The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of cultural knowledge on improving Iranian EFL learners' listening comprehension. To achieve this purpose, out of three hundred participants, one hundred and twenty pre-intermediate language learners were selected based on their scores on a listening comprehension test and were randomly assigned to four groups. Each group was exposed to...

This article begins by accounting the development of Second language theories .It describes major ESL theories ever since the 18th century to those currently adopted in ESL field. Then it proceeds to demonstrate their influences on EFL teaching in China, like nowadays an increasing awareness of non-cognitive factors in teaching foreign languages, reforms in some traditional teaching methodologi...

Computerized dynamic assessment has been proposed as a solution to the practicality issues involved in ordinary dynamic assessment procedures. However, most of computerized dynamic assessment studies have addressed receptive skills (i.e., reading and listening). Responding to the scarcity of CDA studies of productive skills, the present study was an attempt to design and implement a computerize...

Near-Synonyms and Similar-Looking (NSSL) words can create confusion for English as Foreign Language Learners as a result of a type of lexical error that often occurs when they confuse similar-looking words that are near synonyms to have the same meaning. Particularly, this may occur if the similar-looking words have the same translated meaning. This study proposes a method to find these NSSL wo...

The current study was intended to investigate the impact of Dynamic Assessment (DA) on promoting reading comprehension ability of Iranian male and female EFL learners, focusing on Guthke's Lerntest approach. In this study, the researcher used DA which unifies instruction with assessment to provide learners with mediation to promote their hidden potential during assessment. In this action resear...

The purpose of this study was to probe the effect of metacognitive strategy instruction through dialogic interaction on the reading comprehension performance and metacognitive awareness of Iranian EFL learners. The data were collected through the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) and a reading test to examine changes in metacognitive awareness and reading performance before and after the inte...

The purpose of this study was to probe the effect of metacognitive strategy instruction through dialogic interaction on the reading comprehension performance and metacognitive awareness of Iranian EFL learners. The data were collected through the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) and a reading test to examine changes in metacognitive awareness and reading performance before and after the inte...

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...

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the impact of manipulating task performance conditions on listening task performance by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was designed to explore the effects of changing complexity dimensions on listening task performance and to achieve two aims: to see how listening comprehension task performance was aff...

Writing in English might be one of the most difficult tasks for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. This paper presents FLOW, a writing assistance system. It is built based on first-language-oriented input function and context sensitive approach, aiming at providing immediate and appropriate suggestions including translations, paraphrases, and n-grams during composing and revising pro...