- I am an assistant professor in TEFL. I have been teaching English as a foreign language for the last 26 years in diff... moreI am an assistant professor in TEFL. I have been teaching English as a foreign language for the last 26 years in different universities. My areas of interest are mainly Psycholinguistics, Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary development.I have published more than 40 articles on various aspects of English Language learning and teaching. I am the reviewer of 1 peer-reviewed journal inside Iran and two peer-reviewed journals outside Iran. I am now working in the Department of English Language and Literature of Hakim Sabzevari University in Sabzevar, Iran.edit
This paper aimed to investigate the possible relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ writing strategies and their language proficiency. The current study enjoyed a mixed-method design. In the quantitative phase, a sample of 283 English... more
This paper aimed to investigate the possible relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ writing strategies and their language proficiency. The current study enjoyed a mixed-method design. In the quantitative phase, a sample of 283 English students from three universities majoring in English participated in the study. Pearson correlation, one-way ANOVA, and independent sample t-test were among different measures used in the study. The findings showed that writing strategies were significantly correlated with the participants’ English language proficiency. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to collect additional information on the students’ use of writing strategies. The qualitative phase of the study yielded several important results contributing to our understanding of writing strategies use. A content analysis of interview results revealed that most students paid less attention to metacognitive strategies while writing. Implications of the study and recommendations for future...
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The current study aimed to develop a Formative Assessment of Writing (FAoW) instrument through operationalizing Black and Wiliam’s (2009) Formative Assessment (FA) and Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) feedback model. Following intuitive... more
The current study aimed to develop a Formative Assessment of Writing (FAoW) instrument through operationalizing Black and Wiliam’s (2009) Formative Assessment (FA) and Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) feedback model. Following intuitive approach of scale construction (Hase & Goldberg, 1967), a comprehensive review of the literature was undertaken, and 30 Likert scale items were devised. The items tapped students’ experiences of FA practices in writing classrooms and their attitudes towards the helpfulness of each practice. In a focused group interview, the items were intuitively classified by three experts of writing and assessment based on the five components of FA (clarifying criteria, evidence on students’ learning, feedback to move learners forward, peer assessment and autonomy) and in three stages (“Where the learner is going/Pre-writing, “Where the learner is right now/Writing and “How to get there/ Post-writing”). The expert interviews resulted in revisions and 20 additional i...
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The present study investigated the effect of the keyword method of vocabulary teaching on the learning and longterm retention of vocabulary in a normal EFL classroom context. Fifty elementary EFL students were selected and assigned into... more
The present study investigated the effect of the keyword method of vocabulary teaching on the learning and longterm retention of vocabulary in a normal EFL classroom context. Fifty elementary EFL students were selected and assigned into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received vocabulary instruction using mnemonic keyword method and the control group received conventional memorization-based instruction of the same vocabulary items. Each group took two post-tests, one test immediately after instruction and one test two weeks later. Paired and independent samples t-tests were run on the data and the results indicated that participants in the keyword group outperformed the memorization group significantly in both their learning and retention of the vocabulary items. The results of the study support the effectiveness of the establishment of mental links and images, through the use of mnemonic strategies, for the vocabulary learning and retention of elementary lev...
This study aims at investigating the Medical students’ English language needs as the first step for designing an alternative curriculum for teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP). It also tries to examine if the needs of medical... more
This study aims at investigating the Medical students’ English language needs as the first step for designing an alternative curriculum for teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP). It also tries to examine if the needs of medical students are perceived differently by stakeholders in medical sciences. For so doing, a structured questionnaire was developed and distributed among 282 Medical Students, 12 instructors, and 15 practitioners studying and working at (X removed for blind peer review) University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS using statistical tests of Mann-Whitney U and Kruskall-Wallis. The findings indicated that the medical students need to be competent enough in all four language skills, considering the demanding nature of their profession in the future. They ranked the importance of language skills as reading, writing, speaking and listening, respectively. In addition, the results of four Kruskall-Wallis tests indicated a statistic...
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The aim of the current mixed methods study was twofold: to explore the extent to which EFL teachers engage in reflective teaching and to examine the extent to which raising teachers’ awareness of reflective teaching changes their... more
The aim of the current mixed methods study was twofold: to explore the extent to which EFL teachers engage in reflective teaching and to examine the extent to which raising teachers’ awareness of reflective teaching changes their reflective practice. Data were collected by the following means: (a) Akbari et al.’s (2010) reflective teaching inventory (quantitative method) administered to 250 Iranian EFL teachers and (b) reflective journals written by 60 Iranian EFL teachers (qualitative method). The results indicated that EFL teachers engaged in five factors underlying reflective teaching (namely, cognitive, metacognitive, affective, critical, practical) to varying degrees. For the qualitative phase, 60 male and female EFL teachers from two language institutes in Sabzevar, northeast Iran, were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups with the experimental group receiving the treatment. After completing the treatment, reflective teaching inventory as a posttest was given to the two groups to determine the effect of the treatment. Then, a t test was applied to determine statistically
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Writing has a special role in academic society as most of the information is transferred though publications. It has various aspects and among them stance taking and engagement have received less attention. The current study aimed at... more
Writing has a special role in academic society as most of the information is transferred though publications. It has various aspects and among them stance taking and engagement have received less attention. The current study aimed at investigating how Iranian PhD candidates take stance and engagement in their dissertations. The participants of the study included Iranian PhD candidates and corpus for text analysis contained PhD dissertations written by them. Discourse analysis was carried out on the corpus to identify stance taking and engagement based on the framework proposed by Hyland (2008). Overall, it was found that Iranian PhD candidates use all the elements of stance taking although some elements were more present than others. For instance, the use of stance makers of boosters like actually, believe(s), believed, certain, clear, definite, demonstrate(s), demonstrated, and establish were present in the dissertations about 12.38% while the use of self-mention like I, me, my, ou...
Despite the importance of writing in ESL/EFL contexts, too many youngsters do not learn to write well enough to meet the demands of school or the workplace. The present study strives to probe into the effect of teaching paragraph writing... more
Despite the importance of writing in ESL/EFL contexts, too many youngsters do not learn to write well enough to meet the demands of school or the workplace. The present study strives to probe into the effect of teaching paragraph writing styles in the first language on the wiring proficiency of Iranian EFL learners. To conduct the study, a quasi-experimental design was used. The participants of this study were 40 male and female language learners learning English as the foreign language at the Oxford language institute in Bojnourd in the Northern Khorasan province of Iran who were divided into experimental and control groups. There was no treatment for the control group, but the experimental group received the treatment in which four types of paragraphs-descriptive, explanatory, contrastive, comparative- were taught in participants' first language (Farsi). After the treatment, a simplified English proficiency test focusing mainly on English writing skill was used to assess the e...
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This validation study was undertaken to evaluate the construct of Formative Assessment of Writing (FAoW) operationalized by an instrument with 50 Likert scale items. To identify the EFL learners’ experiences of FAoW practices, the... more
This validation study was undertaken to evaluate the construct of Formative Assessment of Writing (FAoW) operationalized by an instrument with 50 Likert scale items. To identify the EFL learners’ experiences of FAoW practices, the instrument was first piloted with three EFL learners, and subsequently administered on a sample of 255 EFL learners selected based on purposive sampling. A five-factor solution with five latent variables (i.e. clarifying criteria, evidence on students’ current learning, feedback to move learners forward, peer-assessment and autonomy) was evaluated through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with AMOS 22. Model fit showed that the five-factor structure of FAoW could only be supported in terms of absolute and parsimony fit indices. The model with three factors (i.e. clarifying criteria, peer-assessment and feedback) in two stages of pre- and while-writing, however, provided higher discriminant validity in addition to absolute and parsimony fit indices. In other words, FAoW was not found to be practiced within its full potential with five components in the context of this study. A conceptual model was developed based on the findings and the literature to show pedagogical application of FAoW and how it can be practiced in line with Black and Wiliam’s (2009).
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This study sets out to develop a questionnaire on willingness to communicate (WTC) orally specific to English as a Foreign Language setting. It also aims to investigate the effect of three independent variables of interlocutor, age and... more
This study sets out to develop a questionnaire on willingness to communicate (WTC) orally specific to English as a Foreign Language setting. It also aims to investigate the effect of three independent variables of interlocutor, age and gender on the same construct of WTC orally. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in three dimensions to WTC, namely WTC with teacher, with classmate, and stranger. Also Cronbach's alpha of .86 indicated a high internal consistency. Mixed between-within subjects analysis of variance was used to assess the impact of interlocutors, age and gender on participants' WTC across the three WTC subscale scores. The results showed no interaction effect between any of pairs of variables but the main effect of interlocutor on WTC orally. The results are discussed in the context of language teaching and some pedagogical implications are suggested.
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Academic writing is a highly specialized genre of writing that requires students to become aware of and understand its processes and requirements The present study is a review article on the features of academic discourse as they are... more
Academic writing is a highly specialized genre of writing that requires students to become aware of and understand its processes and requirements The present study is a review article on the features of academic discourse as they are represented in the academic writings of EFL writers in Iran. The study reviews the existing literature on three features of academic discourse, intertextuality, citation and hedging. Using a genre-based approach to discourse analysis, it reports the findings of four decades of research on academic discourse with respect to these three prominent features. The study ends with the critical analysis of research studies carried out by Iranian scholars on academic discourse among Iranian college students who are majoring in TEFL.
Keywords: academic discourse, genre analysis, intertextuality, citation, hedging, Iranian EFL learners
Keywords: academic discourse, genre analysis, intertextuality, citation, hedging, Iranian EFL learners
Research Interests: ادبیات and زبان شناسی
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The present study aimed to investigate the effect of instruction in graphic organizers on reading comprehension of EFL learners in Iran. 60 female Iranian EFL learners participated in a quasi-experimental study. Oxford placement test was... more
The present study aimed to investigate the effect of instruction in graphic organizers on reading comprehension of EFL learners in Iran. 60 female Iranian EFL learners participated in a quasi-experimental study. Oxford placement test was used to determine the level of proficiency of the participants. A syllabus-based reading comprehension test consisting of 20 multiple-choice items was developed by the researcher to test EFL learners' reading comprehension before (pretest) and after (posttest) treatment. The participants in the experimental group received reading tasks through the use of graphic organizers. The control group received reading instruction through the conventional method which is popular in reading courses by means of using dictionaries, definitions, synonyms, translation, etc. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between control and experimental group in their performance on the post-test. In other words, graphic organizers were more effective than traditional teaching techniques for reading comprehension.
Keywords: Graphic organizers, reading instruction, Iranian EFL learners, advance organizers
Keywords: Graphic organizers, reading instruction, Iranian EFL learners, advance organizers