The present study investigated the impact of topical knowledge and language proficiency on the re... more The present study investigated the impact of topical knowledge and language proficiency on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. The Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used at the beginning of the study to divide the students into two groups of low and high proficiency. Both the high and low proficiency students later read two texts of almost the same level of difficulty but different in terms of their familiarity to the students. The obtained results indicated that topic familiarity cannot override language proficiency in reading comprehension; that is, low-proficiency students could not catch up with high-proficiency students even in familiar topics.
Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 2016
This study investigated the impact of variables affecting foreign language learning from Iranian ... more This study investigated the impact of variables affecting foreign language learning from Iranian EFL learners’ perspectives and explored the patterns that arise from their responses to questions addressing these variables. At first it was taken for granted that variables affecting foreign language learning are classifiable into internal and external. Therefore, the focus of the study was not on extracting these components but on the role that the variables play in relation to them. The study was carried out by distributing copies of a 30-item Lickert-scale questionnaire among close to 140 postgraduate students of English Language Teaching (ELT) in three universities in Iran. The collected data were then subjected to Principle Component Analysis (PCA). The findings revealed that although internal and external components are identifiable, many of the variables do not heavily load on the principle component to which they theoretically belong. After separating the non-correlating variab...
The present study was an attempt to investigate the perceptions of cognitively more and less acti... more The present study was an attempt to investigate the perceptions of cognitively more and less active EFL learners about using the ENGAGE Model, as an innovation, in the EFL classroom. The participants of the study were 10 intermediate level male EFL learners in a language institute in Iran who were randomly selected out of 60 homogeneous participants of the study. Of the 10 participants, 5 were cognitively more active and 5 cognitively less active individuals. They were selected based on their answers to a validated cognitive profile questionnaire. An interview guide was used to elicit the perspectives of cognitively more and less active EFL learners on the ENGAGE Model in the EFL classroom. The findings of the study proved that the cognitively more active learners enjoyed the ENGAGE Model class more than the cognitively less active ones. Likewise, the cognitively more active learners could benefit from the course more than their counterparts in the cognitively less active camp. They...
International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2015
Cross-cultural Misunderstanding has always been a conundrum for individuals who involve in interc... more Cross-cultural Misunderstanding has always been a conundrum for individuals who involve in intercultural communication. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, individuals tend to behave in a way that is appropriate to their own cultural norms which might pose serious problems for them. These cultural norms are what Sharifian (2010) titles cultural conceptualizations. Cultural conceptualizations are conceptual structures such as schemas, categories, and metaphors that come into existence as a result of interactions between members of a cultural group. This study elaborates on a number of important Iranian cultural schemas, such as 'expressing thankfulness', 'making request' and 'complimenting', and explores how these cultural schemas can potentially culminate in cross-cultural misunderstanding when communicating in English. This study argues in favor of enhancing people's meta-cultural competence, which is a prerequisite for successful communication i...
This study investigated the reading comprehension questions in EFL textbooks and their appropriat... more This study investigated the reading comprehension questions in EFL textbooks and their appropriateness to learners' levels. The data for the study were collected from four elementary and advanced level EFL textbooks containing 44 chapters altogether. A checklist was designed based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of reading comprehension questions to record the cognitive levels of the questions collected from the reading comprehension sections of the mentioned textbooks. To assess the significance of difference between each kind of the comprehension questions in elementary and advanced level textbooks, the Mann-Whitney U test was used. Results indicated that there are significant differences between the two proficiency levels in terms of question types in all categories except analysis and synthesis. To assess the overall proportions of question types in the textbooks and to see if they are different from each other, a Kruskal-Wallis and the follow up Mann-Whitney U tests were used which rev...
The present study was intended to investigate differences in the kinds of higher-order and lower-... more The present study was intended to investigate differences in the kinds of higher-order and lower-order revising practices employed by less proficient and more proficient Iranian EFL learners using an ex post facto design. Moreover, it was aimed at examining if (and how) these learners' age and gender affected their revising practices. To do so, 70 EFL learners studying in Foreign Language Institutions were selected. The participants had attended language learning classes at least for two years; therefore they possessed the minimum proficiency level required for the purposes of this study. The ESL Composition Profile was used to analytically score the learners’ writings, even though the writings were also holistically scored. The collected data were then submitted to SPSS for analysis. Some statistical procedures such as MANOVA, ANCOVA, and SPANOVA were used to test the hypotheses of the study. The obtained results revealed that there were significant differences in the kinds of ...
The present study investigated the impact of topical knowledge and language proficiency on the re... more The present study investigated the impact of topical knowledge and language proficiency on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. The Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used at the beginning of the study to divide the students into two groups of low and high proficiency. Both the high and low proficiency students later read two texts of almost the same level of difficulty but different in terms of their familiarity to the students. The obtained results indicated that topic familiarity cannot override language proficiency in reading comprehension; that is, low-proficiency students could not catch up with high-proficiency students even in familiar topics.
Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, 2016
This study investigated the impact of variables affecting foreign language learning from Iranian ... more This study investigated the impact of variables affecting foreign language learning from Iranian EFL learners’ perspectives and explored the patterns that arise from their responses to questions addressing these variables. At first it was taken for granted that variables affecting foreign language learning are classifiable into internal and external. Therefore, the focus of the study was not on extracting these components but on the role that the variables play in relation to them. The study was carried out by distributing copies of a 30-item Lickert-scale questionnaire among close to 140 postgraduate students of English Language Teaching (ELT) in three universities in Iran. The collected data were then subjected to Principle Component Analysis (PCA). The findings revealed that although internal and external components are identifiable, many of the variables do not heavily load on the principle component to which they theoretically belong. After separating the non-correlating variab...
The present study was an attempt to investigate the perceptions of cognitively more and less acti... more The present study was an attempt to investigate the perceptions of cognitively more and less active EFL learners about using the ENGAGE Model, as an innovation, in the EFL classroom. The participants of the study were 10 intermediate level male EFL learners in a language institute in Iran who were randomly selected out of 60 homogeneous participants of the study. Of the 10 participants, 5 were cognitively more active and 5 cognitively less active individuals. They were selected based on their answers to a validated cognitive profile questionnaire. An interview guide was used to elicit the perspectives of cognitively more and less active EFL learners on the ENGAGE Model in the EFL classroom. The findings of the study proved that the cognitively more active learners enjoyed the ENGAGE Model class more than the cognitively less active ones. Likewise, the cognitively more active learners could benefit from the course more than their counterparts in the cognitively less active camp. They...
International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2015
Cross-cultural Misunderstanding has always been a conundrum for individuals who involve in interc... more Cross-cultural Misunderstanding has always been a conundrum for individuals who involve in intercultural communication. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, individuals tend to behave in a way that is appropriate to their own cultural norms which might pose serious problems for them. These cultural norms are what Sharifian (2010) titles cultural conceptualizations. Cultural conceptualizations are conceptual structures such as schemas, categories, and metaphors that come into existence as a result of interactions between members of a cultural group. This study elaborates on a number of important Iranian cultural schemas, such as 'expressing thankfulness', 'making request' and 'complimenting', and explores how these cultural schemas can potentially culminate in cross-cultural misunderstanding when communicating in English. This study argues in favor of enhancing people's meta-cultural competence, which is a prerequisite for successful communication i...
This study investigated the reading comprehension questions in EFL textbooks and their appropriat... more This study investigated the reading comprehension questions in EFL textbooks and their appropriateness to learners' levels. The data for the study were collected from four elementary and advanced level EFL textbooks containing 44 chapters altogether. A checklist was designed based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of reading comprehension questions to record the cognitive levels of the questions collected from the reading comprehension sections of the mentioned textbooks. To assess the significance of difference between each kind of the comprehension questions in elementary and advanced level textbooks, the Mann-Whitney U test was used. Results indicated that there are significant differences between the two proficiency levels in terms of question types in all categories except analysis and synthesis. To assess the overall proportions of question types in the textbooks and to see if they are different from each other, a Kruskal-Wallis and the follow up Mann-Whitney U tests were used which rev...
The present study was intended to investigate differences in the kinds of higher-order and lower-... more The present study was intended to investigate differences in the kinds of higher-order and lower-order revising practices employed by less proficient and more proficient Iranian EFL learners using an ex post facto design. Moreover, it was aimed at examining if (and how) these learners' age and gender affected their revising practices. To do so, 70 EFL learners studying in Foreign Language Institutions were selected. The participants had attended language learning classes at least for two years; therefore they possessed the minimum proficiency level required for the purposes of this study. The ESL Composition Profile was used to analytically score the learners’ writings, even though the writings were also holistically scored. The collected data were then submitted to SPSS for analysis. Some statistical procedures such as MANOVA, ANCOVA, and SPANOVA were used to test the hypotheses of the study. The obtained results revealed that there were significant differences in the kinds of ...
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