Dynamics of Fluency, Lexical Resources and Language Awareness: Investigating the Role of Pre-speaking Strategies Instruction

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 912
Author(s):  
Nasim Abdi ◽  
Mehran Davaribina

The purpose of the present study was to find out the effect of using pre-speaking strategies coupled with strategic planning on Iranian EFL learners’ fluency, lexical resources and language awareness. The study involved 70 intermediate male and female learners divided into two groups-experimental and control. Prior to the main phase of the study, Nelson test was carried out to check the homogeneity of the participants. In the pre-test stage, a picture-cued narrative task was administered to the two groups. Next, during ten treatment sessions the experimental group received pre-speaking strategies instruction and strategic planning with ten minutes of planning time while the control group did not receive them. To answer the research questions, Independent-samples t-test and Mann-Whitney U test were used. Data analyses showed the experimental group outperformed the control group. Therefore, for effective speaking, strategic planning should be coupled with pre-speaking strategies.

2021 ◽  
pp. 037957212110254
Author(s):  
Harleen Kaur ◽  
Neerja Singla ◽  
Rohini Jain

Objective: India is the second country after China having the highest population prevalence of diabetes. Several research studies investigating diabetes have been done, but not much work has been done on prediabetes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of nutrition and lifestyle modification on prediabetic females. Methods: A total of 120 prediabetic females from Ludhiana city were divided into 2 matched groups: control group (n = 60) and experimental group (n = 60). Impact of nutrition intervention for dietary and lifestyle modification (for 3 months) was assessed on the anthropometric, dietary, biochemical parameters, and diabetes risk score of the experimental group and control group (no intervention). Results: All the selected 120 subjects completed the study (experimental group = 60; control group = 60). There was significant difference in the changes between the 2 groups throughout the study. The fasting blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin A1c levels of the experimental group subjects reduced significantly ( P ≤ .01). However, no change was observed among the control group subjects. The lipid profile of the experimental group showed a significant improvement ( P ≤ .01). Conclusion: Nutrition counselling of the prediabetics regarding dietary and lifestyle modification is recommended so as to improve their metabolic control, thus preventing them from being diabetics.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Roya Keshavarz ◽  
Amin Marzban

<p>The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect two types of corrective feedback (i.e., recast and metalinguistic) in order to find out which one is more effective on EFL learners’ speaking improvement and also to see if gender could play a role in the relative impact of the two types of corrective feedback on learners’ speaking ability. To this end, 65 EFL learners of intermediate level in one of language institutes in Shiraz, Iran were selected and divided into three groups including two experimental groups and one control. The instruments used to collect the data included IELTS test as the pre and post tests and Oxford Placement Test (OPT) in order to obtain the homogeneity in participants’ English proficiency. The collected data were codified and entered into SPSS Software (Version 22) and were analysed using descriptive statistics, t-test, and Tukey test. The results indicated that although applying these two types of corrective feedback could have made improvement in EFL learners’ speaking ability, there was not observed any significant difference between impacts of recast and metalinguistic on EFL learners’ production. The test results also indicated that there was not any significant difference regarding gender within the three groups. This homogeneity further shows that in this study, the gender variable did not have any effect on the role of corrective feedback and it can be concluded that the observed difference between metalinguistic group, recast group, and control group is just the result of the provided corrective feedback type which has acted as the intervening variable and the moderator variable such as gender did not prove to have any effect in the outcome of this study. The findings can contribute to syllabus design and teaching methodology areas.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Islam Namazian Doost ◽  
Soheila Tahmasbi

This study aims to investigate the possible effects of peripheral learning on elementary EFL learners’ grammar improvement: the case of prepositions of time and place. Two elementary classes were selected as experimental and control groups. Before beginning the treatment, a grammar test was administered to both the groups as a pre-test. Then, as treatment, the experimental group was exposed to realia, pictures, posters and texts, while the control group was not. After term-long treatment of 10 weeks, the two groups received the same grammar test as post-test. The results of t-test showed that the experimental group improved their grammar ability, i.e., knowledge of prepositions of time and place more than their friends in the control group. The finding of the study may open an optional path for teachers to include some peripheral materials in their teaching environment to further invest on unconscious learning abilities of the students.   Keywords: Peripheral learning, reposition of time, prepositions of place, grammar.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 815
Author(s):  
Jahanbakhsh Nikoopour ◽  
Mino Bargnil

The present study investigated the effect of using scrambled cloze procedure on reading and writing among intermediate EFL learners. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 60 participants were tested on a PET test, from whom 48 homogeneous participants were selected and assigned randomly to two groups of 25 and 23, as experimental and control group. Then, both groups were given a pre-test of writing and reading comprehension. During 14 sessions, the experimental group were provided with scrambled cloze samples and tasks while practicing paragraph writing and reading, whereas the control group did not, while they were practicing paragraph writing and reading. At the end, the two groups were tested in reading comprehension and writing, based on a posttest. Two raters scored the writing samples collected from two groups in the pre and posttest. Pearson correlation was used to compute the inter-rater reliability. The results showed the experimental group outperformed the control group in paragraph writing and reading comprehension. However, it was found that gender did not make a significant difference in reading comprehension and writing performance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 172
Author(s):  
Waqar Ahmad ◽  
Zuraina Ali ◽  
Muhammad Aslam Sipra ◽  
Imtiaz Hassan Taj

Smartboards, which are now widely used in the teaching and learning process in Saudi Arabia, have turned the traditional environments of the classrooms, especially the EFL classrooms to be more interesting and encouraging. Literature reviews suggest that Saudi students usually lack motivation for studying English as a foreign language. This study tends to investigate the impact of Smartboards on preparatory year EFL learners motivation at a Saudi university. Two intact groups were selected, in which one was termed as experimental and the second as control group. The experimental group was taught using the Smartboard while the control group was taught with the traditional whiteboard, pen and book method. The treatment was given for seven weeks. A questionnaire was administered to both the groups at the beginning and the end of the study. The data was analysed using the SPSS and the results showed that there was significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of motivation.  


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeedeh Rajayi ◽  
Mahpareh Poorahmadi ◽  
Mahpare Poorahmadi

A considerable body of research has been conducted on effective vocabulary instruction to improve vocabularylearning. However, no research has been done to empirically document the link between teaching vocabulary through“Kik’ application and vocabulary learning. Thus, this study was conducted to fill this gap in research related to thisphenomenon. To this effect, 61 intermediate EFL learners from Joyandegan language institute were selected throughconvenience sampling and randomly assigned to two groups; experimental and control group. In this pretest, posttestexperimental study, only the experimental group received training through “Kik” application. The comparison of thescores of Teacher Made Vocabulary Test showed that the scores of experimental group were higher than those of thecontrol group. The comparison of the scores of Teacher Made Vocabulary Test showed that the scores ofexperimental group were higher than those of the control group. This provided a statistically significant relationshipbetween the independent variable, teaching vocabulary through “Kik” application, and vocabulary learning which isthe dependent variable. The results of this study point to a probability that on using of “Kik” for teaching vocabularyand the results of this study showed that using “Kik” for teaching can have a significant impact on EFL learners’vocabulary learning.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Shahin Vaezi ◽  
Aso Biri ◽  
Farhang Moradi

This study attempted to tap into the potential of reading for incidental vocabulary learning by exposing EFL learnersto elaborated texts. This study was also concerned with investigating learners’ attitudes toward using elaboratedpassages in their reading classes. To this end, 38 students were selected as the participants of this research anddivided into two groups. Students attending the experimental group (N=20) read Persian elaborated texts in whichthe Persian meanings of the specified target words were provided in apposition to them. On the other hand, studentsof the control group (N=18) were required to read the non-elaborated version of the aforementioned texts. Generally,the results of the post-test pointed to the effectiveness of this approach in incidental vocabulary learning, and theparticipants of the experimental group were found to gain a significant vocabulary improvement in comparison to thecontrol group. Furthermore, the interview suggested that students held positive attitudes to reading elaborated textsand regarded them as effective in their vocabulary learning experience. The findings of this study have implicationsfor material developers who need to reconsider the role of modified materials.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 1195
Author(s):  
Islam NamazianDoost ◽  
Asadallah Hashemifardnya ◽  
Nasrin Panahi

This study examined the effects of using approximation and appealing for the help techniques on learning speaking skill among Iranian intermediate EFL learners. First sixteen participants out of 120 were chosen for the target population. The participants were then randomly assigned to three equal groups- two experimental groups and one control group. The groups were pretested by a speaking pre-test. Regarding the treatment, the experimental groups were taught by using the communicative approach techniques including approximation and appealing for the help. One experimental group received instruction on how to appeal for the help if their competence cannot come up with the exact word. The other experimental group received instruction on how to compensate failure in conversation by using approximate words. For example, in case of forgetting the exact word they used an approximate word or phrase like using "boat" instead of "ship" or "pipe" for "water pipe". However, the participants in the control group received traditional activities in learning speaking such as question and answer, topic discussion, dialogs and role playing. The treatment took 10 sessions of 45 minutes each under the guidance of the supervisor. Then, the control group and the experimental groups took the post-test of pet. After collecting the data, they were analyzed through using One-way Anova and Post-hoc Scheffe Test- Multiple Comparisons. The findings showed that both experimental groups outperformed than the control group. The results showed that those students who received appealing for the help treatment were better than approximation group and control group.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sa Li

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes of teaching ability of pre-service teachers during their internship. Methods: The pre-service teachers were divided into experimental group and control group, and the video of each class was recorded, encoded and scored by experts from primary schools, and SPSS was used to analyze the data. Results: The teaching ability of the pre-service teachers in the primary school Chinese subject had a significant improvement in the six weeks of teaching practice. The teaching ability of the pre-service teachers in the primary school mathematics discipline had no significant improvement in the six weeks of teaching practice; there is no significant difference in the teaching ability of pre-service teachers who have experienced six classroom lectures and 18 classroom lectures. Conclusion: Educational universities should attach importance to the role of educational internship in promoting the development of pre-service teachers' teaching ability and increase the internship time. Instructors should pay attention to the cultivation of pre-service teachers' teaching reflection ability and give feedback and guidance in time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 422-432
Author(s):  
Goodarz Shakibaei ◽  
Fatemeh Shahamat ◽  
Ehsan Namaziandost

This study intended to investigate the effect of using authentic texts on Iranian EFL learners' incidental vocabulary learning. To this end, a population of 52 Iranian female EFL learners aged 15 to 17 was selected. They were two intact classes; experimental group (25 students) and control group (27 students). Both groups received a pretest at the first session. Regarding the treatment, the authentic reading texts selected from World News for students of English, Level1 was taught to the experimental group while the texts selected from book 1 was taught to the control group. After a month post-test were run among all of the participants in both control and experimental groups to find out the possible effects of the treatment on the participants' vocabulary improvement. The analysis of data paired samples t-test and independent samples t-test showed that there was a significant difference between the post-tests of experimental and control groups. The experimental group outperformed the control group on the post-test.


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