Afsar Rouhi | Payame Noor University (original) (raw)

Papers by Afsar Rouhi

The use of paired speaking tasks for the assessment of interactional competence has recently attr... more The use of paired speaking tasks for the assessment of interactional competence has recently attracted the attention of many scholars in language learning research. The present study aimed at investigating whether task type has any effect on promoting language learners’ interactional competence measured by means of multi-factor qualitative coding of paired speaking tasks. The performances of 92 dyads of conveniently-selected intermediate Iranian EFL learners on four paired speaking tasks were assessed using a rubric developed based on recent models for the scoring of interactional competence. To reveal the factors contributing to interactional competence, confirmatory factor analysis was run rendering the four-factor rubric developed in the present study as a valid measure of interactional competence through paired speaking tasks. In addition, to check the effect of different task types on interactional competence, the researchers calculated ANOVA estimates. Mean difference statisti...

Porta Linguarum, Jun 27, 2023

This study examined the effect of written languaging and reformulation on intermediate university... more This study examined the effect of written languaging and reformulation on intermediate university students' writing accuracy during a three-stage writing task. Sixty-six EFL Iranian B.A. students in 2019 were required to write a composition, compare their drafts with feedback provided in the form of reformulation and rewrite their original texts. Students' performance in the form of compositions, revisions and written languaging episodes (LREs) were used as the data for studying the potential positive effect of reformulation and languaging on the improvement of writing accuracy. The results support previous research findings on the positive effects of languaging as well as reformulation indicating a significant decline in the number of errors from original drafts to the immediate revisions both within experimental groups and across the control group and experimental groups as well as between the contrast group and the experimental group. The role of reformulation alone and reformulation plus written languaging in mediating the improvement of writing accuracy of the learners along with theoretical and pedagogical implications will be discussed.

Social Welfare

Introduction: Drawing on the overlap between concepts of wellbeing and motivation, based on motiv... more Introduction: Drawing on the overlap between concepts of wellbeing and motivation, based on motivonia, human motivation is derived by the wellbeing experienced in the past, present, and well-willing (desired future wellbeing). Due to the long-term procedure of learning a foreign language and the necessity of intended effort and maintaining motivated behaviour, this study investigated the effect of wellbeing and well-willing as two main motivonic factors on English language learners’ intended effort, and probed the impact of English learning wellbeing on learners’ general wellbeing. Method: The data were collected during the autumn in 2019, through a self-developed quatitative questionnaire entailing 38 Likert-type scales and some demographic items from 193 students of Islamic Azad University of Islamshahr and six secondary schools in Baharestan county, who were attending private language courses as well. Data analysis was performed using multiple linear regression and Pearson correl...

Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, Jul 1, 2014

In this study, an attempt was made to examine the effects of previewing questions, repetition of ... more In this study, an attempt was made to examine the effects of previewing questions, repetition of input, and topic preparation on listening comprehension of Iranian learners of English. The study was conducted with 104 high school students in 3 experimental and one control groups. The participants in the previewing questions group read the comprehension questions before hearing the text and answering the questions. The topic preparation group took advantage of topic-related texts in Persian followed by previewing questions; then they listened to the texts and answered the questions. The repetition of input group had two hearings with previewing before each hearing that preceded answering the comprehension questions. The control group, however, only had one hearing before answering the questions. The results obtained from data analysis showed that the topic preparation group performed better than the other participating groups. The repetition group, in turn, did better than the previewing group. There was, however, no statistically significant difference between the previewing and repetition groups. Based on the results obtained, it can be argued that providing and/or activating background knowledge and repeating a listening task might facilitate listening comprehension in EFL classroom settings. The findings and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed in detail.

The Journal of AsiaTEFL, Jun 1, 2011

Taiwan Journal of TESOL, 2019

This study investigated the effects of communication strategies (CSs) on Intermediate Iranian EFL... more This study investigated the effects of communication strategies (CSs) on Intermediate Iranian EFL Low-and Mid-Willing Learners' Willingness to Communicate (LWTC and MWTC). Sixty-five intermediate EFL learners were placed in LWTC (n = 32) and MWTC (n = 33) group. All learners attended two discussion sessions as the pretest and two discussion sessions as the posttest. All sessions were audio/video recorded and observed. The learners received a direct instruction of CSs for five sessions. The results revealed that the LWTC learners' WTC significantly increased as a result of CSs use compared to that of the MWTC learners. The indirect types of CSs were identified as the most frequent strategies applied by all learners. The personality type was not identified as a contributing factor to the learners' CSs choice. A set of interrelated factors enhancing or reducing learners' WTC including contextual, individual, and communicative competence factors were identified through stimulated-recall interviews.

Task-based instruction is arguably associated with fostering fluent L2 speech distant from native... more Task-based instruction is arguably associated with fostering fluent L2 speech distant from native-like accuracy. Of several methodological options recommended for accounting for accuracy problems of meaning-first approaches to language teaching, planning time has been explored in this study. Three groups of English majors watched a cartoon and narrated their accounts of watching under no-planning, undetailed pre-task planning and detailed pre-task planning conditions. To measure the accuracy and dysfluency of their L2 production, the collected data were coded for the number of error-free clauses, the number of total clauses and also for repetitions, false starts, reformulations and replacements. One-way ANOVAs run on the data revealed that detailed pre-task planning might result in more accurate and less dysfluent language than undetailed pre-task planning which in turn might lead to more accurate and less dysfluent language than no-planning condition.

Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 2016

Task difficulty across different macro-genres continues to remain among less attended areas in se... more Task difficulty across different macro-genres continues to remain among less attended areas in second language development studies. This study examined the correlation between task difficulty across the descriptive, narrative, argumentative, and expository macro-genres. The three components of task difficulty (i.e., code complexity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress) were also compared in the four macro-genres. The design included the administration of short reading texts with comparable length and readability indices based on the four macro-genres followed by task difficulty questionnaire. The macro-genre-based reading textsalong with the task difficulty questionnaire were administered to 50 EFL students in the University ofLorestan, Iran. Task difficulty questionnaire explored the learners’ perceptions of task difficulty in the code complexity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress domains. The results revealed that there were no significant differences among...

Population Studies-a Journal of Demography, 2021

In recent years, tendency to emigrate among Iranians has hit so much. Therefore, in this study, e... more In recent years, tendency to emigrate among Iranians has hit so much. Therefore, in this study, employing the framework of Motivonia (motivational wellbeing) as a new perspective in the field of wellbeing, the effect of English language learners’ wellbeing and well-willing on their desire to emigrate has been investigated. Through convenient sampling, 193 EFL learners entered the study. The learners were either English students of the Islamic Azad University of Islamshahr or pupils of six secondary schools of Baharestan County who were attending English courses in private language institutes along with their school English courses. The data were collected via a self-developed questionnaire in the period from October to the end of December 2019. The results of multiple linear regression indicated that the learners’ L2-domain engaging wellbeing, desire to improve their future wellbeing (as an indicator of well-willing), and two dimensions of general wellbeing (i.e. relationships and p...

The present study sought to explore whether the incorporation of the integration of technology an... more The present study sought to explore whether the incorporation of the integration of technology and project-based learning into the mainstream English teaching classrooms contributes to the development of critical thinking and problem solving, as two skills essential for 21st century English learning. To accomplish such an objective, 35 Iranian learners of English were assigned to an experimental and a control group in a quasi-experimental study. Along with benefiting from a multi-skill textbook-oriented language instruction, which was the conventional teaching method of the class, the participants in the experimental group dealt with a variety of small- and large-scale technology-aided projects. The control group’s participants, on the other hand, received a multi-skill textbook-oriented language instruction in the absence of any technology-aided projects. The comparative analysis of the control and experimental groups’ performance on the critical thinking and problem solving pre- a...

System, 2021

Abstract The present study sought to explore the effect of collaborative listening to podcasts on... more Abstract The present study sought to explore the effect of collaborative listening to podcasts on intermediate learners' listening comprehension and vocabulary learning. It also aimed to elicit learners’ attitudes towards the treatment through a questionnaire. To these ends, 48 Iranian learners of English were randomly divided into two experimental groups (an individual and a peer-peer) and a control group. The experimental groups were exposed to 28 podcast episodes over a 17-session treatment rendered either individually or in dyads. The individual group listened to a podcast inside and one more outside the classroom, undertook the follow-up activities, and summarized them individually. The peer-peer group was instructed to follow the same procedures collaboratively. The same episodes were played for the control group twice inside the classroom. The control group also did the follow-up activities and summarized the podcast episodes. Results demonstrated that the experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group on listening comprehension and vocabulary tests. Further, the peer-peer group appeared to have a significantly better performance than the individual group on the vocabulary test, but not on the listening comprehension task. Learners had a positive perception of podcasts and collaborative listening. The peer-peer group, however, appreciated podcasts significantly more than the individual group.

Porta Linguarum Revista Interuniversitaria de Didáctica de las Lenguas Extranjeras, 2011

This study explores the competitive relationship between form and meaning in getting attention ba... more This study explores the competitive relationship between form and meaning in getting attention based on the primacy of meaning principIe and the lexica1 preference principie (VanPatten, 2004a). With this end in view 161 participants were assigned to four experimental conditions: Silent reading with (+) and without (-) LTIs and thinlkaloud with (+) and without (-) LTls. +LTIs groups read a passage with a title referring to the past, 14 target forms-ed and 12 LTIs. «LTIs groups read a version of the passage with 14 target forms, with no title and LTls associated with the temporal morphology. To identify the degree of text comprehension resulting from djfferent conditions, all groups took a comprehension test while the degree of form processing was examined through a form-recognition test, a cloze-passage production test, and a translation test. A two-way ANOVA run on the data obtained from the comprehension test showed statistically main effect for +LTIs. Two-way ANOVAs run on the data obtained from the three tests examining the effects of «LTIs on participants' engagement wit'h L2 fonn processing showed some benefits. The results obtained 1'01' text interaction formats measured by comprehension test showed no benefit. Input processing made benefit from think-aloud protocol measured by cloze-passage and translation tests and not from form-recognition test. The interaction of ±LT[s and text interaction fonnats did not inl1uence comprehension; however, input processing was influenced by the interaction 01' ±LTls and text interaction formats.

Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 2020

Although the findings of second language (L2) studies conducted to date have provided evidence fo... more Although the findings of second language (L2) studies conducted to date have provided evidence for the positive effect of written corrective feedback (hereafter feedback) on improving L2 learners’ writing grammatical accuracy, there is no conclusive evidence regarding which kind of feedback is more beneficial for enhancing L2 writing. This study compares the differential effects of giving and receiving unfocused direct feedback on improving Iranian EFL learners’ writing accuracy. To this end, 61 learners of English were randomly assigned to three groups, including a feedback giver group (n = 19), a feedback receiver group (n = 22), and a control group (n = 20). The participating groups took Cambridge English Preliminary Test (PET), completed four translation tasks as the treatment, and took two tests, namely a translation test and a picture description test. The data analysis indicated the effectiveness of the feedback provided by peers. Additionally, further data analysis revealed ...

Journal of NELTA, 2016

This study is an examination of the effect of the different degrees of explicitness of written co... more This study is an examination of the effect of the different degrees of explicitness of written corrective feedback (WCF) on implicit and explicit knowledge of the target structure (past simple tense) in the short term and long term. There were four experimental groups including a control group, in this quasi-experimental study which received different degrees of explicit WCF. This study sought to investigate whether or not written corrective feedback could also be effective in targeting the problematic error category in the texts of FL writers. Past simple test was known as the problematic structure based on the result of the pre-test, though their level of proficiency was intermediate. It was found that both metalinguistic and direct WCF could affect the participants’ explicit knowledge of the past simple tense in the short term and long term; the indirect WCF on the other hand, could only affect the explicit knowledge in the short term and the reformulation was the only kind of WC...

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

The effect of peer review on L2 writing has already been established. The benefit of peer review ... more The effect of peer review on L2 writing has already been established. The benefit of peer review to the feedback giver, however, remains to be explored. This quasi-experimental study intends to examine the effect of giving peer corrective feedback on the writing of givers against the effect of receiving it from peers. The study was conducted in an EFL classroom setting with 45 learners of English in three writing classes who were labelled as the "givers", the "receivers", and the comparison group. Over four sessions of treatment, the givers reviewed the writing of the receivers with two functions of English articles (a/an as the first mention and the as the anaphoric reference) and simple past tense (regular and irregular) as the features in focus without receiving any comments from others on their writing. The receivers received feedback from peers but were deprived of giving any feedback to others. The comparison group, however, neither gave nor received any peer feedback. The study followed a pretest, posttest, delayed posttest design. Analyses run on the data obtained from a picture description task and a grammaticality judgment test indicated that the givers made significantly more improvements than the receivers and the receivers, in turn, made significantly more improvements than the comparison group in terms of the forms targeted.

Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods, Sep 1, 2012

AbstractThis paper presents the findings of a quasi-experimental study designed to examine the ef... more AbstractThis paper presents the findings of a quasi-experimental study designed to examine the effects of direct written corrective feedback (DWCF) with and without meta-linguistic negotiation on the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an in the written mode of L2 production. To investigate such effects, 88 Azari learners of English were assigned to an experimental group (n = 30), a contrast group (n = 28), and a control group (n = 30). The three participating groups performed an error correction task, a story rewriting task, and a picture description task as the pre-test. No statistically significant difference was observed among the three participating groups in terms of the correct use of the forms in focus (F = .15, p = .85). The erroneous use of the forms in focus for the experimental group was negotiated in addition to DWCF provided, the erroneous use of the forms in focus was corrected through DWCF for the contrast group, and the control group received some comments on the quality of their writings. Analyses run on the data collected showed that the experimental group outperformed both the contrast group and the control group and the contrast group in turn outperformed the control group.KEY WORDS: direct written corrective feedback, meta-linguistic negotiation, L2 writing1. BackgroundThere is a growing consensus of opinion that some form-focused instruction has to be exercised along with meaning-oriented materials to ensure that some healthy balance will be struck between form and meaning. Roughly speaking, the paradigm is in the process of shifting towards including form-focused instruction in classroom settings in both oral and written modes of L2 production. As it has already been established, "language focus in L2 writing should be seen within a framework of pedagogic options, including minimally differing pedagogic purposes, writer goals and writing tasks, in relation to writer characteristics and context" (Bruton, 2009, p. 600).Viewed within form-focused instruction framework, student writers would need some language focus on their writing for converting some new forms to "intake or long-term uptake" (Hedgcock, 2005). Although expert intervention is judged to be of paramount importance for student writers (e.g., Ferris, 2003, 2010; Sheen, 2007), some doubts have already been voiced regarding the efficacy of grammar correction in L2 writing (Truscott, 1996, 2007). The counterarguments made by Truscott (1 996, 1 999, 2004) boldly questioned the effects of "red pen" on L2 development. Urging L2 practitioners to abandon corrective feedback (CF), he judged it to be of negligible effect and even harmful. Such a strong criticism leveled at CF seems to have dismissed the enthusiasm students have expressed for error correction and the empirical evidence obtained for its benefit. Broadly viewed, CF on L2 writing might be focused or unfocused. In the former, the teacher addresses only one single linguistic feature. In the latter, however, the teacher targets "a wide range of errors in each piece of students' written texts" (Sheen, Wright, & Moldawa, 2009, p. 559). Whether focused or unfocused, CF directly shows the exact location of the error in the written output of L2 learners and at the same time provides learners with the correct form of the grammatical point marked as incorrect. Indirect CF, which has been reported to be favored by teachers and L2 writing researchers (e.g., Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005), indicates the exact location of errors and urges students to revise their writing making corrections required on thenown. In correcting errors committed by L2 writers, teachers might go even beyond direct CF and provide the writers with meta-linguistic explanations as well. Such an elaboration, which provides "learners with some form of explicit comment about the nature of the errors they have made" (Ellis, 2008, p. 4), would lead to understanding which implies "recognition of a general principle, rule, or pattern" (Schmidt, 1993, p. …