1983; Schmidt & Frota, 1986). It is claimed that in order to notice what happens, input might have to be made apparent through
in-put enhancement, which will raise the students’ consciousness about the target features.
The results of the study revealed the rather controversial issue of what effects explicit instruction have on interlanguage development in an EFL setting like Iran. As was shown, findings of the data analysis of the study showed that explicit metapragmatic instruction by providing input enhancement in the L2 classroom, raising L2 students’ awareness about the input features, and entangling them in productive class activities and language use precipitated and facilitated interlanguage pragmatic development to a considerable de-gree. The study appeared the vital role that explicit instruction can play in an Iranian EFL settings.
Teaching speech acts as a factor of socio-cultural skill is ignored in our English institutes, high schools and universities. For this reason, Iranian EFL learners often fail to recognize the correct function of speech acts in EFL educational settings. As the solution to the above-mentioned problem, teachers should help the students learn the appropriate techniques by applying comprehensive teaching methodologies which are considered to be an indispensable part of any EFL teaching programs. Studies to investigate strategies of request is rare in Iran; therefore, it is essential to deal with the problems by examining a communicative method of teaching in which speech acts are explicitly taught with due attention to the cross-cultural differ-ences which are found between Persian and English. The present study revealed that at the end of the pro-cess there were differences between homogeneous students’ pretest and posttest scores. Accordingly, there were differences between students’ knowledge of request speech act in experimental group that received the instructions and the teaching materials, and the control group that did not.
To sum up, it should be mentioned that teaching pragmatics enables learners to experience and experi-ment with the language at a deeper level, and consequently make them able to participate in the purpose of language communication, rather than just words. These kinds of issues have been paid too little attention in Iranian FLT contexts. This research can have very valuable theoretical and pedagogical implications and ap-plications for these underestimated issues. The result of the pretest of the study proved that intermediate learners of English did not have pragmatic awareness of request speech act in the absence of any pertinent instruction. This depicts that some form of metapragmatic instruction-deductive, inductive, explicit or im-plicit- is essential.
REFERENCES
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do Things with Words. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Dörnyei, Z. (1998). Do language learners recognize pragmatic violations? Pragmatic versus grammatical awareness in instructed L2 learning. TESOL Quarterly, 32 (2), 233-262.
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Bardovi-Harling, K. (2001). Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics? In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching (pp. 13-32) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blum-Kulka, S., and Olshtaihn, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act reali-zation patters (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5, 196-213.
Bouton, L.F. (1996). Pragmatics and language learning. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 7, 1-20. Urbana-Champaign: DEIL, University of Illinois.
Boxer, D., & Pickering, L. (1995). Problems in the presentation of speech acts in ELT materials: The case of complaints. ELT Journal, 49, 44-57.
Brown, J.D. (2008). Raters, functions, item types and the dependability of L2 pragmatics tests. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 224-248). Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Brown, P. and Levinson, S.D. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DuFon, M.A. (2008). Language socialization theory and the acquisition of pragmatics in the foreign language classroom. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learn-ing, teaching and testing (pp. 25-44). Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Eslami, Z.R., & Eslami-Rasekh, A. (2008). Enhancing the pragmatic competence of non-native English-speaking teacher candidates (NNESTCs) in an EFL context. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez -Flor (Eds.), In-vestigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 178-197). Bristol; Buffalo; To-ronto: Multilingual Matters.
Gonzales-Lloret, M. (2008). Computer-mediated learning of L2 pragmatics. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 114-132). Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Hassal, T. (2008). Pragmatic performance: What are learners thinking? In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 72-93). Bristol; Buffa-lo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
House, J. (2008). Using translation to improve pragmatic competence. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 135-152). Bristol; Buf-falo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Jalilifar, A. (2009). Request strategies: Cross-sectional study of Iranian EFL learners and Australian native speakers. English Language Teaching, 2(1), 46-61.
Kondo, S. (2008). Effects on pragmatic development through awareness-raising instruction: Refusals by Jap-anese EFL learners. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 153-177). Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Jernigan, J. E. (2007). Instruction and developing second language pragmatic competence: An investigation into the efficacy of output. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database (UMI No. 3263885) Kasper, G. (1997). 'Can pragmatic competence be taught?" NFLRC Network (6) Honolulu: University of Ha-waii, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.
Lin, M.X. (2008). Pragmatic failure in intercultural communication and English teaching in China. China Media Research, 4(3), 43-52. Retrieved November, 2009, from
http://www.chinamediaresearch.net/vol4no3/06Mei-xiao%20Lin-final.pdf
Murray, N. (2010). Pragmatics, awareness-raising, and the cooperative principle. ELT Journal, 64(3), 293-301. Nikula, T. (2008). Learning pragmatics in content-based classrooms. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 94 -113). Bristol; Buf-falo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Roever, C. (2008). Rater, item and candidate effects in Discourse Completion Tests: A FACETS approach. In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 249-266). Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Salmani, M. A. (2008). Persian requests: Redress of face through indirectness. Iranian Journal of Languages Studies.
Sasaki, M. (1998). Investigating EFL students’ production of speech acts: A comparison of production ques-tionnaires and role plays. Journal of Pragmatics, 30, 457-484.
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Schmidt, R. (1983). Interaction, acculturation and the acquisition of communicative competence. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds), Sociolinguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 137-174). Rowley, MA: New-bury House.
Schmidt, R., & Frota, S. N. (1986). Developing basic conversation ability in second language: A case study of an adult learner of Portuguese. In Day, R. (Ed.) Talking to learn (pp. 237-326). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Sharifian, F. (2004). Cultural Schemas and Intercultural Communication: A study of Persian. In J. Leigh, and E. Loo (Eds.). Outer Limits: A Reader in Communication Across Cultures (pp. 119-128). Language Australia, CAE. Melbourne, Victoria.
Taguchi, N. (2008). Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning, 58 (1), 33-71.
Uso-Juan, E., & Martinez-Flor, A. (2008). Teaching learners to appropriately mitigate requests. ELT Journal, 62(4), 349-357.
Winkler, E.G. (2007). Understanding language. London: Continuum.
Yamashita, S. (2008). Investigating interlanguage pragmatic ability: What are we testing? In E. Alcon Soler & A. Martinez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 201-223). Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
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HOW IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS PERCEIVE THE EFFECT OF
WRIT-TEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN THEIR WRITING
PERFOR-MANCE
Batoul Ghanbari,
Persian Gulf University, Bushehr, Iran, [email protected]
Sara Amiramini,
Department of Humanity, Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bushehr, Iran, [email protected]
Mohammad Reza Shamsoddini, Persian Gulf University, Bushehr, Iran,
ABSTRACT
The study investigated how Iranian EFL learners perceive the effect of written corrective feedback in their writing performance. To conduct the study, 32 female students were chosen through judgment sampling and were divided equally into two homogeneous groups (experimental & control) consisting of 16 students. They were studying at the Iran language institute in Bushehr (ILI). The data was gathered from an interview; however, a pre-test and a post-test were conducted before the interview was held. The experimental group received corrective feedback on their writing from the teacher whereas the control did not receive any feed-back. The results of the post-test revealed that the experimental group was able to enhance their writing per-formance while the control showed no increase in their scores on the post-test. The interview was then held in order to perceive experimental group’s perception of the feedback they received. It illustrated that the ex-perimental group was satisfied with the feedback they received as they believed that it was very effective and helpful and wanted it to be continued, that is, the majority of them regarded corrections as essential and wanted to be corrected regularly even though few at the same time find corrections embarrassing to varying degrees.
KEYWORDS: written corrective feedback, EFL writing, EFL writers, feedback, and perception.
Introduction
Writing which has once considered the domain of the elite and well-educated, has become an essential tool for people of all walks of life in today’s global community and the ability to write accurately is becoming essential today, and instruction in writing is thus assuming an increasing role in both second- and foreign-language instruction. Whether used in reporting analyses of current events for newspapers or web-pages, composing academic essays, business reports, letters, or e-mail messages, the ability to write correctly allows individuals from different cultures and backgrounds to communicate. And as advances in transportation and technology allow people from nations and cultures throughout the world to interact with each other, communication across language becomes ever more necessary. As a result, the ability to write a second lan-guage is becoming widely recognized as an important skill for educational, business, and personal reasons. Furthermore, it is now widely recognized that writing plays a vital role not only in conveying information, but also in transforming knowledge to create new knowledge. Writing has also become more important as tenets of communicative language teaching- that is, teaching language as a system of communication rather than as an object of study- have taken hold in both second- and foreign- language settings. It is thus of cen-tral importance to students in academic and second language programs throughout the world.
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The majority of second and foreign language learners regard corrections as essential and want to be correct-ed regularly (see e.g. Havranek, 2002; Schulz, 2001) even though many at the same time find corrections em-barrassing to varying degrees. Most teachers also assume that corrections are important; but they frequently worry about whether potential negative affective reactions may not outweigh the positive effect on the learners’ language development (Kleppin & Konigs, 1991; Schulz, 2001). Establishing that a correction “suc-ceeded in modifying the learner’s inter-language rule so that the error is eliminated from further produc-tion” (Chaudron, 1988, p.150) would require long-term observation of the learner’s production of the cor-rected structure while at the same time making sure that there is no further input of the same structure, rul-ing out any other source of learnrul-ing.
Literature review
2.1. Previous research on students’ perceptions of teacher-written feedback
Many studies regarding teacher-written feedback on L2 writing have examined students’ (not teachers’) both use of and preference for different types of feedback (Enginarlar, 1993; Goldstein, 2001). Studies exam-ining students’ use of feedback have demonstrated that, though several scholars have argued that feedback is not helpful, students still believe that it is and use this feedback to improve not only their L2 writing but L2 grammar as well (Ferris, 1995; Hyland, 1998). In addition, studies examining students’ perceptions of and preferences for types of feedback have demonstrated that students do have strong opinions on both the amount and type of feedback given by their teachers. For example, Cohen (1987) examined 217 students in various university language classes who completed surveys on the amount and the effectiveness of teacher-written feedback. The results of this study indicated that students felt that teachers do and should focus their feedback on local issues (such as grammar and mechanics) more than on global writing issues (such as ideas, content, and organization). Ferris (1995) replicated Cohen’s study in a product context (i.e., in a situation where students had to complete only one draft of a composition). In her survey of 155 students, Ferris found similar results to Cohen, and also found that students are more attentive to feedback given during the
writ-ing process instead of after they have already finished a composition. Such findings demonstrate students’
strong preference for local feedback and also demonstrate how and how much students use this feedback to improve their writing.
Although these studies indicate student preferences and perceptions about feedback, these perceptions are rarely compared to actual teacher feedback or teachers’ self-assessments of that feedback. In fact, it is surprising, despite their importance in assessing the effectiveness of writing feedback, how few studies have examined how teachers’ self-assessments relate to their use of feedback. Recently, researchers have called for research that examines the complex relationships in the classroom that affect feedback, advocating more re-search that compares student perceptions with teacher self-assessments and actual teacher feedback (e.g., Goldstein, 2001, 2006).
One study that has examined all three aspects of written feedback is Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990), which examined teachers’ self-assessments with student perceptions and actual written feedback in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and native language (L1) programs in both institute and university contexts. This study found a strong link between teacher self-assessments and actual performance in all categories exam-ined (content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics), at least in the university EFL context. While this study examined teacher self-assessment, student perception, and actual performance, it only ex-amined the behavior of three teachers and nine students. In addition, the Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) study did not explain whether teachers were told how their self-assessments compared to the feedback they had actually given. The current study attempts to build on the findings of Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) by exam-ining a much larger database of student perceptions, teacher self-assessments, and actual teacher feedback as well as by discussing how teachers responded to the findings of the study (Julie L. Montgomery, Wendy Baker, 2007).
2.2. Related studies
Feedback is a crucial aspect in the writing process and that it plays a central role in learning this skill. Through feedback, learners come to distinguish for themselves whether they are performing well or not. When they are not performing well, however, further feedback helps them to take corrective action about their writing in order to improve it and reach an acceptable level of performance (Freedman, 1987). Another valuable feature of feedback is that it serves as a good identification of how ESL students are progressing in
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learning the written language and, therefore, assist the teachers in diagnosing and assessing their students’ problematic areas (Hedge, 1988).
The importance of feedback lies in quality, not frequency. There are some important aspects to consider before feedback is given. Firstly, does the feedback take the students’ development into account? By showing their progress, it could be an extra motivation for them. Also, a teacher should emphasize the efforts the st u-dents made, not the positive effect the outcome has on the teacher. There is a difference between these two teacher’s comments “I see that you have worked very hard, good job!” and “I appreciate the hard work you have done!” The second comment suggests that the work was done for the teacher, the first focuses on the students’ effort. The students should feel that they work for themselves, not for the teacher (Good, 1994, p.147). There are also two other aspects to consider when it comes to feedback. Is the feedback based on a conscious strategy? And does the teacher vary it from time to time? Writing a mere “Wow!” by the teacher does not say much about the work the students have carried out. It is better to point out the parts that are impressive and explain why. Also variation is necessary. If a teacher constantly writes “Good job!” students might not find it genuine and disregard it (Good, 1994). Keeping these points in mind could help to make feedback more useful for the students, and also more appreciated.
Chandler (2003: 292) concluded that if error correction is accompanied by students’ revisions, the st u-dents' subsequent new writing will be more accurate. She also did not reject the probability of the effect of students’ attitudes on accuracy of subsequent writing, for example, “marginal description of type of error had the most negative effect on accuracy of subsequent writing of any feedback methods used in either study, perhaps because of students’ attitudes toward it”. Truscott’s (2004) continuous rebuttal arguments regarding the efficacy of error correction can be traced in recent response to Chandler. In this response, Truscott tries to show that Chandler’s (2003) claims are not more than conjectures. He argues that no previ-ous research findings support the effectiveness of correction plus revision.
Last but not the least issue which has attracted the attention of researchers is the different error treatments by teachers. Hyland and Anan (2006: 517) surveyed different groups of teachers (i.e., Japanese teachers, na-tive English speaker non- teachers, and nana-tive English speakers as teachers from UK) and concluded that “Although the teachers viewed error correction as a positive pedagogic strategy, they performed the task in different ways”. In fact, Japanese teachers as non-natives were less lenient while native English speaking teachers identified fewer errors and judged errors considering their appropriacy. The source of this contrast can be traced back in teachers’ prior experience, in addition to their background and teaching context (khodabakhshzade, 2006).
Method
3.1. Participants
32 female students who were studying English as a foreign language for almost three years participated in this study. They were enrolled in high-intermediate classes at the Iran Language Institute (ILI) in Bushehr. They met twice a week for 90 min, 21 sessions a semester, and 4 times a year with approximately equal length in each term. Ages ranged from early twenties to late forties, but the majority was in their late twen-ties and early thirtwen-ties. In order to make the participants homogeneous, the researcher administered a pre-test. The participants whose scores were close the mean were selected for the present study. They were in two different classes which consisted of sixteen students in each class. Later, the students were divided in two groups, experimental and control.
3.2. Instruments
There were three major data collection instruments to the course for both classes: An assigned textbook pro-vided practice in grammar, lexical resource, and pronunciation with a workbook propro-vided assignments giv-en studgiv-ents practice in refining and improving exercises on grammar, punctuation notes, reading compre-hension and so on; essays and writing assignments which the students produced during the semester; the interview scheme including some items to organize the information in the way things happen in the class-room and finally a rating scale by Jacob et al. to evaluate the students’ progress at the end of the treatment.
3.3.Data collection
Following the administration of the post-tests, some of the learners in the experimental group were selected for an interview. The interview was designed in a way to show how the learners in the experimental group perceived the feedback given to them. The interview transcripts collected in this way, were used for a later analysis.
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The students were surveyed using a follow-up interview in Persian (the students’ mother tongue). The in-terview contained statements about their teacher’s error correction practices as well as the students’ own beliefs and attitudes about error correction. The follow-up interview invited students to elaborate on some of the statements. All the above research processes were piloted by the same teacher-researcher. Based on the pilot results, the processes were revised and finalized. It was hoped that these three sources of data (i.e., pre-test, teacher error correction task, post-pre-test, and student survey) would yield useful information about how error correction was perceived by students, how effective error correction could be in student writing
3.4.Data analysis
The research question was more qualitative than quantitative. It dealt with the Iranian EFL learners’ perce p-tion of corrective feedback in their writing. To end this, some days after the post-test, the participants in the experimental group were provided with an interview about the treatment they received. It was an oppor-tunity to write down their opinions on the feedback given to them during the study.
Feedback is a way to involve the students in their assessment. In other words, the learners feel that they are negotiated with regard to their performance. In this way, it could improve the writing performance of the learners. As a proof in this regard, results of the interview showed that the participants in the experimental group positively perceived the role of feedback in their writing performance.
Results & Discussion
The research question concerned the qualitative aspects of the study which focused on the learners’ p ercep-tion of direct written feedback. After the quantitative tests (ptest/ post-test) were done during the re-search, the learners in the experimental group were interviewed in order to access the way the learners per-ceived corrective feedback. The items were concerned with the role of explicit instruction in writing and the attitudes of the respondents for their perceived role of error correction. The interview was presented in learners’ first language (Persian) in order not to let comprehension problems arise.
To investigate the perception of the participants, 12 learners in the experimental group were randomly se-lected to be interviewed. There existed eight questions which employed open-ended qualitative exploration in order to support qualitative data collection.
The first question in the interview was related to the students’ opinion on this type of feedback generally and the answers received all showed a kind of satisfaction toward this feedback and proved to be helpful in writing progress. The next item questioned if direct feedback caused frustration or not which was responded in a way that showed it did not create any negative feelings but caused improvement in students’ writing performance. As examples here, the third and fourth interview questions and the answers given are brought below respectively:
3
-"
دیف دوب رتهب ایآ ی
؟دوشن هداد یک
"
"
میراد یتلااکشا هچ مینادب هکنیا یارب تسا رتهب دوش هداد کی دیف ریخ .
"
4
-"
؟دوشیم نتشون تراهم تفرشیپ ثعاب یراتشون تروصب میقتسم کب دیف دینکیم رکف
"
"
تاهابتشا و دوشیم تفرشیپ و ندش رتهب ثعاب ندرک ادیپ همادا تروص رد مینکیمن رارکت یدایز دح ات ار هباشم
"
The results here illustrated that almost all of the interviewees considered a high status for direct error cor-rection and they all agreed that this type of feedback had a crucial role in their learning. In addition, their writing performance was getting much more progressed. And the main objective which was to reveal the learners’ opinion toward this issue in language learning was gained. It also showed that feedback procedure worked well and it had nothing to do with frustration and embarrassment on the part of the learners. In sum, it can be said that the introduction of feedback procedure in the Iranian EFL writing classes is quite welcome. As interview findings showed, it did not create any problems for the students. Moreover, it greatly contributed to the students’ improvement in both their overall writing and grammatical accuracy of the writ-ing.
Conclusion
The research question was more qualitative than quantitative. It dealt with the Iranian EFL learners’ percep-tion of corrective feedback in their writing. To end this, some days after the post-test, the participants in the experimental group were provided with an interview in their own mother tongue about the treatment they received and it was an opportunity to speak out their opinions on the feedback given to them during the
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study. Interestingly, almost all of the interviewees were satisfied with the feedback they received and they even wanted it to be continued. Some of them stated that it facilitated learning for them and they could no-tice significant improvement over their previous essay writings. Although the writing tasks that the partic i-pants were asked to perform were not an integral part of their course, a high degree of motivation to im-prove the accuracy of their writings was evident from the comments many of the made at the end of the course. For example, a number of them made explicit reference to the importance of written accuracy in their assignments and said that the appreciated every opportunity they were given to learn more.
Appendix 1
نازومآ شناد اب هبحاصم تلااوس
؟ تسیچ کب دیف عون هب عجار امش رظن ؟تسیچ کبدیف نیا تلاکشم ؟تسیچ امش دنسپ دروم کب دیف عون یم نتشون تراهم تفرشیپ ثعاب نداد کب دیف عون نیا دینک یم رکف ایآ ؟دوش
امش رد یتیاضران ساسحا داجیا ثعاب کب دیف عون نیا یناور رظن زا ایآ ؟دوش یم
دیف دوب رتهب ایآ ب
دوشن هداد یک
?
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Z. Dornyei (Eds.), Themes in SLA Research. AILA, 19, 18-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Enginarlar, H. (1993). Student response to teacher feedback in EFL writing. System, 21, 193-204.
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Quarterly, 29, 33–53.
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strategies for language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 23, 27–45.
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P. Matsuda (Eds.), on second language writing (pp. 73–90). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Goldstein, L. M. (2006). Feedback and revision in second language writing: Contextual, teacher, and student
variables. In K. Hyland & F. Hyland (Eds.), Feedback in second language writing: Contexts and issues (pp. 185–
205). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Havranek, G. (2002). Die Rolle der Korrektur beim Fremdsprachenlernen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Hyland, F. (1998). The impact of teacher written feedback on individual writers. Journal of Second Language
Writing,7(3), 255–286.
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CULTURAL NATIVIZATION VERSUS CULTURAL PREVIEW) ON
THE READING COMPREHENSION OF INTERMEDIATE EFL
LEARNERS
Fereidoon Vahdany
Assistant professor of PNU in applied linguistics
Hoda Divsar
PNU lecturer in applied linguistics
Marzieh Arzaghi
Payame Noor University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran Department of English Language
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the effect of cultural nativization of short stories on the reading comprehension abil-ity of Iranian intermediate learners in Iran language institute in Rasht. To achieve this goal, a sample popula-tion of 60 learners was homogenized out of 100 students and further divided into three groups. The ques-tions to be answered were if nativization and cultural previewing could improve Iranian intermediate Eng-lish language learners' reading comprehension. Also the attitudes of fifteen teachers towards cultural nativization versus the cultural previewing were asked. To answer the research questions, the One-Way ANOVA procedure produced a one-way analysis of variance for the quantitative dependent variable to be specific reading comprehension scores by the factor or independent variables (cultural Nativization and Cul-tural preview of the short story). Analysis of variance was used to test the hypothesis and to compare the means of the three groups on the reading comprehension test. The results proved that nativization had a significant positive effect on Iranian intermediate English language learners' reading comprehension. Addi-tionally, it was found that cultural previewing also had a significant positive effect on Iranian intermediate English language learners' reading comprehension.
KEYWORDS: Culture; English Language Learners; Nativization; Previewing; Reading Comprehension
Introduction
Reading is a basic and complementary skill in language learning. “Second language students need to learn to read for communication and to read greater and greater quantities of authentic materials. Students can use reading materials as a primary source of comprehensible input as they learn the language” (Chastain, 1988, p. 216). The current understanding of reading strategies has been shaped significantly by research on what expert readers do (Bazerman, 1985; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). These studies demonstrate that successful comprehension does not occur automatically. Skilled readers tend to use reading comprehension strategies such as re-reading, generating questions, predictions, and so on. According to the pilot study that has been done among 20 junior students of translation training program studying at the Islamic Azad University of Rasht, Iran, a TOFEL test that included two passages with 45 multiple choice tests were given to the st u-dents. Approximately, half of them had the scores under 10 out of 20. So it is determined that the subjects had problem in their reading comprehension ability.
It seems that the 'how' question of reading comprehension still poses a problem to these learners despite being at a high level and having learnt English for several years of their schooling experience. This means that the learners need to be trained in effective use of strategies to take control of their learning process in reading comprehension ability. Reading is the most important of all for most of students of English
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)
ISSN: 2251-6204
2014
V o l . 4 , I s s u e 4 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Page 24
out the world, especially in the countries that foreign language learners have not the opportunity to interact with native speakers but have access to written form of that language (Birjandi, Mosallanejad, Bagheridoust, 2006). Ladan JavdanFaghat and Zaidaha Zainal (2010) stressed that the system of education in Iran had not produced the desired objectives of reading classes which had emphasis on the high- cognitive domains. The common problem that students face with in reading classes is the comprehension of texts which are loaded with cultural terms. For most of them comprehending a text with new words and an unknown topic is difficult. The purpose of the present study was the elaborations on the benefits of awareness raising activi-ties on the L2 learner’s comprehension of cultural texts. Cultural differences among different nations can cause communication problems which are worsen while reading. Since the interaction takes place between the text and the reader and the writer is not present to diminish ambiguities, it is more difficult to make sense of a text. Based on what has been reviewed EFL and ESL reading classes what is being worked on now seems inefficient and accordingly this research tries to shed light on this issue through the following experi-ment. Brown (2007) identifies comprehension as “the process of receiving language; listening or reading; input” (p. 379). Comprehension is the ability to take in information, analyze it in its respective segments, and come up with an understanding of the input in a cohesive and accurate manner. Well-developed compre-hension abilities involve interactive strategy use to come up with a meaningful understanding of the input (Lin, 2010). Above all, comprehension can be identified as an interactive, strategic process which, when fully developed, results in reading fluency. According to Ziegler (2005), reading is a process of understanding speech written down. There are factors that affect reading comprehension and they include Lexical Pro-cessing, eye tracking, cultural familiarity, and first language effect. Many studies showed that there exists a positive correlation between cultural familiarity and reading comprehension (Brantmeier, 2003; Erten & Razi, 2009). It showed that if the reading is more familiar in terms of cultural content, it is easier to compr e-hend. Also it is suggested that L2 comprehension development possibly varies from culture to culture be-cause of a varying combination of information organization preferences between groups (Grabe, 1991). Brantmeier (2003) argues that L2 learners tend to make different judgments on the level of a text’s reading difficulty depending on how familiar the cultural content is to the reader. Certain reading strategies may be common among certain cultures, but it is important to remember that individuals are more than the stereo-types and generalizations of their cultures and may not necessarily use the same approaches as the dominant culture in order to improve reading proficiency in the L2. This is important to consider when choosing rea d-ing texts, also, as the interpretation of a text will vary from culture to culture (Brantmeier, 2003).
If reader confront with unfamiliar cultural patterns, L2 readers will often revert to their own cultural norms in an attempt to interpret the text, which may result in unsuccessful comprehension (Erten & Razi, 2009). They conducted a study in order to determine whether or not the “nativization”—using culture-specific information in order to make text meaningful and thus comprehensible—of a text provided enough cultural familiarity to better comprehend a text. The result of their research indicates that cultural nativization plays a role in increased text understanding, decreases the cognitive load needed for compre-hension, and increases the motivation to learn.
Grabe (1991) classified five most important areas of current research on the issue of schemata and lan-guage skills which are still prominent. They include “schema theory, lanlan-guage skills and automaticity, vo-cabulary development, comprehension strategy training, and reading-writing relations” (p. 375). Automatic-ity may be defined as “occurring when the reader is unaware of the process, not consciously controlling the process, and using little processing capacity. (ibid, p. 379-380). There has been a lot of research which inves-tigated the influence of cultural background knowledge on reading comprehension like the works of (Carrell, 1987; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Johnson, 1981; Steffensen & Joag-dev, 1992; Steffensen, Joag-dev, & Anderson, 1979, Yeut Hung Chan, 2003). Some of them are described in details.
