Studies have documented the significance of scaffolding as a sociocultural theory driven type of assistance for the development of English as foreign language (EFL) learners' language skills in general; however, the comparative efficacy of various cognitive and/or metacognitive scaffolding procedures for EFL learners' listening comprehension…

Traditional approaches to language assessment have been criticized for their inadequacy in taking account of language learners' potential for development. To obviate this pitfall in traditional assessment, language teachers and researchers have been paying increasing attention to dynamic assessment (DA), which is rooted in Vygotsky's (1978)…

Although a range of studies has explored the effectiveness of group-dynamic assessment (G-DA) and process-based instruction (PBI) in second language (L2) learning, no study has compared the effects of G-DA and PBI on EFL learners' metacognitive awareness (MA) and listening comprehension (LC). Thus, this study aimed to explore the effects of G-DA…

The study explored the impact of proficiency, frequency, L1-L2 congruency, and semantic transparency on the knowledge of multi-word units (MWUs) among Iranian L2 learners (N = 256). A gap-filling test was used to assess learners' productive knowledge, employing a high-frequency MWU list created with the lemmatised concgramming method. The list,…

This study explores the role of cognitive task complexity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum development and its impact on learner engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes. A mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, was employed to gain comprehensive insights into the topic. The qualitative…

There has been an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of spaced and massed distribution instruction in second/foreign language learning. A number of studies in the literature have investigated the impacts of spacing effect on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' vocabulary acquisition. This study aims to expand the body of existing…

Anticipatory completions can be a potential place in which the second speaker expresses disagreement with the first speaker. 'Doing disagreement' is a significant feature of group work interaction, and resolving such disagreements can pose an interactional challenge for students in classroom contexts (Sharma 2012). Examining disagreement episodes…

This research investigated the effect of three definitional, sentential, and textual vocabulary learning strategies on Iranian intermediate EFL learners' vocabulary learning and retention. Based on Oxford Solutions Placement Test, of 94 total population, 66 Iranian EFL learners were selected as homogeneous participants at the intermediate level…

This study shed light on the effects of four modes of vocabulary instruction, i.e., extended audio glossing, lexical inferencing, lexical translation, and frequency manipulation of input on the learning of lexical collocations by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. In so doing, 80 L1 Persian EFL students were divided into four 20-participant…

Over the past few years, there has been an increasing focus on innovative approaches to language instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. Task-supported language Instruction (TSLI) has emerged as one such approach. While previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of TSLI in improving language proficiency, its broader…

This study explored the effects of concurrent group dynamic assessment (G-DA) and cumulative G-DA on Iranian pre-intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' interlanguage pragmatic comprehension (ILPC). To this end, a total of 97 pre-intermediate learners took the key English test (KET) test and 45 learners whose scores fell between…

Emergentist, usage-based L2 research has witnessed that emphasizing formulaic sequences as entry points in meaning-based instructional contexts contributes to the development of linguistic comprehension and production. Related studies have thus far striven to find the most effective methods of highlighting these word strings. This study explored…

Task-Based Language Teaching has been developed in response to the teacher-dominated, focus-on-forms methods such as Present, Practice, Produce (PPP). The body of literature is replete with studies examining the learning efficacy of the PPP approach versus TBLT; however, these studies did not use assessment tasks in comparing these two methods. To…

The present study investigated the efficacy of segmental/suprasegmental vs. holistic pronunciation instruction in the development of listening comprehension skills by EFL learners, using a pre-test post-test design. Six groups of 20 intermediate EFL learners at a university in Iran took part in the study, all groups receiving the same amount of…

In order to contribute to the line of inquiry on the use of Web 2.0 technology in Second Language (L2) learning, the current research employed a quantitative research method to probe the contribution of blog-mediated writing instruction to developing the writing skill and the ideal writing self of Iranian English-as-a-Foreign Language (EFL)…