International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics March 2015 Volume 1 Number 1 ISNN 2383-0514 (Online) wwwaijlal.irInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics © 2015, Khate Sefid Press Published by Khate Sefid Press English Educational Group www Khatesefid.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Khate Sefid Press.About Us Title: Abbreviation: ISSN: Frequency: Publication Dates: Themes Publisher: Country of Publication: Language of Text: Format: Serial Type Refereed: Paper Review Policy: Peer Review Time: Free Full-text Access: Acceptable Paper Length: ‘Submission Types: Author Fees: Paper Acceptance Rate: website: International Journal of Language and Applied Linguist WLAL 2383-0514 (Online) Quarterly March, June, September, December Applied Linguistics; English Language Teaching Khate Sefid Press Tran Standard American/British English Online Academic/Scholarly Journals Yes Doubly-masked, peer-reviewed 410 6 weeks Free PDF 3,000 to 5,000 words Research Papers; Review Papers None 28.57% (in first issue) wwwiflalirEditor in Chief Seyyed Mohammad Reza Amirian, (Ph.D. in English Language Teaching, Hakim Sabzevari University, Iran) Managing Editor Dara Tafazoli (M.A. in English Language Teaching, Islamic Azad University, Iran) Editorial Board Members Reza Bagheri Nevisi (PhD in ELT, University of Qom, Iran) ‘Mohammad Davoudi (PhD in ELT, Hakim Sabzevari University, Iran) Mahmood Debghan (PhD in ELT, University of Mazandaran, Iran) Zohreh R. Eslami (PhD in ESL, Texas A & M University College Station, USA) Abolfazl Khodamoradi (PhD in ELT, Farhangian University, Iran) Akram Nayernia (PHD in ELT, University of Science and Technology, Iran) Michal B, Paradowski (PhD in Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland) Margarida Romero (PhD in Educational Technology, Laval University, Canada) Mahdi Sarkhosh (PhD in ELT, Urmia University, Iran) Karim Shabani (PhD in ELT, Allameh Mohaddes Nouri University, Iran) Amir Zand Moghaddam (Ph.D. in ELT, Allameh Tabatabai University, Iran) Gholamreza Zareian (PhD in ELT, Hakim Sabzevari University, Iran) Ivan H. Williams (PHD in Applied Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) Reza Nemati Moghadam (MA in ELT, Khate Sefid English Educational Group, Iran) Mohammad Ali Kowsary (MA in ELT, Khate Sefid English Educational Group, Iran) Reviewers of this issue: ‘Mahnaz. Azad (Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch, Iran) Lora M. Beseler (Winona State University, USA) ‘Amin Davoodi (Razi University of Kermanshah, Iran) Marina Duarte (Polytechnic Institute of Porto , Portugal) Ali Khodi (Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Iran) Konstantinos M. Pitychoutis (Al Yamamah University, Saudi Arabia) Maria del Mar Sanchez Pérez (University of Almeria, Spain) Marjan Vosoughi (Islamic Azad University, Sabzevar Branch, Iran)International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics March 2015 Vol. 1. No. 1. ISSN 2383-0514 (Online) Table of Contents Editorial Note Seyyed Mohammad Reza Amirian EFL Learners’ Perceptions of (im)politeness: The Possible Gender Differences Mavadat Saidi & Mohadese Khosravi ......... rieeccai once uesveauaed = Ll A Naturalistic Inquiry into an Innovative Teaching Practice of Establishing Students’ Research Agendas Igor Smerdov... eon = 18 ‘A Comparison between the Effectiveness of Mnemonic versus Non-mnemonic Strategies in Foreign Language Learning Context Fatemeh Ahmadniay Motlagh & Naser RaShidi..........-ccssvssssseeesseeeeeeeesssessseeees]9 = 26 Reaching the Compromise: An Iranian EFL Teacher’s Treatment of Vocabulary in Reading Reza Farhang........+. a teseeeseeeedT = 35 Online Learning Communities and Formative Peer Assessment: Two Case Studies in the Field of Humanities Maria J. Vera-Cazorla. 36 - 43Editorial Note International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics is a scholarly joumal aiming at promoting original research and supporting the academic creativity and innovation. This Journal intends to present information and ideas on theories, research, methods and materials related to language learning and teaching. As a fully peer-reviewed international joumal benefiting from knowledgeable international editorial board and reviewers, this journal publishes original research and review articles on language education. This is the first issue of the journal and contributions in different areas of enquiry such as first and second language learning and teaching, language and culture, discourse analysis, language planning, language testing, multilingual education, stylistics, translation and information technology are welcome. As the chief editor of International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics, I am happy to launch the first issue of journal and it’s hoped that this journal can contribute to the advancement of research and practice in applied linguistics. Editor-in-Chief, Mohammad Reza Amirian Lettie’International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 1-11 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp:!/vww-ilalit) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Sates EFL Learners’ Perceptions of (im)politenes The Possible Gender Differences Mavadat Saidi Kharazmi University, Tehran, fran Email; msttut@ gmail.com Mohadese Khosravi Kharaz University, Tehran, fran Email: mohadese khosravi@gmail.com Abstract — One of the speech acts to which considerable research attention has been directed is the act of request (Marti, 2006; Félix-Brasdefer, 2010; Lin, 2009; Liu, 2007; ‘Tagushi, 2006) which has often been investigated adjacent to the politeness (Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006). Situated in Iranian university English language context, the present study strived to cast further light on Iranian EFL learners’ perceptions of the requests. which lack any politeness markers in terms of their gender. It further tried to see how tale and female EFL learners would respond if they were {in the same situation. To this end, 60 MA students and ‘graduates (30 males and 30 females) were asked to rate ‘ight requests in terms of their (Impoliteness on a 4-point Likert scale, They were also required to write the possible response they would provide if they were in the same situations. The results indicated that both males and females hhad similar perceptions regarding the (im)politeness of the requests while their responses showed some variation. The possible underlying reasons behind this variation across genders were discussed and some suggestions for further research were presented. Generally speaking, though, one might conclude that gender would not influence the addressee’s perception of the degree of politeness of the request speech uct in both formal and informal settings Index Terms— Request, (Im)Politeness, Politeness markers I INTRODUCTION One of the speech acts fo which considerable research attention has been directed is the act of request (Mart 2006; Félix-Brasdefer, 2010; Lin, 2009; Liu, 2007; ‘Tagushi, 2006). Request is “an illocutionary act whereby a speaker (requester) conveys to hearer (requestee) that she/he wants the requestee to perform an act which is for the benefit of the speaker (Trosborg, 1994, p. 32, cited in Liu, 2007), It is “a directive act and a pre-event that Received January 28, 2015; Accepted March 5, 2015 © 2015 Khate Sefid Press indicates conversations” (Félix-Brasdefer, 2010, p. 2) and has often been investigated adjacent to the politeness since it is believed that “the activity is intrinsically impolite and carries heavy social implications and is therefore governed by putative principles of politeness (BlumKulka, House, & Kasper, 1989; Brown & Levinson, 1978, 1987; all cited in Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006, p. 11). Most of the studies have taken a cross-cultural approach to reveal the commonalities and discrepancies between native and nonnative speakers’ request realization pattems (Blum-Kulka et al, 1989, Sifianou, 1992; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 1999) and a limited number ‘of researchers have looked into the possible differences in the realization and performance of the request speech act under the influence of such variables as gender and age (Goates, 2004; Holmes, 1995; Marquez-Reiter, 2000; all cited in Fétix-Brasderfer, 2010). Moreover, a large body of research has been allocated to the effects of social and situational factors e.g. social distance, social power, and imposition on the request and its directness in a variety of languages (Becker et al, 1989; Trosborg. 1995: Kwong, 2004; all cited in Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2010). Less is, however, known about the gender differences in the perceptions of and possible responses to the requests in general. In particular, the way the requests lacking any politeness markers would be perceived and responded, hhas not been studied either. It is worth noting. that studying perceptions of politeness from a cross-cultural perspective came to the fore following the project carried ‘out to investigate realization patterns of requests and apologies in different languages (the CCSARP project) (See Blum-Kulka, 1987) which aimed at exploring intra- lingual, situational, and cross-lingual variation in the use ‘of these two speech acts. Bearing this in mind, the current study tried to cast further light on Iranian EFL learners’ perceptions of the requesis which lack any politeness markers in terms of their gender. It further tied to see how male and female EFL learners would respond if they were in the same situationInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): [11 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press Tl, REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE A, Theoretical Background Spoken and written forms of language have their own distinguishing characteristics (Leech, Deuchar, & Hoogenraad, 1982). However, what interlocutors mostly favor is being polite. Yule (1996) holds that politeness is realized as “polite social behavior, ot etiquette, within a culture” (p. 60) and entails “a range of principles ‘expressing politeness in any social interaction which may include being tactful, generous, modest, and sympathetic to others” (p. 60). In the same line, Urbanové and ‘Oakland (2002) define politeness as “the ability of the speaker to show respect, discretion, and goodwill” (p 42), In Hirschova’s (2006) terms, itis the way language is used while the focus is on “smooth communication, self-fulfllment, and self-defense of the individual in the imteraction with other communicating individuals” (p 171), Lakoff (cited in Hirschova, 2006, p. 171) ‘summarizes politeness in the form of three rules: “do not impose, give options, and make the addressee feel good- be friendly” However, the concept of politeness should be discussed in light of a closely related concept, ie. face (Yule, 1996). As Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 62) put it, face is “the kemel element in folk notions of politeness” and underlies a good relationship (Yule, 1996). It is “a public self-image of a person” (p. 60) Which falls further into two categories: a) positive face defined as “fields of concepts, interests, wishes in which the individual wants 10 be respected and positively evaluated” (Hirschova, 2006, p. 172) and “the need to be accepted, even liked, by others” and “to be treated as a ‘member of group” (Yule, 1996, p. 62) and 6) negative face which means “to be independent, have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others” (p.61). Accordingly, politeness is divided into two categories: positive politeness and negative politeness. The former “redress directed to the addressee’s positive face” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 101) while the latter encompasses “redressive action addressed to the addressee’s negative face” (p. 129). On the other hand, Leech et al. (1982) considers relative politeness and absolute politeness as a set of scales which have a negative and a positive pole At the negative pole, negative politeness underpins minimizing the impoliteness of impolite utterances and at the positive pole, positive politeness underlies ‘maximizing the politeness of polite utterances. Politeness cncompasses wide range of research, To narrow it down, hedging, Le. several different categories of politeness markers are briefly discussed in this study. Willamova (2005) refers to hedging devices as “one of the means through which linguistic politeness can be manifested” which aim “to soften the propositional content of the message” (p. 80). Their function is to “attenuate the strength of an utterance” (p. 81). In brown and Levinson’s (1987) words, they include “a particle, word, or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or noun phrase in a set” (p. 145) which prevent any threat 10 the addressee’s fice Hedging devices are categorized into seven types (Willamova, 2005): 1) Subjectivity markers which are “speaker-oriented” (p. 82) and reiterate the speaker's subjective attitude towards the message e.g. think, I guess 2) Performative hedges that are used to avoid dircet utterance by refining its llocutionary force 3) Pragmatic idioms which are “minimal lexical devices that signal how the illocutionary force of an utterance should be interpreted” (p. $7) eg. please, Kindly, maybe. 4) Clausal mitigators which are further divided into if: clauses and but-elauses. They strive to mitigate the strength of an utterance, 5) Downgraders that include words like just, a bit, rather, alittle in order to “minimize the size of imposition” (p. 94) 6) Tentativizers which are pragmatic markers that carry the concepts like hesitation, uncertainty, or vagueness e.g. well, I don’t know. 7) Hedges on politeness maxims which “mitigate a FTA such as a refisal or criticism’ (p. 103) e.g. a kind of T'm afraid, In another categorization, House and Kasper (1981) propose taxonomy of politeness structure including politeness markers, play-downs, consultative devices, hedges, understaters, downtoners, _ committers, forewarning, hestators, scope-staters, and agent avoiders, ‘They define politeness markers as a set of expressions added (0 the utterance to demonstrate a_ cooperative behavior e.g. please, if you wouldn't mind/don’t mind, and will‘vould you following an imperative structure Moreover, they state that hedges are used to avoid giving ‘an exact propositional content and to provide the addressee with an open option to impose his/her intent, e.g. kind of. somehow, rather, B. Empirical Studies Globalization has broadened the scope _ of communication and discourse practices are considered as the locus of this interconnectedness (Sifianou, 2013) This expansion pierced into the norms of communicating s0 that its effects on the expression of politeness and impoliteness have dravm the scholars’ attention, In this regard, Siffanou (2013) searched for evidence from the service sector in Greece and England and analyzed the concepts of formality/informality, terms of address existing in naturally occurting data and research findings and concluded that although globalization has moved toward homogenization process, it has, by no-means, brought about cultural homogeneity.International Journal of Language and Applied Ling 2015; 1(1): 1-11 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp:!/vww-ilalit) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of On the other hand, with the growing technological advances within the last two decades, investigating computer-mediated communities gained prominence, Graham (2007) attempted to see how expectations of ‘impotiteness are negotiated within an e-mail community and what make up the polite behavior in a computer ‘mediated setting. The findings revealed that deviation from the norms of interaction would lead to conflict. However, the participants could compensate for the conflict by actively negotiating the norms of politeness. In a more recent study, Shum and Lee (2013) also ‘examined the discursive and interactional approaches in Hong Kong Internet discussion forums in terms of the interlocutors’ disagreement strategies. They asked forum ‘browsers to rate the disagreement strategies regarding the parameters of politeness on a 5-point Likert scale. They also conducted an interview. The results revealed that interlocutors mostly used ditect strategies which were rated as polite. Accordingly, they pointed to the complex ‘and multidimensional nature of relational work in speech act performance. Moreover, to provide a more comprehensive insight into the norms of politeness and their possible change with the pass of time, one set of studies has given particular attention to a comparative framework by examining the commonalities and discrepancies between historical and contemporary practices of polite interaction (Gu, 1990; Pan & Kadir, 2011). A second set of studies sought to explore the possible interface between several speech acts and politeness, Sifianou (2012) found that inter- and intra-cultural variation may cast some doubt on labeling disagreement as a face-threatening or impolite act as a number of other factors eg. interlocutors’ personal traits and relational histories would make an impact on the way i is perceived. ‘A number of researchers also concentrated on linguistic strategies in refusal interactions in different situations, Félix-Brasdefer (2006) asked Mexican male ‘university students to perform four role-play interactions with two native speakers of Spanish in both formal and informal situations and found that a number of formulaic/semi-formulaic expressions were applied for face negotiation. Bella (2011) also took advantage of role-plays to explore the politeness strategies which were used by native and non-native speakers of Greece while refusing an invitation from an intimate person. In this study, the possible influence of length of residence and intensity of interaction with native speakers on non- native speakers’ performance was also investigated. The results revealed that length of residence does not suffice hile intensity of interaction can cause better results considering pragmatic appropriateness and politeness. Moreover, since the partcipanis, regardless of the length of residence and intensity of interaction, proved to be pragmatically underdeveloped, the researcher reiterated the notoriety of pedagogical intervention t0 provide ‘meaningfal opportunities for interaction in order to ‘enhance their pragmatic development. On the other hand, discourse markers indicating Gamppoliteness have been the focus of much research. In this regard, Masahiko (1998) examined how narrative discourse markers and linguistic strategies would specifically shape Japanese oral personal narratives and found that Japanese adult narrators use the formal verb- ending pattems which are considered as politeness ‘markers. However, it was found that these markers are ‘not merely employed to reinforce politeness and they also play a key role in cultural and contextual framing. ‘Mulken (1996) also found that different conceptions of the need for repair strategies would lead to different distribution of politeness markers in the Dutch and French speech communities, Sifianou (1992) also tried to cast further light on the use of diminutives in expressing politeness by taking a ccontrastive approach toward Modern Greek and English, ‘The findings indicated higher frequency and flexibility of | formation of diminutives in Greek. It was also found that these linguistic elements were employed to show friendly and informal politeness. The researcher drew this conclusion that these markers are used to serve different purposes in the two languages under the study, ie. in English they are used to show a preference for distance and formality whereas in Greek, they demonstrate a tendency for intimacy and informality. Chodorowska-Pilch (2008) also pointed to interactional/interpersonal role of a grammaticalized politeness marker “Verds”, ie. “You'll see” in Peninsular Spanish which was employed to establish politeness. However, the results of this study revealed that this discourse marker can invoke both positive and negative politeness simultaneously. In a more recent study, ‘Terkourafi_ 2011) analyzed. spoken corpus data from Cypriot Greek to investigate the changes three expressions “shank you", “sorry”, “please” undertake ‘when they are borrowed from English and found that they lose their main function and serve to demonstrate discourse-, gender, class-, and ethnicity- based variation, ice. they don’t function to express thanking, apologizing, and requesting speech acts. Other scholars raised concerns related to the concept of politeness in business context, Jensen and Jensen (2010) investigated the effects of adding and combining positive politeness strategies to letters denying claims to policy holders and found that giving reasons would contribute positively to the evaluation of the letter. Dunn (2011) also ‘examined the concept of politeness in Japanese business etiquette training in five work force development companies that provided seminars in business manners for new employees and understood that these classes ‘would raise the young Japanese employees’ awareness of the type of politeness which is considered as important in the business world. Further, the work of several researchers revealed the conceptualization of face andInternational Journal of Language and App! 2015; 1(1): [11 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna et sis relational work and (im)politeness (Spencer-oatey, 2011; Ruhi & Isik-Goler, 2007) in which the results called for more pragmatic research to scrutinize relational work that is influenced by cultural issues C. Request Speech Aet One of the speech acts to which a host of studies have been allocated is the act of request (Félix-Brasdefer, 2010; Lin, 2009; Liu, 2007; Marti, 2006; Taguchi, 2006), Extensive research on this speech act has been conducted taking a cross-cultural orientation (Rinnert & Kobayasi, 1999; Sifianou, 1992) to compare native and non-native speakers’ request realization patterns. In this regard, Marti (2006) attempted to explore the realization and politeness perception of requests made by ‘Turkish monolingual speakers and Turkish-German bilingual returnees. The results of this study revealed that indirectness and politeness are related but the relationship is, by no means, linear. It was also found that Turkish ‘monolingual speakers tend to apply more direct strategies im comparison with their bilingual counterparts. In the same linc, Rinnert and Kobayashi (1999) investigated the relationship between indirectness and politeness among LI speakers of Japanese and English by analyzing the requestive hints. The findings showed that requestive hints were more frequently used than direct and conventionally indirect requests. Contraily, Blum-Kutka (1987) argued that indireciness does not necessarily mean politeness and it is the pragmatic clarity of the message that acts as an inevitable part of politeness. Tn addition, a burgeoning research has increasingly focused on the effects oF social and situational factors ¢ social distance, social power, and imposition on the request and its directness in a variety of languages (Becker et al, 1989; Trosborg, 1995; Kwong, 2004; all cited in Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2010). Besides, a large body of research has shown that power variables influence the speakers" requestive behavior (Brown & Gilman, 1989; Fukushima, 2000; Holtgraves & Yang, 1990; Lustig & King, 1980; all cited in Economidou- Kogetsidis, 2010), Further, some researchers have attempted to delineate the choice of speech act strategies across different languages (See Barron, 2005), Some other studies have also been allocated to the possible similarities and differences in the realization of requests in terms of the speakers” gender. However, the investigation of pragmatic conventions in the light ofthis ‘variable has received scant attention (Barron, 2005), Only few studies tried to cast light on gender differences in the realization and performance of requests (See Félix- Brasdefer, 2010), As the review of literature might suggest, most of studies tried to cast light on cross-cultural variations in realization of request pattems (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989, Sifianou, 1992; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 1999), Few has been known of the possible impact of gender on the way request speech act is perceived and performed (See Félix- Brasderfer, 2010) and this was the main interest of the current study to bridge this gap. Hence, male and female Iranian EFL learners’ perception of the requests lacking, any politeness markers was examined. Further, their responses in the case of experiencing the same situation were scrutinized considering their gender, Ill. METHODOLOGY A, Participants A total of 60 EFL leamers including 30 male and 30 female leamers contributed to this study. Al participants were either MA students or MA graduates whose age ranged from 24 0 41. It took almost 15 minutes to complete the DCTs individually. The participants were asked to rate the requests considering their (impoliteness on a 4-point Likert scale and to write the probable response (verbal or non-verbal) they would provide if they were addressed by the same speaker in the same situation. A total of 480 responses (240 ones from each gender) were collected. B. Instrumentation ‘The study adopted a written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) which included 8 situations. The participants were asked to imagine themselves in the situations and rate the (imppoliteness of cach request situation on a 4-point Likert scale. They were also required to write the probable answer they would provide i they were faced with the same situation and request ‘Two situations included a request made by a high-status person to a low-status person. Two situations embodied a equest posed by a lo-status person to a high-status person. Four situations (two in formal and two in informal settings) were related to requests made by @ person of equal status with the addressee (See the Appendix). IV. RESULTS Table 1 and 2 summarize the descriptive statistics for the male and female EFL leamers' perceptions of the impoliteness of cight request situations. As Table 1 and illustrat, the lowest and highest mean scores belong to situations 6 and 5, respectively for both male and female participants. Both male and female participants deemed that a request, including no politeness marker, made in an informal situation, e.2, a class, between two interactants of equal status would not necessarily be perceived as impolite while this is not the case in a formal situation, eg. office.International Journal of Language and Applied 2015; 1(1): 1-11 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press PERCEPTIONS OF THE NGPOLIFENESS OF IGE REQUEST TUATIONS Sitiaion | —N-[ Max | Min | Mean [SD 7 of 4 T 278 | 078 2 30_[ c 077 z 30 [4 O8 « oft 099 5 30 i O78 @ of o7e 7 of c Ox ¥ 4 r 080) EACLE gS OF TE MGPOLTENESS Oe REQUEST SUUATIONS ‘Sion [—N[ Max [Min [Mean [SD T x] 4 T a 067 2 30,4 3ae_| 098 a 0[ 4 320_—| 108 4 30,4 i 3 30,4 r 6 a 7 30,4 = a A. Situation I and 7: The case of high-low status ‘The results of two independent t-lests reveal that no significant difference exists between male and female EFL leamers’ perceptions of the (impoliteness with regard to request situation 1 and 7 (Sig=0.09, 0.24, respectively, p<0.05) (See Table 3). Tgnou fess oe RagUssy SruATION ‘one of them said that she would say nothing and give the pen, Among 16 male participants who perceived request 7 as mostly/slightly polite, 13 ones stated that they would respond by bringing the chair and using expressions like “sure”, “OR, “Alright”, “in a minute”. However, 3 ones said that they would obey the request reluctantly (I! do it reluctantly, I’ not my job) or refuse it by making an ‘excuse (Super sorry, I have a backache). All 12 female participants who perceived this request as mostly/slightly polite, however, deemed that they would respond positively to the request. Nevertheless, two of them stated that they would get angry. ‘As the focus of this study was mostly on the participants’ responses to those requests which would be perceived as mostiy/slightly impolite, the researcher tried to identify the strategies which the addressees would use ‘Table 4 illustrates the strategies and their frequency of use among male and female participants for situations 1 and 7. SGT YROSTLY POLITE ABgUEST RTUATION a) ‘Male Female SirategiesSituaions participants | _ participants a a T Dicey reining «ewer | ITT] | 2 verbally or nonverbally 2 Comping abo ef 3) 0 | 2) 0 Tanguage which was used for making” the request by” using verbal expressions 3 Complaning about the | 7 1 language ‘which was used for making the request by using none ‘verbal eations Groups LN ‘Mu [ sD [TI ser M 30] 27 | ore | ores [38] NS F__|30 31 | oss SET | M30) 2a | oor | ores 38 | NF F [so | 270 | 10s 4. Agreeing to the request wad >IT] S| 1s 9 using postive verbal expressions ‘Ten male participants perceived the request in situation 1 as mostlyslighily polite while 20 ones perceived it as rmostly/slightly impolite. On the other hand, 6 female participants perceived the request in situation 1 as ‘mostly/slightly polite whereas 24 ones perceived it as rmostly/slightly impolite. Sixteen male participants rated the request in situation 7 as mostly/slightly polite while 14 ones perceived it as mostly/slightly impolite. On the ‘other hand, 12 female participants perceived the request in situation 7 as mostly/sightly polite while 18 ones thought that it was mostly/slightly impolite All male participants who perceived request 1 as mostly/slightly polite tend to respond politely by positively reacting to the speaker. Eight out of 10 said that they would respond by giving the pen and saying “here you are” and “of course” while 2 participants deemed that they would say nothing and just give the pen. Five out of 6 female participants who perceived the request as mostlyislightly polite stated that they would respond politely, both verbally (e.g. here you are. sure) and non-verbally (¢.g. smiling, showing respect) while 5. Ageing to the request nd] 0 | 0 | 1] 0 ‘sing postive nonverbal 6. Agreeing to he wet ad S| 3S | 4 fe sing neither verbal nor non ‘verbal reaction T. Agreeing 1 the Toque and] 0 | 1 | 0] 0 using nezative verbal expressions % Agreeing 10 the request and] 0] 2) 1] 4 vosing. negtive nonverbal Total 3 a | As it can be seen, both male and female participants tend to react politely to the requests which they perceived as slightly/mostly impolite in situation 1 and 7 by agreeing and using a number of positive verbal ‘expressions (Here you are, Sure, Of). B imation 2 & 8: The case of low-high status The results of two independent t-tests show that both ‘male and female EFL leamers perceived the requests in situation 2 and 8 quite the same with regard to theirInternational Journal of Language and App! 2015, 1: i Puts online Marc 15,2015 (tpi) ease ISSN; 2383-0514 (ulin) ite {©2015 Khate Sef Pres Cipoliteness (Sig 023, 0.18, respectively, 0.05) [wing — pape — awa Seer ‘Total TT Ea Ea 26 {ORGIES oF RUT SHURTION ee Gr N{—MTSD. Tle 17) sy Male —[30__[ 340 _[o77_[ 130 | $e _[ NS Femi | 30 | 286-093 see ‘Male —[30—[ 333] 0.80 | -135 | 58D NS Fens [30 | 360 [072 Thirteen and six male participants perecived the requests in situation 2 and & as mostly/sightly polite respectively while 17 and 24 ones perceived them as ‘mostly/stightly impolite. Among — their female ‘counterparts, 6 ones perceived the request in situation 2 as mostly/slightly polite while 4 ones had this opinion about the request in situation 8 Twenty-four and 26 female participants thought thatthe requests in situation 2 and 8 were mostly/slightly impolite, respectively. ‘As regards the request in simation 2, 10 male participants who perceived it as mostly/slightly polite stated that they would repeat the point for the student while 3 ones said that they would add some politeness ‘markers, ¢.8. please and repeat the request posed by the student, However, all 6 female participants who had the same perception as their male counterparts deemed that they would repeat the point. Considering the request in situation 8, 4 male and all (4) female participants who perceived it as mostly/slightly polite mentioned that they ‘would order the food while 2 male participants stated that they would leave the restaurant or react verbally. Table 6 demonstrates the stratezies used by those male ‘and female participants who perceived the requests in situation 2 and 8 as mostly/stightly impolite along with their frequency of use. As regards situation 2, both male and female participants mentioned that they would agree to the Tequest and use positive verbal expression (Ok, Please listen more carefully, Sure, etc.). However, as Table 6 indicates, female learners seemed to tend more either 10 use verbal expressions to complain about the language of the request (You mustn't ask in this way, change your request, Use a better language) or to agree using neither verbal nor non-verbal reaction, Considering situation 8, female students expressed that they would mostly use verbal reactions (Who ts your boss?, Be more polite, ts this the appropriate way of taking to customers?) 10 reming the speaker of his/her (im)politeness in posing the request while their male counterparts asserted that they would prefer to use non-verbal reactions (leaving the resiaurani) to show their dissatisfaction with the way the request was made or they would agree to the request by using some positive verbal expressions. C. Situation 3 & 5: Equal status (formal setting) As Table 7 displays, no significant difference was found among EFL leamers’ perceptions of the (imppotiteness ofthe requests in situation 3 and 5 in terms of their gender (Sig.= 0.50, 0.44, respectively, p<0.05). (AOPOLITENTSS OF REQUEST SITUATION Sas Grogs [N [M [SD] T F sey ‘Male —[-30-| 305 088 [007 | s8_[ NS" Female [ 303.20 [1.08 sis ‘Male —[-30-[ 333073076 38 [RS Female [30 [366 [00 SLi ost MOLE RUST SITUATION 285) “Male Female ‘SirategiewStutions ims_| participa re 1 Drea whng 2 vequet] 2] 00] —1 vetbally or nonvesball 2 Complaining about the | 3 | 5 | 6] Tangoage ‘which was used for making the request by using vetbal expressions 3. Complining abot Ge] 0] S| 0] 6 language which was used for ‘making the request by using non ‘verbal reactions 4. Agresing to the request me] —F | 9] 7] sing poste verbal expressions 5. Agreing 10 the rest and] 1 [0 | 0] 0 sing — postive non-real %, Agreeing 10 the request wd] 3] 0] 10] 0 ‘sing neither a verbal nce & toa ‘yetbl reaction 7, Agrecing 10 the rape awd] 0] 0] 0] 0 using neptive verbal expressions 3. Agreeing 10 the weyuest an [—O[ 2] 1 Po Nine male participants perceived the request in situation 3 as mostly’slightly polite while 21 of them rated it as mostly/slightly impolite. Among their female counterparts, 7 participants perceived it as mosily/slightly polite whereas 23 ones rated it as mosily/sightly impolite. As regards the request situation 5, only 4 male participants perceived it as mostly/slightly potite while 26 ‘ones rated it as mosilyslightly impolite. Only 2 female participants, on the other hand, perceived it as mostly/stightly polite while 28 ones agreed that the request inthis situation was mostly/slightly imp ‘Among those male participants who perceived the request 3 as mostly/slightly polite, 4 ones stated that they ‘would just fetch a glass of water without saying anything while 5 ones said that they would agree to the request and use such expressions as “Ok”, “I'll get you in a minute” “Sure”. For this request, all female ‘participants who rated it as mostly/slightly polite asserted that they would agree to the request and use some positive polite expressions eg. “Ofcourse”, “Sure”. On the other hand,International Journal of Language and Applied Ling 2015; 1(1): 1-11 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of (Die those few male participants who perceived the request 5 as mostly/slightly polite stated that they would either agree (2 participants) or refuse (2 participants) politely. Two female participants who perceived it as mostly/stightly polite, however, mentioned that they ‘would either say nothing or react nonverbally (frowning). Regarding those male and female participants who perceived the request in situation 3 and 5 as ‘mostly/slightly impolite, the strategies they employed are presented in Table 8. The frequency of use for cach strategy is also provided, Ses yet tie nage (oat D. Situation 4 & 6: Equal status (informal setting) As Table 9 displays, no significant difference was found among EFL leamers’ perceptions of the Gimpoliteness of the requests in situation 3 and 5 in terms of their gender (Sig.= 0.18, 0.64, respectively, p<0.05). IISAPOLITENESS OF REQUEST SITUATION 48s Male Female SirategieStuations participants _|__paricipants 3] st 3] T_Dirsly weiing a veyeet | 4 | #2] a7 vabully or nonvoially 2. Comphining about the | 0] S| 1 [3 language which was used for snaking the request by using vatbal expressions 3. Complaining about the 2 | 5} 4] 1 language ‘which was used for smabing the request by wing non- Nexbalreautions 4. Agreeing to the quest ad >IT] S| a >> ‘sing positive verbal expression. S. Agreeing to the request and] 0] 0] oo ‘sing positive nonverbal reactions 6. Agreeing to the equet and] 2] 3] TT ‘sing either verbal nor anon ‘etl reaction 7. Agecag to te request md] 2] 3 [0] 1 sing negative vesbal expressions %. Agreeing 10 tbe request ad [0 | 1 | 3 > 2 ‘sing egaive non-verbal reactions Tout a [35 |e With regard to situation 3, male participants who perceived it as mostly/slightly impolite mostly stated that they would agree to the request and use some positive expressions (Ok, Sure, Here you are, Wait a minute please”) while female participants asserted that they ‘would agree to the request without saying anything ‘Considering situation 5, male participants who rated it as ‘mostly/slightly impolite mentioned that they would complain about the way language was used for making request by using both verbal (This way of talking is ‘inappropriate, Be polite, My ears are working properly?” ‘or non-verbal (F fook at him frowning, I just fook at him strangely) expressions. Some of them also said that they would agree to the request and employ a number of positive expressions (I'll answer, Ok, just a minute) Their female counterparis, however, showed higher tendency to refuse the request directly either verbally (/ won't answer, It isn’t my job, I won't answer, You can answer if you can hear) or non-verbally (I keep silent and frowning, I continue my job without saying anything). Grows [N [MTS 1? To] sot Wale —[-30-| 310 [099 [135 | $e_[ NS Fenmle[-30_[ 343 | 093 sue ‘Male —[-30-| 230074 | 0s | 58 NS Female_[30[220 [092 With regard to situation 4, 9 male and 5 female participants rated it as mostly/stightly polite while 21 male and 25 female participants perceived it as ‘mostly/slightly impolite. On the other hand, 18 male and 20 female participants thought that the request in situation 6 was mostly/slightly polite whereas 12 male and 10 female participants agreed that it was ‘mostly/slightly impolite, All male participants who perceived the request 4 as ‘mostlyislightly polite asserted that they would lend money by using some positive expressions (J would like fo, Sure, How much do you need?). However, one of them stated that he would first talk about his financial problems and then he would ask how much money is needed. Among their female counterparts who held the ‘same opinion considering this request, 4 respondents said that they would lend money. One of them, however, siated that she would not lend it, Among those who perceived the request in situation 6 as mostlyislightly polite, 9 male and alt female (10) participants stated that they would give the eraser and apply some positive expressions (Iiere you go, Ok, Get it, Take il, Of course), ‘Three male participants, on the other hand, deemed that they would complain about the way the request was made either verbally (EXCUSE ME"), This és not appropriate way of taking!) or non-verbally (frowning) ‘As regards the male and female participants’ strategies to confront with the request they perceived as ‘mostly/slightly impolite, Table 10 illustrates the results. a Female Sirategew Situations perticigants_| _parieipants 4) el 4] 6 T Daal wimg a per] iT] 2 [1s] —o _vesally or nonverbal 2 Conplainng abot ef 0] 0 | 2} 0 language ‘which was uscd for making. the request’ by using verbal expressions 3. Conplainng abot tee f 1} 0 | 0 | —o language hich was sod for making the request by using non- ‘verbal ection’ 4. Agrocing to the ret and [1 | 8 | 0 [6International Journal of Language and App! 2015; 1(1): [11 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press urna et sis ‘sing postive veal expressions 5S. Agreing to the request md] 0 | 0] 0] 0 ‘sing positive nop-vetbal seactions 6. Agreeing 10 the vaya and | = Ca sing neither verbal nee @ non ‘verbal reaction 7. Agrecing 0 the rayuet md | 0 [0] 0] using negative verbal expressions © Agrcing 10 the reyvest and] 0 [1] 0] 1 sing negative non-verbal “Toul at [35-0 Taking situation 4 into account, both male and female participants who perceived it as mostly/stighily impolite agreed that they would refuse the request verbally trough using such expressions as “I'm out of money right now”, “Sorry, I don’t do it at all”, “Sorry, I don’t hhave any", “Sorry, I require it myself". Some female participants, however, asserted that they would agree to the request using no special verbal or non-verbal reaction With regard to situation 6, both male and female participants who rated it as mostl/slightly impolite stated that they would agree to the request and use a number of positive verbal expressions (Ok, Take it, Sure, Here you are) \V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The current study aimed at investigating Iranian EFL. learners” perceptions of (imppoliteness of request speech act in request situation that lacked any politeness marker across two genders. Among eight request situations, both ‘male and female respondents perceived request 5 as the ‘most impolite one, followed by request situation 8 and 4 In situation 5, the status of the interlocutors was equal in 4 formal setting (workplace). In situation 8, the request was made by the waiter (0 the customer lacking any politeness marker and in situation 4, a neighbor posed the ‘equest to borrow some money. One might notice that when the request lacking any politeness marker is made by a person of the same status with the addressee, it would be perceived as more impolite. This might indicate that people may not expect hhigher-status people to express their requests indirectly as they enjoy higher power and degree of imposition Moreover, they seem not to expect lower-status people to ‘make the request indirectly as their socio-economic status might influence their way of talking. However, they expect the people of the same status with them to ‘understand that no one has superiority over the other one ‘and thereby, no one has the right t behave like @ ‘commander. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that gender ‘would make no significant difference in EFL leamers’ perceptions of (impoliteness of different request situations. However, comparing the number of participants who perceived a request as mostly/slightly impolite scemed to provide information about their expectations of politeness in diferent situations ‘With regard to situations 1 and 7 in which the request was made by a person of higher status, the results seemed to be revealing Both male and female respondents mostly agreed that the request posed by the teacher was ‘more impolite than the one made by the boss. This might suggest that a teacher in an educational setting is expected to be more polite than a boss in an occupational setting. Furthermore, it might indicate that the degree of imposition is expected to be higher in an occupational setting and thereby, the request lacking any politeness marker by a boss would be perceived as less impolite. Interestingly, when it came to a request made by a person of lower status (situation 2 and 8), it was perceived as mosily/slightly impolite by most of male and female leamers regardless of the setting. This may point to the fact that no matter it is made in an educational setting (Class) of a public place (restaurant), lack of politeness ‘markers in these situations makes the request impolite. ‘The way the respondents mentioned to react to the request they perceived as mostlyslightly impolite seems to be of significance. Inthe former situations in which the speaker was of higher status, both male and female participants agreed that they would politely agree to the request. This might be attributed to the speaker's position as a teacher who is regarded as a respectable person ‘whose requests should be politely considered, This point also has its roots in cultural and religious practices of Iranian people. The same results in situation 7 might stem from the fact that their boss should be respected due to some job-related considerations. Indeed, people prefer to keep their positive face in an occupational setting even if they are exposed to face-threatening acts by their boss; keeping face equals keeping jobs for them. In the latter situations, however, male and female participants seemed to feel much more offended so that they would prefer 10 react. However, what seems to make male and female participants’ reactions different is a matter of the type of reaction. Male participants tend to employ nonverbal strategies while their female counterparts _ prefer nonverbal reaction. The findings indicate that when the speaker's status is lower than the addressee and the request lacks politeness markers, it would be perceived as more impolite and would be responded more seriously and both male and female learners tend to employ some other strategies to react rather than merely agree to the request. Taking into account two situations in which the requests were made by a person of the equal status with the addressee (situations 3 and 5) in formal settings (Conference meeting and office), the results revealed that they perceived as mostly/slightly impolite by most of the participants. This may show that interlocutors of equal siatus expect higher degree of politeness. Morcover, as regards situations 4 and 6 in which the requests were ‘made in informal setings (neighborhood and classroom,International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 1-11 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press = the participants mostly rated request 4 as mostly/slightly impolite while only 36% of them thought that request 6 as mostly/slightly impolite. This might indicate that equal status in very informal setting like classroom would not lead to expectations of higher degree of politeness Hence, the request situation 6 was rated less impolite than the one in situation 4. ‘As regards the equal status in the formal setting, the probable reactions of the participants seem to be of importance. In situation 3 which was highly formal, both ‘male and female participants preferred to overlook the impoliteness and agree to the request and cither use positive expressions of say nothing. However, in situation 5, male participants stated that they would complain about the way the request was made and female respondents asserted that they would refuse the request either verbally or nonverbally. Here, it seems that they ‘thought much freer to react ro impolite behavior. ‘This was the same for situation 4 (informal setting) as both male and female participants mentioned that they ‘would refuse the request directly and verbally. Contrary, in situation 6, both groups noted that they would agree 10 the request politely. Hence, it might be concluded that ‘even situations in which the interlocutors are considered as having equal status enjoy variations regarding the way @ request without politeness marker is perceived and responded To put it in a nutshell, familiarity of the interlocutors ‘of equal status and their relational history might influence their perceptions and responses in a request situation (Sifianou, 2012). Furthermore, as Blum-Kulka (1987) pinpointed, indirectness does not necessarily mean politeness. It might be inferred from the findings of the ‘current study that directness may not always. imply politeness. As Shum and Lee's (2013) findings indicated, direct strategies might sometimes be perceived as polite On the other hand, as the number of participants who perceived the requests lacking politeness markers as ‘mostly/slightly impolite might suggest, deviation from norms of interaction would result in conflict (Graham, 2007), Hence, indirectness and politeness should be considered as related concepts (Marti, 2006; Rinnert & ‘Kobayashi, 1999) but this isa relative issue. As a large body of research demonstrated, power variable would play a significant role in_ speaker's requestive behavior (Brown & Gilman, 1989; Fukushima, 2000; Holigraves & Yang, 1990; Lustig & King, 1980; all cited in Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2010). According to the findings of this study, one might speculate that this variable would influence the addressee’s perception of the degree of politeness of the request speech actin both formal and informal settings as well. Moreover, interlocutors’ personality traits and relational. history might affect the way the politeness of a speech act is perceived (Sifianou, 2012). However, as employing Politeness strategies would be positively evaluated 9 (Gensen & Jensen, 2012), it seems better to keep face by adding some politeness markers to the request. Although the current study enriched the politeness literature, the findings should be approached cautiously due to the small sample size. It is, therefore, recommended to replicate the current study with larger sample size and different groups of EFL leamers, e.g. BA siudents, in diferent educational settings, c.g. learners in the institutes. Besides, further research can be carried out taking the gender of the speakers into account to see how people would perceive and respond to the requests lacking politeness markers and made by male or female speakers. Besides, it is also possible to explore the possible influence of teaching politeness markers on EFL leamers’ perceptions and responses in different request situation Appendix A POLITENESS QUESTIONNAIRE Age: Gender: Male Female Dear Participant! Read the following situations and rate ‘the speaker's request based on its appropriateness in terms of politeness within the range of I-4. Then, put yourself in the addressee’s shoes and write (in "Your ‘Response section) what you might say/do in response? 1. You are in class and your teacher wants a pen and says: "Hey, give me your pen." 1. Mostly polite 2. Slightly polite 3. Slightly impolite 4. Mostly impolite Your response: 2. You are explaining a grammatical point in the class as a teacher. Your student has problem in understanding that point and says: "Repeat this point again." 1. Mostly polite 2. Slightly potite 3. Slightly impolite 4 Mostly impolite Your response: 3. You are at a conference. The presenter is thirsty and ‘wants some water. He tells you: "Bring a glass of water forme." 1. Mostly polite 2 Slightly polite 3. Slightly impolite 4. Mostly impolite Your response:International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): [11 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press 4. Your new neighbor needs some money (0 buy something and tells you: "Lend me some money." 1. Mostly polite 2. Slightly polite 3. Slightly impolite 4. Mostly impolite Your response: 5. You are in the office. The phone is ringing. Your colleague is too busy and says: "Can’t you hear? Answer the phone.” 1. Mostly polite 2. Slightly polite 43. Slightly impolite 4. Mostly impolite Your responsi 6. You are in class and your classmate needs an eraser. ‘Your classmate tells you: "Give me your eraser.” 1. Mostly polite 2 Slightly polite 3. Slightly impolite 4. Mostly impolite Your respons 7. You ate an employee in an office and your boss needs an extra chair in the meeting room and (ells you: "Bring ‘one extra chair to the meeting room." 1. Mostly polite 2. Slightly polite 3. Slightly impolite 4. Mostly impolite Your responsi 8. You go to a restaurant. The waiter comes to take your order and tells you: "Order the food.” 1. Mostly polite 2 Slightly polite 3. Slightly impotite 4. Mostly impolite Your respon: ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the first draft of this Paper, 10 REFERENCES Barron, A. (2003). Variational pragmatics in the foreign language classroom. System, 33 (3), 519-536, Bella, S. (2011). Mitigation and politeness in Greek invitation refusals: Effects of length of residence in the target community and intensity of interaction on non- native speakers’ performance. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (©), 1718-1740, Blum-Kulka, S, (1987). Indirectness and politeness in requests: same or different. Journal of Pragmatics, 1 (2), 131-146. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universais in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chodorowska-Pilch, M. (2008). Verés in Peninsular Spanish as a grammaticalized discourse marker invoking positive and negative politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 40 (8), 1357-1372, Dunn. C.D. (2011). Formal forms or verbal strategies? Politeness theory and Japanese business etiquette training Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (15), 3643-3654. Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2010). Cross-cultural and situational variation in requesting behavior: Perceptions of social situations and strategic usage of request pattems, Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (8), 2262-2281. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2006). Linguistic politeness in Mexico: Refusal ‘strategies among male speakers of Mexican Spanish, Journal of Pragmatics, 38 (12), 2158 2187. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. 2010). Intraclingual pragmatic variation in Mexico City and San Jose, Costa Rica: A focus on regional differences in female requests. Journal of Pragmatics,42 (11), 1-20. Graham, $. L. (2007). Disagreeing to agree: Conflict, impoliteness and identity in a computer-mediaied community. Journal of Pragmatics, 39 (4), 742-759. Gu, Y. (1990), Politeness phenomena in modem Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14 (2), 237-257. Hirschova, M. (2006). Pragmatika v éestiné. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci Jensen, F., & Jensen, D. (2010), Effects of positive politeness strategies in business letters. Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (9), 1531-2548. Leech G., Deuchar M., & Hoogenraad R. (1982). English Grammar for Today. Lodon: Macmillan Press Ltd. Lin, Y. H, (2009), Query preparatory modals: Cross~ linguistic and cross-situational variations in request modification, Journal of Pragmatics, Al (8), 1636-1656. Liu, C. N. (2007). Pragmatics in foreign language instruction: The effects of pedagogical intervention and technology on the development of EFL learners! realization of "request". Unpublished dissertation, A & M University of Texas,International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 1-11 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Dee Marti, L. (2006). Indirectness and politeness in ‘Turkish-German bilingual and Turkish monolingual requests. Journal of Pragmaties, 38 (11), 1836-1869. Masahiko, M, (1998), Politeness markers and psychological complements: Wrapping up devices in Japanese oral personal narratives. Journal of Pragmatics, 82), 351-371 Mulken, M. V, (1996). Potiteness markers in French ‘and Dutch requests. Language Sciences, 18 (3-8), 689+ 702. Pan, Y, & Kédér, D. Z. (2011). Historical vs. Contemporary Chinese linguistic politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (6), 1525-1539. Rinnert, C., & Kobayashi, H. (1999). Requestive hints in Japanese and English. Journal of Pragmatics, 31 (9), 1173-1201 Ruhi, S., & Isik-Galer, H. (2007). Conceptualizing face and relational work (im)politeness: Revelations from politeness lexemes and idioms in Turkish. Journal of Pragmatics, 39 (4), 681-711 Shum, W., & Lee, C. (2013). (Impoliteness and disagreement in two Hong Kong Internet discussion forums. Journal of Pragmatics, 50 (1), 52-83. Sifianou, M. (1992). The use of diminutives in ‘expressing politeness: Modem Greek vs. English. Journal ‘af Pragmatics, 17 (2), 155-173. Sifianou, M. (2012). Disagreements, face, and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 44 (12), 1554-1564. Sifianou, M. (2013). The impact of globalization on politeness and impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 5S (1), 86-102, Spencer-oatcy, H. (2011), Conceptualizing “the relational” in pragmatics: Insights from metapragmatic ul ‘emotions and (im)politeness comments. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (13), 3565-3578. Taguchi, N. (2006). Analysis of appropriateness in a speech act of request in L2 English, Journal of Pragmatics, 16 (4), 513-533. Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2006). Request sequences: The intersection of grammar, interaction and social conte. Amsterdam: John Benjamin's Publishing Company. Terkourafi, M. (2011). Thank you, Sorry, and Please in Cypriot Spanish: What happens io politeness markers when they are borrowed across languages?. Jounal of Pragmatics, 43 (1), 218-235. : Urbanovi, L, & Oakland, A.(2002), Uvod do anglické stylistixy. [Introduction to English Stylistics] Brno: Barrister & Principal. Yule, G. (1996), University Press. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford AUTHORS Mavadat Saidi is a Ph.D. student of TEFL at Kharazmi University of Tehran, Her areas of interest include research and discourse analysis. Mohadese Khosravi got her BA in Translation Studies from Kharazmi University of Tehran. She got her MA in TEFL from the same university. Her main research interests are discourse analysis, contrastive rhetoric and CDA.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press A Naturalistic Inquiry into an Innovative Teaching Practice of Establishing Students’ Research Agendas Igor Smerdov Faculty of Foreign Language, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China Email: igorsmerdov@mail.u Abstract — The paper describes the 3 year history of the undergraduate study/research group at « Chinese private college where students" research agendas were not heard of before. The group has heen concentrating. on EFLITESOLidiscourse ivrelated action and classroom research at a Chinese private college. T discuss the preconditions of setting up the group, analyze the rationale for the group in the Asian educational context, the guiding principles of the group, its modus operandi, Students" motivations, personal stories of successes and failures. 1 summarize pros and cons of organizing such a froup, my experience as the supervisor of this group of motivated students and teachers at “a college of last resort” in the Chinese private educational system. The issues that ‘we addressed in this projet are: Chinese (Asian) students’ csamorientedness; plagiarism; enhancing academic ‘quality: bringing variety to the ESL curriculum: reviving Students’ interest in academle literature; making students voice heard internationally. The paper provides a unique Insight on functioning of ESL/EFL rescarch activites i the ‘Asian context analy Index Terms— EFL Naturalistic Inquiry, Classroom research, Chinese learners, Chinese private college, academic quality 1 INTRODUCTION This paper reports on the 3 year history of a researeh’study group at a private college in China where a researchroriented environment didn’t exist before and ‘was partially established of the group activity. I describe the details of setting up the students” research agendas, the topics and research themes students selected in the limited research environment, the outcome of the group activities. In China, the college student enrollment has grown ‘exponentially since 2000 in public universities as well as Received February 12,2015; Accepted March 6, 2015 © 2015 Khate Sefid Press 12 in newly opened private colleges, but many scholars criticized the low quality of education there, poor qualification of teachers and money-orientedness of these institutions (Li, 1999; Dalby, 2006; Niu & Wollf, 2010) Few researchers so fir have analyzed the academic atmosphere and research practices at those new colleges across China, and research-based studies and teaching methods have been largely missing there. My study concentrates on the issue of improving the research culture and academic atmosphere at these colleges and provides the detailed description of a successful project that can serve as an example, particularly in other Asian Countries where similar projects can be set up. ‘The traditional academic atmosphere of the established Chinese universities like Tsinghua (Zhang, Liu, 2007) is well-known, but their academic quality and tesearch- based agendas could not be quickly transferred 0 the newiy-opened institutions. In the newly found schools, the EFL teaching and research practices lagged behind the ones of key universities as library resources there were not adequate for high-class research, the teaching environment, academic traditions and atmosphere cannot be introduced instantly as these components require many years of development. In this context of rapid growth of the Chinese educational system, conducting naturalistic, observational inquiries and action research (Bailey, 2005) based on real teaching and classroom practices can be the only way of introducing research agendas there. Academic and semi- academic observations typical for classroom research as well as descriptions of students” practices can be used as research topics there in the newly formed academic milieu of these institutions, The processes of research and academic development there provide research interest and are worth reporting on. IL LITERATURE REVIEW Moore and Bounchan (2006) denoted the research component of the teaching process in the Asian context as “the Ugly,” described it as “unwelcome intrusion,” “ unnecessary luxury” and backed their deseription withInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilalif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of (Die the list of “many reasons why a language teacher may not be interested in researching... such as it may be difficult to see the relationship between research and actual BLT classrooms, limited access to relevant research literature, no “voice of authority that values and promotes research.” Borg (2006) did not include any research capability and potential in his characterization of “a good language teacher” limiting his scope by “knowledge, skills and attitude towards the learners” I assume that the positive attitude towards possible research projects and ‘minimum qualification 10 meet the learners’ wish to conduct some EFL research program may be added to Borg’s portrayal of a good language instructor as a result ‘of my exploratory study. ‘Moore and Bounchan concluded that “researching to0 has a distinctive and necessary role in improving teaching, testing and ultimately language learning” (Moore, Bounchan, 2006). The reality is that this research component of college studies that makes Westem instittions look so different from even good and prestigious Chinese colleges canmot be set up simultaneously with the college foundation, The problem of transferring traditional Wester methods of university studies and academic inguiries based on research and critical thinking into the Asian soil of university studies has been raised recently, but apparently it is not the biggest problem in the Chinese newly established ‘educational institutions as they strugele with money, public recognition, poor quality and low motivation of their students (Yuan, 2004). The status of research programs, if they exist, in the newly founded Chinese colleges is predictably low as they strugele with “poor English learning environment.” (Cheng, Wang, 2004) Gorsuch (2006) provided a detailed account of her research project completed at Vinh University in Vicinam, but she described the local difficulties for her as a western scholar while the problem the local academics face have not been described at all. My account falls into the rubric of naturalistic inquiry which “works with naturally occurring settings and groups” and the main ‘goal of it is “to describe or explain systems or events” Bailey, 2005) This joumalisic element of the observation is the novelty of my approach as well as a potentially new research niche for the academics wanting to undertake a research project in the Asian non- \westernized context IL, METHOD A. Research Questions ‘The quantitative growth of the college system in the Asian countries has been very impressive, but the quality of the “culture of learning” (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996) and educational services have been lagging behind, The research questions that guided this study are: B 1, How can students be involved in the research [process in institutions where the research culture has not been established? 2. How cam research projects be organized in new instivutions? B. Participants The participants of this project comprise the Chinese private college students majoring in English who have ‘been involved into the college rescarchistudy group since the beginning of the project in 2009. Almost all of the students entered this college because of their low scores in the Chinese College Entrance Examinations. Most of the students failed to perform well in the Chinese ruthless academic system and ended up in this private college of “last resort”; they have been taught by the author during the academic years 2008-2013, so the participants were directly influenced by my teaching and my reputation of | a foreign teacher who goes to intemational conferences ‘and wnites academic and non-academic papers regularly. This is also a limitation of the study and the whole process as it was difficult to involve students not directly affected by the author. B. Settings The tertiary colleges, private or public, are “ranked lowest in China's hierarchy of tertiary institutions” (Gao, 2005). The private college where this academic experiment has taken place was founded in 2005, up to 660 % of their curriculum and almost all English-related courses like Writing, Reading, Comprehensive English ‘and Communication are taught by foreign teachers from the English speaking countries. It has enrolled up to 300 English majors a year and six grades. of students ‘graduated by 2015. It is one of the typical commercial and financially sustainable project within the Chinese ‘education system that leads to the development of the private college system in the country as the English learning frenzy in China allows these colleges to exist. T never considered the project focused exclusively on learning of English by English majors. Instead, the focus is on learning the basics of the general and EFL/ESL- specific research methods and practices through the usage of English as well as uplifting students (0 the international level within the EFL “professional discourse community” of EFLIESL experts. IV. DATA COLLECTION ‘Upon arrival in campus in China, foreign teachers of English are often assigned volunteering students Cteacher’s assistants” a5 they are called) out of good local students who always wanting to practice their English with foreigners. Normally, they are students who want (0 study overseas later or a Teast (0 continue theirInternational Journal of Language and App! 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna et sis English studies. My future research group began with one teacher's assistant, Richie (western name Chinese students often take for the foreign teachers’ convenience), ‘who helped me with campus trivia, I found a good topic hhe wanted to explore, Teaching Practices of Foreign English Teachers in China and Siudents Responses. (Ihe Case-siudy of Xingjian College). 1 helped to work out interview questions and questionnaires. So it partially answers research question | ~ the foreign teachers should be able to help students with their research projec. Richie expressed his wish to go with me as an observer to the intemational conference Korea in August 2009, even on his own money. The college did not mind and even provided some funds for his eye-opening trip. Richie presented his findings inthe final 5 minutes of my presentation on Chinese colleges’ academic practices and answered a few questions addressed to him afterwards. 1 realized that students who got low scores in the Chinese college entrance exams and, as a result of this, have to study at private or 3" tier colleges can do presentations at the highest international level. Richie's next ordeal came at the 6” Cambodian TESOL conference in Phnom Penh in February 2010, This time he made his own presentation on foreigners” teaching practices for 45 ‘minutes in a Cambodian university room. His final conclusion was a bit questionable, but he wrote it himself: “The foreign teachers do not perform the function of role models for the Chinese students well. At the level of a non-ambitious student who is happy 10 be enrolled at @ higher education institution, it has worked well. But a the level of ambitious students who want to achieve more, it is still shallow. — Many westem professors and Cambodian teachers applauded him as he finished his speech. He was the first ever student presenting there at such a high level, before there were Chinese key-school professors only. Richi has become a role model for the other students who joined the research group later, and it was an important part of the development of the project. The rationale for my students’ participation in international conferences at any level was finally worked ‘out: the Chinese learmers’ views on what is important for their successful learning of English - students and teachers’ motivation, teaching practices and techniques, ‘ways of teaching particular subjects in English, learners’ anxieties, errors in English writing etc. The Chinese students have much to say about how the global tingua franca should be taught, In the end, they represent the ‘Chinese college student population of 25 million (China has 25 min college students, 2007). They annually contribute billions of dollars to the English teaching industry in China and foreign teachers’ salaries, so their views deserve 0 be heard. The dean and the college sponsors offered me a chance to develop the study group project afier Richie's Cambodian presentation success, ‘media attention and college hype resulted in a few news 4 articles on the Xingjian website the copies of which T use for recruiting new students, The other students started joining later in 2010 and 1 regularly consulted them fice-o face since. In the academic years 2010-2013, we have had regular seminars on Friday aftemoon as it is the only timeslot when the group of undergraduates from grades two, three and four can be gathered as their other weekdays are loaded with classes up to 20.30. The seminar agenda was based on a student's individual presentation and QUA session afterwards. Originally, I had to supply most of the students with questions related to the presentation they just heard, but gradually the learners started formulating their own questions to the presenter and seminars now last for up to two hours depending on how many questions have been raised. Seminars are conducted in the student-centered framework as the students are the presenters. Seminars help the student to find their own topics and set up their research agendas. My new students" presentations range from relatively simple case-studies like Student A’s project Textbooks Fraluation at a Private College in China to the large- seale longitudinal research projects on teaching Writing in China: Student B’s Measuring Students’ individual Progress in English Writing within the Framework of the Process-Product Teaching Approach. The answer fo research question 2: To date, the official outcome has been: 1. The three grade 4 students have been accepted by the conference organizers of the 31st TESOL Conference 31st Thailand TESOL Intemational Conference “Transforming the Language Classroom: Meeting the Needs of the Globalized World,” Chiang Mai, January 2011. Two students presented their findings following my presentation on i process- product approach to teaching English Writ 2. Seven students were accepted by 7 CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching “English for Mobility,” Cambodia, 2011 and presented their papers there 3. Ten new students joined the group in the autumn term 2010. Four of them were accepted and made their presentations at the 9 Asian TEFL conference Teaching English in a Changing Asia: Challenges and Directions, July 2011 in Korea. Four students have been accepted: and made presentations at the 16% conference of the Pan- Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics in Hong Kong. Two students presented their papers at the 8” CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching, “Language and Development”, Cambodia, 2012. 4, More than ten students of grades three and two joined the group in the autumn term 2011 and participated in the TESOL and TEFL conferences in 2013. V. DISCUSSION Chinese students” agendas, anxieties, identities, problems learning strategies, related (0 examInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilalif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of Ds orientedness have been analyzed extensively for the last 15 years. Trent said that “there is a need for further contextualized, longitudinal research that explores ‘mainland Chinese learners’ identity construction within ‘educational settings around the world.”(Trent, 2011) My assumption was that the Chinese students’ exam- orientedness and test-iaking focus can (and. somehow must) be overcome in the Chinese settings with some new ways of teaching and instructing them. Giving them a chance to participate in international conferences: conveying their messages directly to the intemational audience seems (0 be one of the ways out of the exam oriented vicious circle. My students’ motivation and rationale to join the group include earthly items ‘extending and developing their resumes beyond the limits of the traditional college studies, getting extra English speaking practice and some international experience in the form of ESL/EFL/TESOL conferences. Responding to these students” expectations in the form of the project involving them into international conference preparations — it will be the answer to research question 1. ‘These expectations were lived up. Student B said in the evaluative questionnaire: “Before joining the group, I ‘was thinking it would be much better if the teacher will provide direction, will advise and edit our works. That ‘would help me finish my paper earlier and with quality. If there is a chance to attend a conference, that just be good.” I have received naive messages with thanks like this one (Student E): “I'm so happy that | could have your help to improve my English. Richie is pretty much my role model in studies.” Students mostly want to improve their English, but it also can be a starting point of academic careers, if they continue in the same way. Many ‘of my students think that if you are able to express ‘yourselves, tell foreign teachers in classroom about your family, job prospecis and shopping interests, you are fluent. In reality, fluency in English is an ability to make others (foreign English teachers as immediate interlocutors) to listen, take notice and maybe even change their minds, particularly regarding China and ‘Chinese students. This study/research group is an option to teach Chinese students how to make this mysterious effort that turns you from a passive listener of the Chinese and foreign teachers’ classes and sometimes a speaker/opinion presenter in a class of 25-30 colleagues into a speaker presenting in a multilingual and ‘multicultural audience. Distinguished features of research as human activity are well expressed in the statements like “research is..concemed with understanding the world, the discovery of truth, a tool which develops during the process of inquiry that provides us with information, ‘based on one ot more paradigms, corroborating ot conilicting, upon which one may make an assessment that is open to analysis by a third party inguiry.” (Robertson, 2002), but in the particular situation of a 3 tier college in China, research can be considered the only 1s way of taking the whole local academic environment seriously and even taking the teaching job seriously as such. Otherwise, three or five original B.A. theses out of a few hundreds at the end of each academic year make an impression on students and teachers alike that the whole process of studies has been falsified. Without an international or, atleast a broader Chinese audience in the case of a TEFLITESOL conference in China where foreign guests are rare, most of the intellectual efforts of Chinese learners of English atthe 2"-3" tier colleges are limited by chat rooms and local activities (classes, exams, English comers, job interviews), so the students’ participation in’ the intemational forums gives an international perspective to the students’ growth and provides external goals to the whole studying and teaching process, for students - to ouigrow the college parochial limits, for teachers — to train students for this breakthrough towards international academic careers, VI STUDENTS" RESPONSES Chinese students’ needs have become the subject of extensive research recently. (Xiao, 2006) Leamers” needs analysis beside the obvious need to pass local and national examination in Mainland China and establishing ‘what Tsui called “legitimacy of access to practice.” (Tsui, 2007) is still underrepresented in academic literature and further research is needed. (Trent, 2011) My questionnaire may contribute to the corpus. of Chinese leamers’ needs recorded in Gao’s papers recently (Gao, 2005, 2010) Students’ responses in the form of replies to the open-ended questions regarding the research group modus operandi have been regularly collected to help me guide the group and organize new activities for the students within regular weekly seminars and conference preparations. I solicited the students? responses on what was their rationale for joining the research group and whether their experience met theit expectations Question 1: What did you expect from the research ‘group when you joined it first in 2010/2011? Student C: “I can finish my BA dissertation before grade 4. Even though, Iwill not take part in the entrance ‘exams for posteraduate studies, I think it is a good chance to improve my English (more time and more chances to talk with foreigners. Student D: “First of all, the research group provided ‘me with a brand new stage 10 leam how to do a real academic rescarch in this college, which is what I have bbeen expecting: second, through this stage, I also expected to make acquaintances with those who has something in common with me and brainstorm together. Last but not least, it may offer me an opportunity 0 attend such a conference like TESOL.” Question 4: What have you leamed from your own ‘work on presentations, your presentations and yourInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press participation in conferences? Was it worth doing and why? Student E: “First, I leamed how to do a not-bad presentation in font of scholars; 2", be confident and speak out ahead of foreigners. Definitely, it is worth doing in that itis one of the meaningful things we can do im this college.” Student E “1 teamed how to do an effective presentation with scholars or even professors as the audience (e.g how to control your time, communicate with your audience and what to prepare beforehand). I can also meet many researchers who have the same interested areas, so conferences are quite worthy.” Question 5: Did it help you improve your study and in ‘what way? Why it helped or why didn’t help? Student F: “Honestly, it doesn't help my exam-oriented study but does help my thinking-oriented study. The former you know needs a lot of exercises to get a higher score while the latter requires much time to think, to read, to rethink and to be dialectic, which is one of things we Chinese students realy lack.” Student C: “Tread more articles than before.” Students’ perceptions have not changed much during their stay within the group: they conclude that this research project is a part of their English language ‘raining, As student F said in the questionnaire, his participation in the research project “helps with my thinking-oriented study” (compared to the exam-oriented learning) which is an indicator of a major change in purposes of studying. VII. ISSUE ADDRESED: ESTABLISHING A MINI-ACTION RESEARCH PARADIGM A. Exam-Orientedness of Chinese Students. Moving Out of the Exam-Centered Vicious Circle Gao (2005) drew his conclusion on the basis of the two typical Chinese Mainland leamers of English in Hong Kong that “their adopted learning approaches, as revealed im their biographical accounts, seem to be extremely exam-oriented.” So even in the English speaking environment of Hong Kong the students did not abandon their traditional learning habits, so. freeing Chinese students from this burden of exams seems virtually impossible within the Chinese Mainland context. The ‘obvious improvement so far has been the fact that the Chinese college administrations often allow foreign teachers to increase the value of the class performance or continuous assessment from 30 % to 70 % n the final score, otherwise 70 % of the Chinese students’ final course scores are determined by their examination performance. Study groups, participations in presentations and group discussions, let alone the international conference presentations (if students are 16 accepted) help to ease exam-oricntedness in their minds. Also the group activities, being entirely new, or even ‘unique, in the Chinese college framework weaken the udents’ exam-oriented mindset. As student F put, it “does help my thinking-oriented study”. The primary example is: the two students of mine asked the college to postpone their last semester exam as they had 10 go to the ‘ThaiTESOL-2011 conference instead and the permission was readily granted, B. Plagiarism Issue “Many scholars portrayed the situation with plagiarism in China as very serious as “academic fiaud more common in China than in any other country” and “Chinese universities are facing the crisis of credibility.(Mu, 2010) My own — discouraging observation during my career at Chinese universities: at least 40 out of 45 BA graduates 1 supervised at a university in Guangdong Province in 2003-2008 preferred to copy, paste and slightly modify their B.A. dissertations on Literature and Cultural Comparisons ot to gct full texts from a librarian instead of actually doing a research and writing a 4000 word thesis in English Students” B.A. dissertations, ideally, should serve as their final goal and highest achievement during the 4 years at college. In reality, the students” dissertations, normally flawless in terms of grammar, are too often plagiarised, at best, concocted from various intemet resources, and the only original text written by the student is the ‘Acknowledgements at the front page, normally full of grammar errors that shows the author's real level of English. 1 doesn’t mean that the original research agendas of 10-15 college students and their dissertations can tur the td, but in the local situation, it can make a suiile difference as the number of original texts in the pool of grade four students’ theses will increase when 14 of my study group members graduate, C.— Making Chinese Students’ Voice Heard Internationally ‘The presenter contingent at the TESOL/EFL/ESL international conference across South-East Asia has consisted of college teachers, professional language instructors and teachers’ trainers. Students were mostly represented as local volunteers helping participants find their room and checking time of presentations. Chinese students” input as presenters and question/answer session participants is bringing new blood to the established forums and, more importantly, providing the students’ perspective as a vital and interesting supplement to the debates among the teaching professionals and trainers at the TESOL/TEFL conferences. The voice of students, the consumers of the ESL/EFL industry and objecis of teachers? instructions, started being heard at theInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilalif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Dee international forums aimed at improving the teaching practices in Asia, VII. CONCLUSION AND PRACTICAL ‘SUGGESTIONS ‘The prime advantage of the research project is that the students were involved into a new teaching framework, 30 the fact that students joined the research group and started their individual projects can be attributed to the sheer novelty of the situation and the example of Richie, the first students in the group. Adding to the answer to research question 1, role-models are important and they should be found first. Regarding question 2, newly founded institutions are better suitable for such’a novelty as an undergraduate student research group. A new, not very well-established instiution is always more flexible, responsive and susceptible to novel approaches asin the old and established schools local traditions and agendas dominate. As White put it, in new institutions “teachers had extra time to spend with the student, as the responsibilities that come with an established university ‘were not yet entrenched.” (White, 2011) All students come from relatively wealthy families that ‘can afford sending their children to a neighboring country (ora distant part of China for an international conference ‘and paying the fee. In many public schools, this will be impossible due to a lower profile of students’ families Preparations for intermational forums and participation there motivate students to work on their presentations harder than they would have worked on their routine assignments they have got used to do. We are opening the new “Asian EFL research protocols” (Robertson, 2002) as we analyze the academic situation and study ‘environment in the places that represent the vast majority of Chinese learners of English at college level. The results of the student's research projects can be spread around the Chinese (Asian) academic milieu with ‘mumerous university journals and college websites. Finally, the only obvious disadvantage of the project is tat propelling the 3" tier college students to the international level of conference presenters requires a ‘huge amount of time for error-correction " REFERENCES Bailey, K. (2005). Looking Back Down the Road: A Recent History of Language Classroom Research. In The Review of Applied Linguistics in China, Issues of Language Learning and Teaching, Vol. 1. Beijing: Higher Education Press. Borg, S. (2006). The Distinctive Characteristics of Foreign’ Language Teachers. The Language Teaching Research, 10(1), 1-29. Retrieved July 31, 2014 from hutp:/www.citeseer.ist psu.edw/viewdoc/download?doi= 10.1.1.132.6475. Cheng, L, & Wang, H. (2004), Understanding Professional Challenges Faced by Chinese Teachers of | English. The Teaching English as Second or Foreign Language, 7(4), pp. 1-14. China has 25 min college students. Xinhua News Agency, October 18, 2007. Retrieved December 20, 2014 from hitp://www.china.org.cn/english/China/228657 htm, Cortazzi, M., & Jin, L. (1996). Cultures of learning: Language classrooms in China. In Coleman H. (Ed.), Society and the Language Classroom (pp. 169-206), ‘Cambridge University Press. Dalby, C. (2006). English Teachers Wanted: Who Is Teaching China's Youth? China.org.cn, Retrieved 15 October, 2012 ‘from http:/Avww china. org.cn/english’2006/Oct/185393.him. Gao, X., 2005). A Tale of Two Mainland Chinese English Leamers. The Asian EFI. Journal Quarterly, 2Q), 1-20. Retrieved December 30, 2012 from ‘nap:/Avww asian-efl-journal.com/June_2003_index.php. Gao, X. (2010), Autonomous Language Learning Against All Odds. Sysvem, 38(4), 580-590, Gorsuch, G. (2006). Doing Language Education Research in a Developing Country. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 100), Retrieved December 25, 2013, from _www.tesl- ¢j.org/wordpress/issues/volumel O/ej38/¢)38al I. ‘Moore, S., & Bounchan, S. (2006). Teaching, Testing and Researching: The Good, the Bad and Usly Dimensions of ELT. The CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching. Selected Papers. Vol. 2, 9» 4 ‘Mu, C. (2010). “I only cited some of his words”: The dilemma of EFL students and their perceptions of plagiarism in academic. writing. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 7(4), 103-134. Retrieved December 26, 2014, from inp//wwvw asiateflorg/journal/main26.php. Niu, Q., & Wolff, M. (2010), China EFL: An Industry Run Amuck, China Holst Ergish. Retrieved October 1, 2014 from hitp//chinaholisticenglish.org/download- anicles. Robertson, P. (2002). Asian EFL Research Protocols. ‘The Asian EFL Journal, 4(4), 1-10, Retrieved December 20, 2014 hutps/asian-efl- journal.com/december_02_prphpInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 12-18 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press Trent, J. 011). Mainland Chinese Students? Perceptions of Language, Learning, and Identity in an English Language Teacher Education Program in Hong Kong. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 8(3), 243-270, ‘Tsui, A. (2007), Complexities of Identity Formation: A Narrative Inquiry of an EFL Teacher. The TESOL Quarterly, 41(4), 657-680. White, J. 2011). A Case Study of Unique Input to Produce Spoken English Output, The Asian EFT. Journal, Professional Teaching Articles, 56, 30-42 Zhang, W., & Liu, M. (2007), Students’ Perspectives ona School-based English Proficiency Test. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 4(3), 213-240. 18 AUTHOR Dr. Igor Smerdov, Russian, is a foreign teacher of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Jaingsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China. He got his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2002 from Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has taught Conversational English and Russian, Writing, Literature, Wester Culture, Comprehensive English, Extensive Reading in Chinese universities since October 2002. Also, Dr. Smerdov has published books, academic papers and magazine articles on modern Chinese lifestyle and academic environment in Russian and English,International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp:!/www-ilalit) ISSN; 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of Ds A Comparison between the Effectiveness of Mnemonic versus Non-mnemonic Strategies in Foreign Language Learning Context Fatemeh Ahmadniay Motlagh Faculty of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Emnil: English fahmadnia@gmail.com Naser Rashidi Faculty of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Email; nrashidi@rose shirazu,ac.ir Abstract — This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness ‘on mnemonic. strategies compared with non-mnemonic strategies in foreign language learning. To end this aim, 40 Iranian female EFL learners took part in this study, They ‘were divided into two classes of experimental group, in which mnemonic strategies were strongly used, and control ‘group, in which these strategies were not presented. With regard to the statistical findings of paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test as well as the reported scores of pretest and posttest exams, it was concluded that mnemonics strategies are helpful (0 facilitate learning vocabularies compared with non-mnemonic strategies. Mnemonic strategies are of great Importance and can effectively be used in the process of foreign language learning, as well. Index Terms— Mnemonic strategies, Vocabulary, Retention, ‘Vocabulary Learning L INTRODUCTION ‘Vocabulary is of paramount importance in the process Jeaming a foreign language. Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in the process of transferring the meaning. Through vocabulary an individual is more or less capable of making hinverself understood. That is why vocabulary is regarded as a fundamental communication instrument, as well. Mnemonic strategies have been known an effective procedure to acquire and retain vocabulary in foreign language learning. However, few studies have been done to enhance the effectiveness ‘of mnemonic strategies compared with non-mnemonic strategies in foreign language learning, It seems that more research needs to be conducted in this field in Iran Received March 6, 2015; Accepted March 13, 2015 © 2015 Khate Sefid Press 19 context With regard to the crucial importance of vocabulary, this study will hopefully offer great insights in the field of foreign language acquisition. It facilitates the learners ability to retain and acquire vocabulary longer, furthermore, it eases teachers’ responsibilities and causes them to handle the class in a way to share more responsibilities with the learners. It seems that the findings of the present study will be effectively valuable for the foreign language learners not only to leam and ease the process of vocabulary acquisition, but also to increase autonomous leaming and peer working in the FFL context How 10 retain vocabulary in long-term memory has always been a matter of discussion in the feld of foreign language learning, since vocabulary i a fugacious part of the Language and will be forgotten soon. This study aimed to make a comparison between executing mnemonic and hnon-mnnemonic strategies in the classroom context in order to facilitate vocabulary leaming process for the EFL learners. So that, individuals can retain and acquire new words more easily in the target language. In this cease, vocabulary as a fundamental communication instrument needs to be taken into account more seriously bby EFL learners and teachers, respectively. Accordingly, the present study addresses one major research question: Are mnemonic sirategies more effective in comparison with non-mnemonic strategies in vocabulary acquisition? In this case, the following mull hypothesis was considered: There is no relationship between teaching mnemonic strategies and learning vocabularies in foreign language learning.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press II, REVIEW OF LITERATURE Vocabulary has always been of great importance in the process of language acquisition. Vocabulary is known as the area of the most fundamental constituents of language learning. Foreign and second language learners are well aware of the fact that limitations in their vocabulary knowledge influence their communication skills. since lexical items convey the basic information; they wish to conceive and manifest. (Nation, 2001,” as cited in Akbarian, 2010). In other words, vocabulary is commonly regarded as the basic communication tool; ‘moreover, it is labeled as the most problematic area for the EFL leamers. The study of vocabulary has two crucial stages. In the first stage, a subject is needed to make an association between spoken foreign word and an English word. The second stage gets benefit from a ‘mental image of interaction between the mental image of the key word and the English translation (Atkinson & Raugh, 1975) Lots of factors including explicit and implicit techniques individual and group based activities and ‘motivation and learning strategies, have made the arca of vocabulary leaming process seriously problematic (Coady, 1997b; Nation & Newton, 1997, as cited in Celik & Topias, 2010). It might be the reason that mumerous researchers, during the history of language learning have ‘been done to shed light on techniques that facilitate second language (L2) vocabulary learning, These researches have investigated various techniques such as: ‘©The learning of word lists (e.g. Carter, 1987), exposure to word glosses (eg. Jacobs, Dufon, & Cheng,1994; Yoshii, 2006; Webb, 2007); the key word mnemonic technique (e.g. Pressley, Levin, & McDaniel, 1987; Wang, Thomas, & Ouellette, 1992; Sagarra & Alba, 2006), + Learning words in a discourse context (ez Nation & Coady, 1988; Nagy, 1997; Horst, Cobb, & Meara, 1998; Laufer, 2003), ‘+ Reading followed by vocabulary exercises (eg Paribakht & Wesche, 1997), as well as numerous others (Hummel, 2010, p: 61-62). Reading story books, involving in conversation being exposed to rare words affect early vocabulary development (Beals, 1997; Detemple & Snow, 2003; Weizman & Snow 2001, as citied in Collins, 2010) Novice readers such as young school-aged children have some classroom-based contexts for vocabulary learning: Explicit curricular instruction of targeted words (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2000, Beck , Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982); repetition of words in books used for reading instruction (McKeown, Beck, Omamson, & Pople, 1985); classroom discussions of words (Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986), and exposed towords from read aloud (Stahl etal, 1991)and self-read texts (Jenkin, stein, & Wysocki, 1984; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987) (Collins, 2010, p: 85) 20 All learning strategies, containing vocabulary leaming, empower the leamers to take more control of their individual leaming, in order to take more responsibilities in their studies (Nation, 2001; Scharle & Szabo, 2000, as cited in Celik & Toptas, 2010), The word vocabulary has long alluded to word lists, and vocabulary learning strategies have been the same as techniques which help consign the lists to memory. AS a matter of fect, psychologists, linguistics, and language teachers have examined vocabulary learning strategies, during the past decades (Leveston, 1979, as cited in Celik & Toptas, 2010). All in all, vocabulary learning strategies are regarded as a sub group of common language learning strategies, in the field of foreign language pedagogy (Carter & McCarthy 1998; Oxford, 1990; Schmitt, 1997, as cited in Celik & Topias, 2010), Prominent scholars have proposed several vocabulary learning strategy taxonomies for language learning (Gu & Johnson, 1996). Vocabulary learning strategies have also been classified into three general groups of planning, sources, and process (Nation, 2001, as cited in Celik & Toptas, 2010). Stoffer (1995) has considered nine categories by factor analysis as follow: . Strategies involving authentic language use Strategies used for self-motivation Strategies used to organize words |. Strategies used to create activities Memory strategies Strategies involving creative activities Strategies involving physical action . Strategies used (0 overcome anxiety 9. Auditory strategies (AS cited in Celik & Toptas, 2010, p. 63) A. Mnemonic Techniques in Education General speaking, mnemonics are devices to abet memory. The goal of using them is improving encoding efficiently. They encode information by associating ‘between new and earlier learned information in long.term memory Gohnson & Weber, 2006 as cited in Gibson, 2008). This term is Greek. It is derived from a mythological allegory. Mnemosyne, the personification of memory, was titaness, the mother with Zeus of the Muses. The ancient Greeks believed they derived their power of public speaking from Mnemosyne and her special relation with the Muses (Hesiod, 1914; Yates, 1966). A “mnemoni then, is any procedure or operation designed to improve one's memory. (Scruggs, Mastompieri, Berkeley, & Marshak, 2010, p: 79). Mnemonic techniques are applied expandedly in education. There is conformation that use of mnemonics for college students eases them to recall information,International Journal of Language and Applied Ling 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN; 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of (Die (Ross & Kerry, 1968; Brigges et al. 1970 as cited in Keshavan, 2009). Mnemonics also play an important role in errorless learning, a technique by which leamers are prevented from making errors in the initial stages of learning information, which was first applied to the fact of rehabilitation of memory and ils impairments by Baddeley and Wilson (1994) (as cited in Anderson & Craik, 2006), B. Categorization of Mnemonics Mnemonics are of different types. Some of which benefit from visual cues and some use verbal cues. Mnemonic strategies include the keyword method, the peg word method and letter strategies. The mnemonic keyword method is a conductive technique to acquire vocabulary in foreign language learning. (Wyra, Lawsen & Hungi, 2007). This method is concrete, furthermore; itis acoustically similar proxy for ‘unacquainted data" such as vocabulary words, terminology, and ete. The data can be associated with the to-be-temembered information later. The keyword ‘method is famous for its versatility, that’s why i is used in different areas of learning including English, foreign- language learning vocabulary, science and social studies. (Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2000 as cited in Scruggs, etal, 2010). There are some peculiar steps to implement the ‘keyword method as follows 1. Write out the content to be remembered in a list (eg, Person — Accomplishment, Vocabulary word — Definition) 2. Identify whether the terms, vocabulary words, people, accomplishments, ot other to-be-remembered information is familiar or unfamiliar to the learner. 3. If unfamiliar, develop an acoustically similar, casily pictured, concrete proxy or keyword for the term (e.., rained=rain). If information is familia, the familiar term (eg. trench) is the keyword. 4. Develop an interactive image or picture of the keyword doing something with the to-be-temembered information (e.g. frog siting in the rain, sick soldiers in the trenches). 5. Practice learning the keyword (for unfamiliar {nformation) and the interactive image or pictur, 6, Practice leaming the retrieval steps. When asked the ‘meaning of the word, think of the keyword, think of what ‘was happening in the picture with the keyword in it, and retrieve the definition (Scruggs, tal, 2010, p; 80), In order to remember numbers or not to forget ordered information the peg word method is used. It has a rhyming proxy for a number, For example, one is bun, two is shoe, and three is tree. I can be accompanied by keywords when new terms are connected to numbers (Scruggs, et a., 2010), The most common mnemonic is letter sirategies. It includes acronyms and acrostics, The former is first-letter a ‘mnemonics, in which each letter depicts a word such as “HOMES” to represent the five great lakes (ie, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erica, and Superior). In the latter, ‘known as sentence mnemonics, the first letters of words are used in the sentence to remember a list of information, For example, “my very educated mother just served us nine pizza.” To remember the order of planets (c.g., Mercury, Venus, Earth, ctc.) (Scruggs, etal. 2010). C. Drawbacks of Mnemonics Techniques Beyond any shadow of doubt, mnemonics have a vital role in learning and vocabulary acquisition, yet ‘Yesavage, et al. (1989) hold the view that they suffer from five limitations related to older adults Mnemonic techniques are too complicated for the older adults to effectively utilize; (2) many studies rely ‘on visual images and visual image associations whereas ‘older people have difficulty producing and remembering, visual images; (3) high anxiety levels tend to depress test performances and older adults are often resistant and/or anxious about using new techniques and participation in (new) text situation; (4) some findings suggest that encoding processing may be more superficial in older adults vis-i-vis their younger counterparts, which suggest that any improvement in memory due to mnemonies may be resiriced to the short term; and (5) any treatment effects may be negligible, which begs the question, “Is ‘mnemonic training worth the time and resources ‘expended to realize minuscule improvements? (AS cited in Smith & Phillips Jr, 2001, p. 104), D. Previous Investigations Mnemonic Strategies on Vocabulary and Over the years researchers have begun working on ‘vocabulary learning, and have done some investigations in this area. Some of these investigations are presented in the following, ‘Anderson and Craik (2006) studied healthy younger and older adults engaged in errorless or ertorful learning by using a process dissociation procedure which provided separate estimates of explicit recollection and implicit familiarity within-subjects and within-task, as well. They found an age-related decrement in recollection, but age- invariance in familiarity. They came to the point that in the young adults, errorless learning decreased the misleading familiarity of prior errors, but the advantage ‘was offset by the non-claborative nature of the errorless leaming situation that also decreased recollection. In the colder adults, who were less capable to oppose familiarity, based errors due to their lower recollection, errorless learning only decreased the misteading influence of previous errors. Collins 2010) investigated the impact of rich explanation, baseline vocabulary, and home reading practices on English language learning. preschoolers’International Journal of Language and App! 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna et sis complicated vocabulary learning from storybook reading, In the research 80 typically developing preschoolers were pretested in Li and L2 receptive vocabulary were assigned fo experimental or control groups. 8 books were chosen and paired. Experimental participants heard books read three times over a 3-week period with enough explanations of target vocabulary. Controls heard stories read without explanations. Parents filled questionnaires about the frequency and content of home reading practices as well as their language. Findings of the study had valuable implications for L2 vocabulary acquisition im ELL preschoolers, ‘Ahmadi Safa and Hamzavi (2013) studied the effect of using mnemonic key word method of vocabulary instruction on the learning and retention of vocabulary over long term in EFL context. To this aim Sth grade primary school students were chosen randomly as experimental group who received vocabulary instruction using mnemonic key word method, and control groups who received classic memorization based instruction of the same vocabulary items. Both groups took three posttests a day, two weeks, and a month after the last ‘catment session. The findings of their study underscore the influence of the establishment of mental inks and images for the vocabulary leaming and retention of beginner level EFL leamers. They also concluded that memonic devices like key word method should be given enough attention by EFL material developers and practitioners since they are effective stralegy for vocabulary teaching, leaming and long term retention peculiarly forthe beginner EFL ESL learners Lois of studies have been conducted in the field of vocabulary learning; however, it seems that more research is needed to be conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of mnemonic strategies compared with non-minemonie strategies. II. METHOD A, Participants To gather the required data, 40 Iranian EFL learners participated in this study. The study was done in Setarch English Language Institute in Shiraz, Fars province, Iran Participants were Persian native’ speakers, Ieaming English as a foreign language. They were female and ‘were selected randomly, based on convenience sampling. Learners were at the intermediate level and most of them ‘were between 1619. B. Materials The materials were Interchange books, third edition, by Jack C. Richards, with Jonathan Hull and Susan Proctor. Each unit is divided into 12 separated parts including listening activities, speaking activities, reading activities and writing activities. These parts are related to 2 pronunciation, conversation, word power, snap shot and ‘grammar focus. Four units of the book were taught, In addition fo the pretest and posttest, students had four exams. After the first unit they had Quiz 1. Having taught the second unit they had Midterm exam on units one and two, When the third unit was over, they had Quiz 2 on unit three. Eventually, they had their Final exam on unit ‘one to four at the end of the term. The pretest and posttest activities were hold before Quiz one and the final exam, respectively. It is worth (0 say that all the students in all levels at the institute have to take part in Quiz 1, Midterm, Quiz 2, and Final exam, since they are inevitable parts ef the educational program of the institute. C. Procedure Participants were divided into two separated groups named Class A and Class B. The study intended 10 compare the effect of instruction of mnemonic strategies on EFL learners with non-mnemonic strategies and if these strategies retain and facilitate new vocabularies in long-term memory. Class A was regarded as an experimental group, in which mnemonic strategies were strongly used, whereas class B was the control one. “Mnemonic strategies were not taueht in this class and the students used previous vocabulary teaching methods such as leaming new words in the context, using synonyms and antonyms, et. The teacher was well aware of mnemonic strategies ‘and was capable enough to make the point clear for the leamers. She explained the mnemonic strategies inductively by preparing some general examples referring to a list of new words, for example; UNESCO stands for United Nations, Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. As an example in order to teach the order of adjectives before the noun to Iranian EFL learners teachers can use the abbreviation form of “shekare ma" ifekate ma/ in which each letter stands for: "shomare (fomusreh/— keifiyat /keifijaet! — andaze /aendazely — rang ‘eng / — melliyat /melije/ — esme sefat saz /esme sefet saz. "So the students can see the order of “Numbers, Quality or material, Size, Color and Nation or origin before the Noun”. (€g., a beautifil tall young American gir). Having made the point clear for the learners and letting them get familiar with the knowledge of ‘miemonic strategies, the teacher had the duty of helping them to create a kind of mnemonic word. If they shape it themselves they are more capable of remembering sooner and can retain it. Student's interest and motivation is also increased, The teacher wanted the students to work on new vocabularies in advance and try to find and create a kind of word as a mnemonic before entering the classroom, They had done the task at home, Later the students were divided into different groups in order to discuss and facilitate group work activities. By cooperation and discussing their mnemonics, they cameInternational Journal of Language and Applied Ling Intron 2015; 1(): 19-26 eS Published online March 15,2015 (hw) er ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) pee © 2015 Khate Sfid Pres ‘up with a conclusion Autonomous Icarming was 25, which illystale an improvement in students’ facilitated, as well. In every step, the teacher assisted them, Whenever they could not afford designing mnemonics, the teacher gave them a hint or provided them with a suggestion for new mnemonics related to the new vocabularies, as the last resort, The teacher utilized some mnemonic strategies including mnemonic keyword ‘method and letter strategies. As mentioned carlicr, students were supposed to take part in four exams including Quiz 1, Midterm, Quiz 2, and Final exam, in addition to the pretest and posttest activity. At the end of the term the effectiveness of using mnemonic strategies was checked by investigating and making logical comparisons between performances of the two groups in pretest and posttest exams. In order to analyze the data, the teacher provided the leamers of both classes with a pretest before teaching the ‘mnemonic strategies to understand their current level of knowledge, later a posttest activity was provided to see if using mnemonic strategies had been fruitful. The nall hypothesis was that there was no relationship between teaching mnemonic strategies and learning vocabularies in the foreign language Iearning. The information was given to the computers to be calculated by SPSS ‘Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Paired sample t- test and independent sample t-test were regarded as ‘means to do the statistical analysis to compare both ‘gToups and their performances. Certain attention was paid to the average of the groups, and the one whose average is higher. The posttest was expected to have a higher average. IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION respect {0 the overall performance of the participating students of Setarch English Language instmate, the descriptive statistics in the mentioned tables provide a general profile of their achievements. Generally students of both classes nearly had the same ability, were fof the same age and level, respectively. Each class included 20 students. Each exam was out of 30, It took a period of 15 sessions between the both tests to be given in each class. Table I illustrates. pre-test and post-test scores of ‘experimental group, Mnemonic strategies were strongly used in this class. As it is illustrated, students have received better scores in the post test activity. ‘The means and standard deviations of both groups were also reported for easy comparison (Tables 2 and 6). ‘Throughout this research report the means, standard error of the means and standard deviation were abbreviated as M, SD, and SEM. N illustrates the number of the students in each class. Correlations and level of significance for ‘each group were abbreviated as C and sig., too (Tables 3 and). Allin all, the results provided for the experimental ‘group, class A, show an increase in the mean ftom 17 to achievement, so teaching has been effective (Table 2). Paticipants Number_[ Pre-test scores (30) _[ Posest sores GO i 27 2 oe 16 2a o ar 2 2s 2s 2 ar 2 a 2s is 2 ar 39 a 2a 26 MN | SD | SIM Pail Prewst_ [ "17.6000 | 20 | SaR3I8 | 8120 Postest [255000 30] 321346 | TIRES N c Sie Paicl Pretest Postest_ [20 [78 00 To make a comparison between students” scores of pre-test and post-test paired sample t-test was conducted. Based on the statistical description seen in table 4 level of significance was .000 which is smaller than .05, so we ‘can reject the null hypothesis. T_ [at | Sig. aed) Pail Pretest-Postest [14995 | 19 00 Table 5 illustrates. pre-test and post-test scores. of control group. .Mnemonic strategies were not used in class B. The results of pre-test and post-test were provided in the table. Here again we face an increase in the mean of the ‘group from 15 to 22. Although mnemonic strategies were not used, increasing of the mean indicates the fact that previous teaching methods have been effective, too AAs discussed above, there was improvement in both ‘groups indicating the positive effect of teaching. With regard to the data presented in table 9, we have compared the post-iest scores of the two mentioned groups to make the point clearer. In order to describe statistics and t-test results of both classes we conducted an independent sample test. As it is provided in table 9 the level of significance is .010, and is smaller than .0S, so finally we 2BInternational Journal of Language and App! 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press urna et eo ‘can reject our null hypothesis, With regard to the findings Of the study both groups have experiences improvement, although the experimental group has had more advancement in the individual scores and the mean, A reason for the improvement of the students’ scores in the control group might be the fact that these students had to study and take part in in Quiz 1, Midterm, Quiz 2, and Final exam. ‘The experimental groups has had these ‘exams as well; however, they took the advantage of using ‘mnemonic strategies during their class session and the ‘mean of these students’ scores is higher which justify this fact. Paicpanis Namibor_[ Protest somes (0) i 5 13 207 20) ri 11 Is 17 11 10 1a ey 21 1D it 13 io 6 1 Poster snes 2 2 15 2 25 26 om 23 21 2 21 24 1s 2 24 77 is 24 2 2 M[N | 8D [8M Pair Pretest [ TS0000—| 20—[ Sane | a7 Postest [223000 [30 [37710 | OTT N c Siz Pail Protest Postest_ [20 | 508 2 i T | @ | Se Caled) Paiel Prtes-Postest_ [9105 | 19 00 Groups N M_[~ SD. Ta] 3 Eigerimenal 20] 53000] 31346] 2714 [38 | 10 ‘Control [20 [22.3000 [3.75710 The null hypothesis expressed the fact that there is no relationship between teaching mnemonic strategies and leaming vocabulary in foreign language leaning, We reject it with regard to the findings based on SPSS, which revealed the fact that mnemonic strategies can play an important role in the realm of vocabulary learning, So it is concluded that mnemonic strategies have been fruitful and can be used greatly in foreign language learning. The 24 aforementioned strategies facilitate EFL learners’ knowledge of vocabulary and encourage them to produce and create suitable mnemonic strategies to acquire vocabulary and retain it longer. This is in line with the findings of Alumadi Safa and Hamvavi (2013). V. CONCLUSION The current investigation was an attempt to explore vocabulary acquisition and the effectiveness of mnemonic strategies compared with non-mnemonic strategies. 40 Iranian female EFL leamers participated in the study. The participants were randomly divided into two classes. Class A. in which mnemonic strategies were executed, was considered as the experimental group, and Class B, was the control one. According to students! reported scores on pretest and posttest, and based on the statistical results of paired sample t-test and independent, it was indicated that the aforementioned strategies facilitate the process of vocabulary learning. They encouraged peer working and led the leamers to increase their creativity and zutonomous learning, respectively. Taking the null hypothesis into account, the research question was answered in the light ofthe findings of data analysis of the present study. Are mnemonic strategies more effective in comparison with non-mnemonic strategies in vocabulary acquisition? ‘The results of the SPSS description, presented in tables, 3, 7, and 9, rejected the null hypothesis. According to the Findings of the study, mnemonic strategies are more effective, compared with non-mnemonic strategies in the process of leaming foreign language vocabulary. Findings of the study are of great importance to EFL, leamers in order to show the importance of mnemonic sirategies 10 acquire vocabulary faster and easier, and longer, as well. They are of paramount importance for teachers 100, since they help them to find out the best possible way of teaching vocabulary effectively. This way, teachers can share more responsibilities with the individuals and consequently autonomous learning and peer working will be encouraged, As a result, individuals will be less dependent on teachers, and can be more creative, in the field of vocabulary acquisition in foreign language learning, A, Limitations of the Study ‘The insights of the present study seem to be beneficial in the ficld of foreign language tcaching/learning, and they pave the way not only for leamers, but also for the teachers to facilitate autonomous learning. However, it suffers from one major limitation which is related to the sampling and. participants. 40 participants took part in this study, They were randomly chosen based on convenience sampling; moreover, they were just female learners. Actually, it was not possible to “have maleInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN; 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Dee participants in the study, since the institute is not a ‘coeducational one. B. Suggestions for Further Research ‘As mentioned earlier, this study provided some interesting insights with regard to the process of ‘vocabulary acquisition; however, areas of investigation for further studies include: 1. Condueting the research in a broader scope. 2. Conducting the research to make a comparison between the genders and evaluating their interest and creativity towards using mnemonic strategies. 3. Investigating the effectiveness of mnemonic strategies coher language skills, specifically reading ‘comprehension. 4. Investigating the influence of EFL learners’ age on ‘mnemonic strategies 25 REFERENCES Ahmadi Safa, M., & Hamzavi, R. (2013). The Effect ‘of Mnemonic “Key Word Method on Vocabulary Learning and Long Term Retention. Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 12, 1-18, ‘Akbarian, I. (2010). The relationship between vocabulary size and depth for ESP/EAP learners. Syxfem, 38, 391-401. “Anderson, N. D., & Craik, F-TM, (2006), The ‘mnemonic "mechanisms — of errorless learning, ‘Neuropsychologia, 44, 2806-2813. Atkinson, R_C.,'& Raugh, M. R. (1975). An Application of the Mnemonic Keyword Method to the Acquisition of a Russian Vocabulary. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and ‘Memory, 104(2), 126-133 Celik, S., & Toptas, V. (2010). Vocabulary learning strategy use of Turkish EFL leamers. Procedia Social ‘and Behavioral Sciences, 3, 62-71 Collins, M. F. (2010). ELL preschoolers’ English ‘vocabulary acquisition from storybook reading, Early Childhood Research Quarteriy, 25, 84-97. Gibson, H. D. (2009). Using mnemonics to increase knowledge of an organizing curriculum framework Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 4, 56-62. Gu, Y. & Jolson, R. K. (1996). Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Language Learning Outcomes. Language Learning, 46(4), 643-679, Hummel, KM. (2010). Translation and short-term vocabulary retention: Hindrance or help? Language Teaching Research, 14(1) 61-74, Keshavan, M. S. 2009), Mnemonics for DSM-IV. Part I. Diagnostic criteria and psychiatric assessments. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2, 117-118, Scruggs, T. E., Mastropieri, M. A. Berkeley, S. L., & Marshak, L. (2010). Mnemonic Strategies: Evidence- Based Practice and Practice-Based Evidence. Intervention in School and Clinic, 46(2), 79-86. Smith, M. C, & Phillips Jr, MR. @001). Age differences in memory for radio advertisements: The role of mnemonics. Journal of Business Research, 53, 103- 109. Wyra, M., Lawson, M. J. & Hungi, N. (2007). The mnemonic keyword method: The effects of bidirectional retrieval training and of ability to image on foreign languaze vocabulary recall. Learning and Instruction, 17, 360-371.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 19-26 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press AUTHORS: Fatemeh Ahmadniay Motlagh is an M. A. Holder of TEFL from Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics of Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. She is currently teaching English courses at Hafez Higher Educational Institute, Shiraz Art Institute of Higher Education, and Setarch English Language institute in Shiraz, Iran. Her ateas of interest are second/foreign language acquisition, psycholinguistics, research methods and material development. 26 Nasser Rashidi, Ph.D., is presently the academic member of the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics of Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. His area of research is TEFL including language teaching and testing, discourse analysis. His recent publications include Practical Contrastive Analysis of English and Persian with Special Emphasis on Discourse with L. Yarmohammadi (2014).International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp:/www-ilal it) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of Ds Reaching the Compromise: An Iranian EFL Teacher’s Treatment of Vocabulary in Reading Reza Farhang Iran Language Institute, Iran Enail: rezafirhang2006@gmuail.com Abstract — The issue of vocabulary in reading ‘comprehension has not been given a practical response for EFL teachers. The problem is that teachers emphasize students’ trying to understand a text without paying much attention to the words, whereas understanding, to take place, requires vocabulary as one of the available media. In ‘order to cope with this paradox, a compromise is suggested to be reached by EFL teachers. To see how such a ‘compromise ean be reached, a case study of an EFL teacher ‘was conducted in a university context in a General English class in which the primary focus has been om reading ‘comprehension through 26 observations in a seven-month ppetiod. The study shows that the participant, o respond to the students’ desire to know the meaning of single words, used different strategies via which teacher's working on students? reading ability was not impeded. However, the Participant did not support explicit strategy training which ‘can be the result of am ignorance of the findings in the related literature. Hence, the implications might he to make ‘the teachers aware of the findings in the existing literature ‘and consider the course objectives. Index Terms— Vocabulary strategies, Reading ‘comprehension, Paradox, Compromise I INTRODUCTION Majority of research on learning strategies (ez. Anderson, 2003; Mehrpour_& Rahimi, 2010; and Mitchell, Myles, & Marsden 2013) unanimously agreed fon the importance of students’ using strategies and familiarizing them with useful ones. In reading comprehension, in a similar vein, vocabulary related strategies are emphasized, but it is not clear how the vocabulary is practically treated in the classrooms. ‘There is a debate on whether to think of the words or not in reading comprehension. On the one hand, the focus, by the teachers, is said to be on the meaning of the \whole text rather than the individual words. On the other hand, the leamers are to infer the meaning of a reading text via not attending to the meaning of individual words. ‘Received January 12,2015; Accepted March 11, 2015 © 2015 Khate Sefid Press 2 This, according to Harmer (2007), has been labeled as a “paradox” on the part of the teachers. He suggests that a ‘compromise is required in order to deal with this paradox. However, the present author is not aware of any study that investigates EFL teachers’ practical teaching behavior with this regard. To partially fill this gap, this study aims to consider how an EFL teacher treats vocabulary in a reading class and the following question ‘was meant to be answered through this case study: How did the participant teacher address vocabulary ina reading class? IL LITERATURE REVIEW Anderson (2003), similar to Mehrpour and Rahimi (2010), “emphasizes the importance of vocabulary to successful reading” (p. 74). In practice, there are some words, depending on many different factors (eg. leamers’ proficiency level, and text difficulty), that are ‘unknown to the Iearmers and are influential in leading the reader to get the meaning. Here, the need for the leamers? being aware of and their being able to use some strategies is manifested. In the related literature, the following three strategies have been emphasized more than the others. ‘The first mostly-aitended strategy in reading ‘comprehension, as Brown (2010) states, is guessing the ‘meaning of the unknown words "from context. ‘Considering the context, being “verbal and/or nonverbal” (Engelbar & Theuerkaul, 1999) and its being helpful in guessing, one may wonder how guessing is (or should be) done, In theory, guessing happens via three stages of selecting as selective encoding (i. locating relevant information in the context), selective combination (je. ‘combining this information into a meaningful whole), and selective comparison (j.e. relating this information to What the reader already knows), as Sternberg, Kaufinan, and Grigorenko state (2008, p. 230). In practice, though, there needs io be some more ready-to-use guidelines for the learners to do the guessing. Nation (2001) considers ‘Buessing to be a (Nassaji, 2003) process of five steps: ‘Stepl: Decide on the part of speech of the unknown word. Step 2: Look at the immediate context of the word, simplifying it grammatically if necessary.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www: ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Step 3: Look at the wider context of the word, ie. the relationship with adjoining sentences or clauses. Step 4: Guess. Step 5: Check the guess (Nation, 2001, p. 257). Deciding on the part of speech, because of its importance, as it may change the meaning of the word, has been considered as the first step. Walters (2004) have also emphasized it in order for a successful guess However, not all the guesses are correct ones. One of the causes of unsuccessful guesses was found, by DeCarrico (2001) and Nassaji (2003), to be the similarity of the unknown words to that of wiat the learners already knew in their form Regarding the necessity of explicit strategy training, the learners need to be trained in how to guess or not, and a number of studies unanimously agreed with the direct teaching of this strategy in particular, and other learning strategies in general. Hunt and Beglar (2002) and Schmitt (2008), for instance, have suggested experimenting with guessing from context that requires to be supported by the teacher. According to Walters (2006), the explicit instruction of general inferencing (here, guessing the ‘meaning of the unknown words from context) could be very helpful for the beginners especially to develop their reading comprehension rather than for the purpose of vocabulary learning. Shokouhi and Askari (2010) also proved this effective in a study of 120 male and female “university students, In reading, a dictionary might be used for the purpose of comprehension, ie. decoding. The leamers ‘may want to check the meaning of some unknown words or to confirm their guesses using a dictionary. Tt should bbe noted, however, that using a dictionary is not as easy as it might appear and that the leamers should know ‘where to begin from and where to go to. Nation (2001) has listed four steps in the use of dictionaries in reading ‘comprehension: Step 1: Get information from the context where the word occurred, Step 2: Find the dictionary entry Step 3: Choose the right sub-entry. Step 4: Relate the meaning to the context and decide if it fits Similar to guessing and the need for it to be taught, Coady (1997) and Cook (2008) have elaborated on the importance of explicit training of dictionary use as Vocabulary-relaed sirategy in reading, As for the third strategy, an awareness of the English ‘word parts can lead the leamers to make deductions about the meaning of a word from its actual form (Cook, 2008, pp. 60) as the “majority of English words come French, Latin, or Greek and the majority of these have word parts, particularly prefixes and suffixes” (Nation, 2002, pp 271-2) . A successful use of this strategy takes place ‘when the reader recognizes the existence of such a part 28 (ic. a suffix, prefix, and root) and tries to understand the ‘meaning of the whole unknown word using the known part, This strategy, like the ones discussed above, as Nation (2001) states, requires to be explicitly taught to make the learners able to efficiently take benefit from it, ‘A conclusion that can be drawn from the reviewed literature is that in reading, strategies which are related to vocabulary are very important and the strategies need to be taught explicitiy. This is emphasized by Mitchell, Myles, & Marsden (2013), especially with “adult learners and more academically oriented students” (p. 145). Hu and Tian (2012) have also mentioned the importance of explaining the rationale behind teaching strategies to the students to make them aware of the reason why they are dealing with the strategies (p. 245). Ill. METHODOLOGY A. Context ofthe Study This is a descriptive study based on a larger study of the cognitions and practices of three Iranian EFL teachers with regard to vocabulary in General English classes at the University of Mazandaran (UMZ). The reason for doing this study at the UMZ, was the fact that the present author has received his B.A. from that university, and because of the rapport between the researcher and the teachers there, the same university was chosen to conduct the present study in, as the relationship between the researcher and the participants is of paramount significance in case studies (Duff, 2008). ‘Also, the researcher's familiarity with the General English course in the UMZ, could be another cause (Borg, 2006), ‘At UMZ, all the B.A. and B.Sc, students, except those who study English Language and Literature and TEFL, have to pass this General English course, meeting twice @ week, which is offered by the Department of English Language and Literature. The primary goal of this course is to improve students’ reading ability and there are some considerable parts of the one obligatory textbook Reading Academically: A Task-Oriented Approach that are devoted (0 vocabulary and grammar. However, there is no observed evidence (0 express where (and how much) vocabulary appears in the teachers’ lesson plans. This study aims to observe how vocabulary was treated in one of these reading classes and how the teacher tried to reach the compromise that Harmer (2007) has longed for in order to overcome the paradox. B, Participant Ashkan, as shown in Table I, is 40-50 years old. He's got a BA. in English Translation He continued his education in TEFL and TESOL, respectively for M.A. and Ph.D. He states that he has been a teacher for more than 25 years and has been teaching EFL at the University of M. for more than 10 years, Finally it mightInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ila:if) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Dee be noteworthy that Ashkan has been the researcher's teacher at the B.A. To ensure the confidentiality of his identity, in this study, he is referred to by a pseudonym (ie. Ashkan) and his exact age and experience are not presented (Duff, 2008, p. 149). Ashkan has taught a variety of courses related to TEFL at the BA and MA levels, however, the data for this study was collected in ‘one of his General English class. The whale [Teaching | Reaioatip BS) 4 | | 4 | teaching | crear | withthe 4 {2 [2 |= | exprione | ‘ume | rocacter * z |g | Mette | More | Tecerat = B |Z | 2syeus | amie | Ba FE a C. Data Collection ‘The researcher had classroom observations which were all audio-recorded using a SONY IC RECORDER (ICD- UXSIF) during the whole spring semester in 2011. This counted up to 26 sessions for each participant. There ‘were two reasons for this number of observations, firstly, to decrease the effect of researcher's presence on teachers’ performance by increasing the number of observations in each teacher's classroom, although itis generally agreed upon that the mere presence of a stranger might have some effect on everything. Second, the observations were extended throughout the whole semester in one particular class in witich the participant was the teacher, to catch a holistic picture of what the teacher would do. In order to do a naturalistic ‘observation, no observation checklist was used; however, hile observing the class, ficld notes were taken (See Appendix A for an exam), Tt should be mentioned ere that the researcher, according to Borg (2006), was a non-participant observer, ‘except for some eases in which he would be one of the :members in the pair works or group works, but he did not have any participation in the teacher's teaching. As the participant was completely aware of the researcher's presence and his purpose, he can be considered as a “participant-as-observer” (Cohen et al, 2000) whose focus was on any behavior that was related to vocabulary. ‘The audio tracks and the typed field notes were all Jmporied into NVivo. To collect the data, the teachers, as the original data ‘was to be collected for a larger study, were personally contacted by the researcher before the study began. The purpose of the study, the data collection procedures, and ‘whatever he was required to do in the course of the study ‘were explained. February 12" 2011 dated the beginning of both the spring semester and the observations for this study ebruary-June 2011). And since in the first session of 29 the courses, the teachers normally provide an introduction to the course, including the objectives and procedures, the observations began by the very first session of the course and they continued until the end of the semester. The ‘observations were done in two phases. This division was due to the national Noruz holidays in Iran, as the longest interval in the spring semester (ic. 20 days in this ease). In the first phase, there were 9 observations. The second phase of the observations started afer Norw. and ‘continued until the end of the semester. D. Data Analysis ‘To conduct the data analysis for this study, NVivo, has ‘been used which is briefly introduced in winat follows. NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software the eighth version of which has been used here. It was used to help in storing, managing, and analyzing the large amount of data which has been (and was being) collected via the four instruments (in the original study). In NVivo, the ‘materials can be stored as three different types of sources, i.e. internals, externals, memos. For this study, the data has been stored as internals since they refer to any type of data which is collected in the course ofa study and can be imported into the program. To do the coding in NVivo, it is possible to create the nodes (the same as codes) before the coding or while doing the coding When the nodes are created, no matter ‘of what type the source is, by simply highlighting the targeted portion of the source (eg, text, image, audio, oF video) and clicking on the related node(s), the section will be coded against the particular node(s). Then, it is possible to represent, how much a particular node had ‘been observed in a particular source or in a collection of sources. It must be noted here, that NVivo, or any other similar programs, will not do the analysis themselves. According to Berard and Ryan (2010), it is the rescarcher that asks the question and secks to find the ‘answer from the data. What the program, however, does is to assist the researcher in finding the answer. FE. Coding It can be claimed that the data analysis in this study took place, in a cyclic fashion, both inductively and deductively (Le, an abductive approach) which started without any pre-defined themes, toward coding with the identified themes, and finally, being open to the emerging themes Gibbs, 2007; Lewins and Silver, 2008). The coding took place through three different stages (Holton, 2007; Lewins and Silver, 2008). Open coding was the first stage in which the whole data was scrutinized in segments to do the indexing of the data in accordance with the nodes. Next, axial coding was conducted within which the coded materials were classified into categories and the relationships were sought for. Finally, to illustrate the findings, those instances which could best represent aInternational Journal of Language and App! 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press urna et eo theme were identified, ie. selective coding, among wich ‘one was randomly selected to be presented in the results chapter. Some steps were also taken to ensure. the credibility and the trustworthiness of the results. These steps are developed in the following part. F. Triangulation Triangulation which, according to Nunan and Bailey (2009), refers to the multiplicity of the perspectives with regard to the data, occurred via having another graduate student of TEFL code the whole data as a second operator for the same research project in NVivo. To ensure the trustworthiness of the findings (Kincheloc, 2003), the jintercoder agreement was. determined which revealed that there was an agreement in the two operators? codings. The index was obiained through “dividing the ‘number of items upon which coders agree{d] by the total ‘number of items that were coded” (Nunan and Bailey, 2009, p. 428). The two codings are said to be consistent if there is at least 85 % agreement. For this study, there was ‘more than 98% of agreement between the two coders in regard to the whole coding. It should be noted that the items on which the coders have had different points of view, were subject to later negotiations and it was found that the second coders” unfamiliarity with the participants and his not being present in the observation site were the ‘major causes of the disagreement, even though, in some cases the first researcher's judgment was not @ proper one, In this section, attempts were made to present Ashkan’s classroom practice on vocabulary concerning two aspeets of his teaching, namely, what was taught and how it was taught, In doing so, ‘mentioned items will be provided in transcribed form so as to illustrate what actually happened in the participant's leaching behavior. A. What Aspects of Vocabulary did the Participant Address? Here, those aspects of vocabulary that were attended to in Ashkan’s class. will be mentioned in order of the overall amount that they occurred throughout the semester (i.e. 26 sessions) Examining all the act during the whole semester, it can be concluded that he was focusing on four different thin attention to different aspects of vocabulary constituted, approximately, 26% of the whole semester excluding the midterm exam session, This amount has been agreed upon up to more than 98% by the two coders, as shown in Table IL Pronunciation In Ashkan’s class, pronunciation has been the mostly attended aspect of vocabulary (15.27% of the whole semester). The key words sections, the texts, and sometimes the teacher provided the words whose pronunciation was practiced. Also, Ashkan introduced the phonetic symbols and the stress mark to help the learners use their dictionary for the word pronunciation. Meaning Next, in Ashkan’s classroom practice, he paid a lot of attention to the meaning of the words (9.02% of the whole semester). This happened either in the texts or in the key words of the book. The Persian meaning of the words was the primary focus; however, attention to @ ‘word's synonym was also observed in rare cases. ans students, Table II represents the portion that each aspect of vocabulary has been attended to by Ashkan in each e] lq 2 , se EEE came Peo oe Pe IV. RESULTS “sessions 5.0 15 [00 [10 [310 99 wo see ee seer eee some instances of the ‘session 80 30 [| 00 | 00 | 130 Too 2 ies yh see ee cee |e cen a Ait ePaper is erie ae Se see Pa tare tee SE EEEEEEEEEEEEE IEEE ies that Ashkan has done ‘sessionii23 “mid-lerm exam, 4 CRIMES Bt ee eH ae e rn le session. In this part of the article, the four aspects will be briefly introduced; as they are more elaborated while being exemplified in the next part (i.e. How did Ashkan treat vocabulary?). It should be noted that Ashkan’s 30International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ila:if) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press = Part of speech ‘The third focus was on the part of speech of a word in Ashkan’s teaching (1.06% of the whole semester. This ‘was primarily used when the learners were to guess the meaning of the unknown words from context. Also, in order for the meaning of a word to be checked in dictionary, Ashkan used to make sure that the students, were aware of the part of speech of the word in that particular context Words not important on their own (assisting learners) Finally, Ashkan tended to make the students aware of ‘and help them understand the role that words play in their ‘understanding and that although the words are necessary in order for understanding to take place, they are not the ‘very goal (at least) in that General English course. So, the last focus was on showing that as the words are not the aim on theit own, it was not necessary to know all the ‘words in a text 10 be able to understand it (0.64% of the ‘whole semester). B. How did Ashkan Treat Vocabulary? In this section, to give the reader a picture of Ashkan's actual teaching, an instance of each activity on ‘vocabulary will be provided. Also, it will be mentioned ‘what is focused upon in each activity type. As stated cearlier, the transcriptions of classroom interactions. are used here and the sentences are provided without change. Noteworthy it might be that the Persian sentences have been translated into English and the English ones appear with no change (See Appendix B for list of the symbols used in transcription). Guessing Guessing has been one of the ways through which Ashkan has used to deal with the meaning of the words, Guessing was used after reading the texts or in the key words section. This was done via clarifying the part of speech and situating the word within the particular context. Three instances of which are presented here. Guessing via the context: To help the leamers guess the meaning of an unknown word, Ashkan would try t0 clarify the context in which the word has been used. An instance of such behavior was observed in the fifth session while working on the first text in Lesson One, after having once read the text, where a student asks the teacher about the meaning of the word ‘snerd” in the sentence “A country girl was once walking slowly along a snerd” which is a bold face word, i. intended by the authors to be guessed. Extract 1 Ashkan (A); ‘snerd’!!? Oh! Well! What’s the meaning of country”? SI: related to village 31 ‘A: yes, right! Now, the sentence! What do you think the meaning of this sentence? Read it and see if you ean ‘understand $1: “along the snerd”? ‘A: No! Read the very sentence and see if you can find cout the meaning. (lhe student reads the sentence, translating the sentence) SI: Itsays agit. Ac ahaa... SI: “once was walking slowly through. ‘T: what’ the meaning of ‘along’? Si: through.. T: No, it's not through, S2: (she says the correct meaning) A: right! Let him say it himself” Along... $1: (silence) ‘A: possibly? Sl: (silence) ‘A: Welll It was a village, here we have along, so ‘what's possibly the meaning of snerd? $2: place! ‘A: yes! It must be a place, path, road. ‘something like this (AObsVS) then he starts it mst be Guessing via the part of speech: Ashkan also tended to ask the students to guess the meaning of the key words in the class using the meaning and the example provided by the book. In doing so, he sometimes referred their attention to the part of speech of the questioned word. An instance of this is presented from the 11" session as tying to guess the meaning of the word ‘result in’, Extract 2 Ac the next word? Ss: ‘result in’ ‘A: result in! Well! Is there anyone who could guess its meaning? ‘SI: finally 2: consequence Ss: (XXX) A: OK! OK! Consequence, finally! Both of these ‘Buesses are very good, but it seems that you've not been very careful. You ask why? Next to this word, it is written ‘y."! what's the meaning of y."2 Ss: verb A: Its a verb! So? Ss: (XXX) ‘82; (the student says the meaning) ‘A> yes! (Ashkan just makes them notice the preposition)! Very good! (AObsv11) Guessing in the exam: In both midterm and final ‘exams, there was an item in which the students were to ‘guess the meaning of some marked words which have appeared in a reading text. The students were intended to use the contextual clues provided by the text and toInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press somehow guess what the marked words could mean in that particular context (AObsv23). A part of this item is provided in Appendix C. Asking/Saying the meaning ‘Ashkan tried to deal with the meaning of the words in different ways. He either said the meaning himself or posed the question to other students. The meaning was clarified by saying the Persian equivalent himself, oF ‘posing the question to other students, In some rare cases, using a familiar synonym of the word, and working on the arts of word seemed to be the ways via which Astkan managed to work on the meaning of the words. Referring them to their dictionary and skipping the words were also sometimes practiced which are illustrated in the next parts. Saying the Persian equivalent: Saying the Persian ‘equivalent of the words by the teacher has been repeated frequently in Ashkan’s classes, as he would, almost after reading cach text, allot some time to the learners’ questions on the text, specifically on the words. As an ‘example of this, Ashkan’ saying the meaning of only five words in the text which are asked by the learners is presented. Extract 3 A; Well! now in pairs, decide on five words that you think if you knew them, you could understand the text. 1 will say the meaning of only five words... (pause) ‘A: Well? has anyone found anything? SI: “literature”? ‘T literature! (Ashkan says the meaning)! Next word? 82: ‘laer"? A: latter means the second one! OK, two have gone! More ‘83: “investigate”? ‘A: ahaaa...investigate! Out of these words, this one is a good word, investigate means study! 'S4: ‘source"? ‘A: (Ashkan says the meaning)! Only one more word. 'S5: the last line, “wonder”? ‘A; wonder means curious to know (Abs?) Asking the Persian equivalent and a synonym: In some cases, less than the times Ashkan said the meaning Of the words himself, he posed the questions to other students to answer. However, in one case, Ashkan did this in companion with saying the synonym of the word, which was among the rarely occurring ways, fora single word, Extract 4 SI: What’ the meaning of “object”? ‘A: those who know....what’s its meaning’? Ss: (they say the meaning) 2 A: Yes, right! What is its synonym? hmm? A difficult word, for example, that nobody knows (joking)... he writes ‘thing’ on the board! Ss; thing (AObsv15) Parts of a word: Among Ashkan's rarely-used strategies to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words, has been studying the word paris. For example, once a student asked the meaning of ‘adulthood’ as a word in the text and here is what came afterwards Extract 5 A: ‘adulthood’! Well! (Ashkan goes and writes the word on the board appreciating the question. He continues...) ‘A: ‘hood’ is a suffix, and when we want to write it down, we put a hyphen, then the suffix. This hyphen shows that the word is @ suffix ‘hood’? It means period, for example, look at this word (Ashkan writes ‘motherhood’ on the board and asks students to read it.) Ss: motherhood ‘A: what's the meaning of motherhood? Ss: (they say the meaning) ‘A: Right! “fatherhood”? (Ashkan says the meaning himself) “adulthood”? Ss: (they say the meaning) A: correct! (and T. concludes with this) it’s a rather productive suffix ‘-hood’! (AObsv12) Dictionary Another strategy in Ashkan’s teaching which was related to vocabulary was using dictionary, He used and introduced dictionary, primarily, for pronunciation. Also, dictionary was used to understand the meaning of some words in some cases. Pronuneiation: For this purpose, Ashkan explicitly taught some of the phonetic symbots and had the students siudy the remained symbols by themselves (AObsv6). In the next session, they could ask their questions and Ashkan clarified some of the difficult symbols (AObsv6). ‘And in the next session, they took an exam on the phonetic symbols (AObsv7). Later on, every other week Ashkan would write some words on the board and ask them to check the correct pronunciation for them. Once, he used the students’ own names as the subject of inquiry to be written in phonetic symbols (AObsv7). However, he sometimes directly corrected their pronunciation mistakes after they finished reading without reference 10 dictionary. Meaning: Sometimes for the meaning of some words, on the one hand, Ashkan would ask the students to look them up in a dictionary inside the classroom to know ‘what the meaning is. On the other hand, as it was ‘mentioned earlier, not every word in the text was studied, 0 that sometimes, Ashkan referred the learers to their dictionary to find the answer to their question on theInternational Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ila:if) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of (Die ‘meaning of some words which were not considered as important for the development of that particular lesson, Collaborate with their partners Ashkan tended to benefit a lot fiom making the students collaborate with their partners, but not that much for vocabulary although he provided them with some useful points on how to behave while collaborating However, in some cases, they were to work in pairs and share their ideas for the meaning and pronunciation of some words. Throughout the semester, Ashkan used 10 remind the learners not to shoot their questions to him before giving it enough thoughts and collaborating with their friends. An instance occurred with the meaning of the key wordy in Lesson One in which the students were involved in collaboration to find out the meaning of the ‘words (AObsv4). Similarly, in some cases, the students were asked to work on the pronunciation of some words Ina session, for example, Ashkan wrote three words (i.e. table, tablet, and indict) on the board and asked the students to pronounce the words. They did well on the first words, but could not deal with the two other words So, he suggested them to collaborate with their partners to see if they could come up with any conclusion (A0bsv6). Skip the unimportant words Finally, skipping the words, ic. not attending to some words, was observed in almost every text that was studied in the class. If the words were of no importance for a better understanding of the text or if they were of no value in achieving the educational aims of the lesson, Ashkan would avoid taking time on working with the ‘meaning of the individual words. This could be observed in the reading text and, even more than that, inthe task instructions, as for the latter, he would mostly say the Persian meaning of the instructions himself V. DISCUSSION ‘The participant of this study emphasized that because the focus of the course and the textbook designed for it, ‘was reading comprehension, vocabulary must not receive ‘uch attention. He believed that itis the text which is 10 ‘be understood and the reading skills to be practiced rather than the words. The “paradox” that Harmer (2007) has referred to seems to have been observed here, too, in the sense that the students are claimed to be able to understand the text without attending to the meaning of individual words. However, personally, the teacher believed in the importance of knowing the words in order for leaning (and understanding) to take place and he used different techniques to deal with unknown words, not all of which are of significance to the present discussion. AS a result, it can be concluded that his practice could reach a compromise in this sense. As for Ashkan’s treating the strategies, it can be inferred that he 3 ‘was particularly aware of the importance of strategies which has been supported by Anderson (2003) and Mehrpour and Rahimi (2010). ‘The participant gave the students’ guessing ability some practice, but he did not think of explicitly teaching them how to guess whereas different steps are enumerated by a number of researchers to help the leamers guess more systematically (Nation, 2001; Stemberg et al, 2008; and Walters, 2004). As for the dictionary, Ashkan paid some attention to familiarizing the students with what can be found in a dictionary and hhow they can use it (Coady 1997; Cook, 2008; and Nation, 2001), and devoted some class time to dictionary work. Finally, the last strategy which was rarely observed in Ashkan’s class, was teaching through the word parts This seems to help the students in their reading and according to Nation (2001), in order for the students, to develop an understanding of the word parts and to use them while reading, they need to be explicitly taught. However, when it comes to his not explicitly teaching the strategies, the justification has been reported to be the fact that the focus must be reading comprehension rather than vocabulary. Here, Walter (2006)'s observation seems not to have been attended to, although they are related to vocabulary. ‘VI. CONCLUSION ‘The aim of this investigation was to provide a picture ‘of an EFL teacher's vocabulary treatment in reading class and based on what has been observed, it can be ‘concluded that the participant in this study made a great attempt to provide a balance between vocabulary and the ‘major focus of the course, ie. reading comprehension, So, the expected compromise (Harmer, 2007). was somehow reached by Ashkan’s attending. primarily, to reading comprehension and his going for the strategies, i.e. guessing, dictionary, and word parts. It has been observed that the three emphasized strategies were worked upon in the class, the amount of attention to each of each was different, though. ‘The results ofthis study cannot (and are not meant to) bbe generalized to other teachers as this is a case study. However, it can be considered as a pioneering study 0 take a teacher’s practical teaching into consideration with ‘an emphasis on vocabulary strategies in a reading class In the meanwhile, as it is true with the nature of case studies, the transferability of the results is desired and the following points can be taken into consideration. The participant teacher had more than 20 years of experience at the time of data collection, but ie did not take an important finding in the literature into consideration. However, he did his best to create a balance in addressing vocabulary in a reading course. As a result, it can be strongly recommended that the teachers get aware of the literature, and to consider the major objectives of the ‘course witile deciding upon their teaching procedures.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) (© 2015 Khate Sefid Press Appendix A: OBSERVATION FIELD NOTES (AN EXAMPLE) ‘Topic: Ashkan # 8 ‘Year: 2011 Month: March Date: 8* 8:03 am, Teacher (T) enters, sits and greets the students (Ss) 8:04 a.m. T refers to the questions asked on the reading text about the paragraph’s strange in the previous session! T: have you read it? Some say no! ‘Tis the paragraph terrifying? SI: ittalks about the inefficiency of observation 2: the last line does not have any explanation; the explanation appears atthe top S3: the sentences are not related to each other! They are not organized TT talks about the chaos in the text and says “page 13, read the text again and see if you can find the disorganization!” An S is asked to go to the board to write the ‘ranslation of the 1* sentence with the help of the teacher. Then another S to see if the sentences are related. “no relation” Tasks what ‘simply’ means? Ss say something like ‘easily’ while T says “here, itis “only” T: what conclusion do we get? $s talkto each other T: what does the authors of the book want to say? T helps them translate their ideas into English SI: the authors were measuring our smarts S2: paragraphs make meaning, rather than sentences S3: each sentence is to attract our mind and to involve us and then to say something T vwraps up “a set of sentence(s) which has a beginning and an end with unity.” SA: not necessarily is a set of sentences a text! And the meaning of the single words. is important, oo! SS: not by putting any two sentences can we ‘make a text, they need to be related T: whats the role of the reader in reading a text, based on the discussion we have had? T encourages them to work in groups rather than individually! SI: one reads it, perceives it, and understands it! $2: one should think of the type of the words and verbs! 3: the English type of writing is different from that of us! Ss are asked to think more on it T: look at p. 14! The first task! And we'll get back to this question! 817 8:25 853 34 V —what’s the meaning of ‘improve’? Ss say different meaning as nouns! And T says the exact meaning! 8:58 An Sasks the meaning of the word ‘selection’ in the task instruction and T urges them to think ‘more about their discussion, the meaning of the instruction, and esp. the authors’ choosing the ‘word ‘selection’ rather than text or paragraph! 9:08 T: for nest session, reorder the sentences to ‘make a paragraph and say your reasons! 9:08 T calls the roll! 9:12 They talk about having the other sessions before Noruz off, while T disagrees 9:20 that’s it Appendix B: SPECIAL TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS A Ashkan S student Ss Students Obsv observation 272 the exact English words/phrases were used. ©) tocontain the researcher's notes * * — tocontain the questioned words “ * to-contain the materials read fiom the book ' interruption xxx speech not understandable speech to be continued Appendix C: ASHKAN’S GUESSING ITEM Iran is part of the region called the Middle East. It shares borders with seven other countries, aq and Turkey lie to the west. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan are to the north. To the cast are Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iran hhas a northern coastline on the Caspian Sea and a southern coastline on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The land area of the country is 1,648,200 (square kilometers). Iran also has several islands in the Persian Gulf ACKNOWLEDGMENT Special thanks must be expressed for the participant teacher who was really supportive in the course of this study.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 27-35 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ila:if) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press Dee REFERENCES ‘Anderson, N. (2003). Reading. In D. Nunan (Fd), Practical English language teaching (pp. 67-86). New York: McGraw-Hill Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: Research and practice. London: Continuut. Brown, D. (2010). What aspects of vocabulary knowledge do textbooks give attention to? Language Teaching Research, ‘15(1), 83-97. di 10.1177/1362168810383345 Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. New York: ‘Longman. Coady, J. (1997). L2_voeabulary acquisition: A synthesis of research. In J.C. T. N. Huckin (Ed.), Second language vocabulary acquisition: A rationale for pedagogy (pp. 273-290). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2000). Research methods. in education. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Cook, V. (2008). Second language learning and language reaching. London: Hodder Education. DeCarrico, J. S. (2001). Vocabulary learning and teaching, In M, Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as @ second or foreign language (pp. 285-299). Boston: Heinle & Heinle, Dull, P. A. (2008), Case study research in applied linguisties. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Engelbar, S. M., & Theverkauf, B. (1999), Defining context within vocabulary acquisition, Language Teaching Research, 3(1), 51-69. Gibbs, G. 2007). Analyzing qualitative data. London Sage Publications Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching. Essex: Pearson Education Holton, J. A. (2007). The coding process and challenges. In A. Bryant & K. Charmaz.(Eds.), The Sage handbook of grounded theory (pp. 264-289). London: Sage publications. Hu, B,, & Tian, L, (2012), Do teachers and students share’ similar beliefS about teaching and leaning strategies. System, 40, 237-254. doi 10,1016, system.2012.04.001 Hunt, A. B., D. (2002). Current research and practice in teaching vocabulary. In J. C. R. W. A. Renandya (Ed. Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of ‘current practice (pp. 258-266). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kincheloe, J. L. (2003). Teachers as researchers Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. London: RoutledgeF alm. 35 Lewins, A., & Silver, C. (2008), Using software in qualitative research: A step-by-step guide. London: Sage Publications, ‘Mehrpour, S., & Rahimi, M. (2010), The impact of ‘eeneral and specific vocabulary knowledge on reading and listening comprehension: A case of Iranian EPL, leamers. System, 38, 292-300. doi 10.10164.system.2010.01.004 Mitchell, R., Myles, F., & Marsden, F. (2013). Second Janguage learning theories (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Nassaji, H. (2003), L2 vocabulary learning from context: Strategies, knowledge sources, and theit relationship with success in L2 lexical’ inferencing TESOL Quarterly, 37, 645-670 Nation, I. S. P. (2001), Learning vocabulary in another Tanguage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nation, I. 8. P. (2002). Best practice in vocabulary teaching and learning. In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 267-272). Cambridge: ‘Cambridge University Press, ‘Numan, D., & Bailey, K. M, (2009), Fxploring second Tanguage classroom research: A comprehensive guide, Boston: Heinle. ‘Schmitt, N. (2008). Review article: Instructed second language vocabulary leaming, Language Teaching Research, 123), 329363, Shokouhi, H., & Askari, H. (2009). The effect of contextual guessing strategy on vocabulary and reading comprehension of Iranian EEL pre-university students in reading authentic texts. Paper presented at the The First National Conference on Language, Discourse and Pragmatics, Ahvaz, fran, Stemberg, R. J, Kaufinan, J (2008). Applied Intelligence. University Press ‘Walters, J. (2004). Teaching the use of context to infer meaning: A longitudinal survey of L1 and L2 vocabulary research. Language Teaching, 37, 243-252. doi: 10.1017/80261444805002491 Walters, J. (2006). Methods of teaching inferring meaning from context. RELC Journal, 372), 176-190. & Grigorenko, E. L. Cambridge: Cambridge AUTHOR Reza Farhang has received his M.A. in TEFL from Arak University, Arak, Iran, He has taught English in different institutes for around ten years. Currently, he is a teacher at the Iran Language Institute, He is mostly interested in language teacher cognition and classroom research.International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(1): 36-43 Published online March 15, 2015 (http://www ili) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press =z Online Learning Communities and Formative Peer Assessment: Two Case Studies in the Field of Humanities Maria J. Vera-Cazorla Department of Modern Languages, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain Email: mariajesus.vera@ulpgc.es Abstract — While there is considerable research on online ‘teaching, less has been written about online peer assessment and feedback at a university level within the context of learning communities in the field of Humanities. Advances in the internet have helped to promote a social constructivist learning theory more in keeping with the idea of preparing ‘our students to work collaboratively and communicate effectively. The purpose of this article is to describe the ‘author's practical experiences with two different subjects at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain: Lesson Planning According to the Communicative Methodological Principles, a post-graduate subject which is part of a 200-hour course on Spanish as a foreign language, ‘and English IV, a compulsory quarterly subject in the second year of the degree in Modern Languages. We will discuss the benefits that students and teachers can obtain by being part of a learning community and using online Tormative peer assessment. Index Terms— Learning communities, Peer assessment, ‘Humanities 1 INTRODUCTION Within the theoretical framework of the social constructivist learning theory, it is believed that learning is more effective when students are actively engaged in the learning process rather than when they are receiving knowledge passively. Likewise, “learning is not only active but interactive” (Hiltz, 1998), and successful peer interactions, whether online or not, have been found to result in mote effective learning. The expansion of a social view of leaming, the increased interest in the concept of community and cooperative leaming, and the advances in the internet and other communication technologies have fostered a paradigmatic shift to collaborative pedagogy in education. Ke & Hoadley (2009) define online leaming Received March 9, 2015; Accepted March 13, 2015 © 2015 Khate Sefid Press 36 communities as “a developed activity system in which a group of leamers, unified by a common cause and empowered by a supportive virtual environment, engage in collaborative learning within an atmosphere of trust and commitment” (p. 489). For Rovai (2002), the essential indicators of a community of students include the existence of a community sprit, trust and interactivity between peers, and common expectations amongst the students. According to Thurston (2005), online peer support “involves conflict and challenge (reflecting Piagetian schools of thought) and on another level it involves scaffolding and working within the leamer's Zone of Proximal Development” (p. 356). There are many advantages when working within a learning community such as the increase of students” persistence in courses due to sirong feelings of community, the flow of information among all learners, the availability of support when needed, the commitment to group goals, the cooperation among members, and the satisfaction with group efforts are among the ones mentioned by Rovai (2002). In the present paper, we present two experiences in the use of formative peer assessment within the context of asynchronous learning communities in the teaching of two subjects at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Spain: Lesson Planning According to the Communicative Methodological Principles, a subject within a 200-hour post-graduate course on Spanish as @ foreign language (SFL), migration and intercultural curriculum, and English IV, a compulsory semester ‘module in year two of the degree in Modern Languages. Both cases show how the redesigning of formative assessment within an asynchronous leaming community can be used to enhance student leaming and how technology can support this type of practices. Bearing in mind Brown and Adler's (2008) statement that “one of the best ways fo learn something is, afterall, t0 teach it to others” (p. 18), we used Johnson and Johnson's Theory of Cooperative Learning (2006) as heuristic guidelines in both cases ‘The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 briefly reviews the concept of online peer assessment and itsInternational Journal of Language and Applied Ling 2015; 1(1): 36-48 Published online March 15, 2015 (htp/www.ilaif) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) © 2015 Khate Sefid Press International urna of (Die different types. Sections 3 and 4 describe our two case studies which include information about the participants, the material, the procedure, the results, along with a brief discussion of these cases. Section 5 states the conclusions

You might also like

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

  

  From Everand

  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

  Mark Manson

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (5794)
• The Effect of Task Repetition and Consciousness-Raising On Iranian L2 Learners' Writing Performance

  

  Document9 pages

  The Effect of Task Repetition and Consciousness-Raising On Iranian L2 Learners' Writing Performance

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

  

  From Everand

  The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

  Meik Wiking

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (400)
• • Magazines
  • Podcasts
  • Sheet music
• The Effect of Collaborative Peer - and Teacher-Scaffolding On Iranian EFL Learners' Intentional and Incidental Grammar Learning

  

  Document8 pages

  The Effect of Collaborative Peer - and Teacher-Scaffolding On Iranian EFL Learners' Intentional and Incidental Grammar Learning

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

  

  From Everand

  Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

  Phil Knight

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (537)
• Arabic ESL Orthographic Errors in English: Production Difficulty in Comparison To Korean ESL Performance

  

  Document7 pages

  Arabic ESL Orthographic Errors in English: Production Difficulty in Comparison To Korean ESL Performance

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

  

  From Everand

  Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

  Margot Lee Shetterly

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (895)
• Team Teaching in The University: Description of A Collaborative Experience Between The Computer Engineering and The English Departments

  

  Document7 pages

  Team Teaching in The University: Description of A Collaborative Experience Between The Computer Engineering and The English Departments

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• The Yellow House: A Memoir (2019 National Book Award Winner)

  

  From Everand

  The Yellow House: A Memoir (2019 National Book Award Winner)

  Sarah M. Broom

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (98)
• Pronunciation or Listening Enhancement: Two Birds With One Stone

  

  Document7 pages

  Pronunciation or Listening Enhancement: Two Birds With One Stone

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

  

  From Everand

  The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

  Siddhartha Mukherjee

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (271)
• English Spelling Errors in Hindi Speaking Children

  

  Document7 pages

  English Spelling Errors in Hindi Speaking Children

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story

  

  From Everand

  A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story

  Dave Eggers

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (231)
• The Effect of Product/Process-Oriented Approach To Teaching and Learning Writing Skill On University Student Performances

  

  Document6 pages

  The Effect of Product/Process-Oriented Approach To Teaching and Learning Writing Skill On University Student Performances

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

  

  From Everand

  Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

  Chris Voss

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (838)
• A Syllabic Error Analysis of Young EFL Learners' Spelling Tasks

  

  Document6 pages

  A Syllabic Error Analysis of Young EFL Learners' Spelling Tasks

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

  

  From Everand

  Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

  Angela Duckworth

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (588)
• Vol. 1 No.2 Cover

  

  Document11 pages

  Vol. 1 No.2 Cover

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

  

  From Everand

  On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

  Naomi Klein

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (73)
• Reaching The Compromise: An Iranian EFL Teacher S Treatment of Vocabulary in Reading by Reza Farhang

  

  Document9 pages

  Reaching The Compromise: An Iranian EFL Teacher S Treatment of Vocabulary in Reading by Reza Farhang

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Yes Please

  

  From Everand

  Yes Please

  Amy Poehler

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1891)
• Online Learning Communities and Formative Peer Assessment: Two Case Studies in The Field of Humanities by María J. Vera-Cazorla

  

  Document8 pages

  Online Learning Communities and Formative Peer Assessment: Two Case Studies in The Field of Humanities by María J. Vera-Cazorla

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

  

  From Everand

  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

  Ashlee Vance

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (474)
• A Comparison Between The Effectiveness of Mnemonic Versus Non-Mnemonic Strategies in Foreign Language Learning Context by Fatemeh Ahmadniay Motlagh & Naser Rashidi

  

  Document8 pages

  A Comparison Between The Effectiveness of Mnemonic Versus Non-Mnemonic Strategies in Foreign Language Learning Context by Fatemeh Ahmadniay Motlagh & Naser Rashidi

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

  

  From Everand

  Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

  Gilbert King

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (266)
• A Naturalistic Inquiry Into An Innovative Teaching Practice of Establishing Students' Research Agendas by Igor Smerdov

  

  Document7 pages

  A Naturalistic Inquiry Into An Innovative Teaching Practice of Establishing Students' Research Agendas by Igor Smerdov

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

  

  From Everand

  The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

  George Packer

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (45)
• Cover of Vol. 1 No. 1

  

  Document6 pages

  Cover of Vol. 1 No. 1

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Fear: Trump in the White House

  

  From Everand

  Fear: Trump in the White House

  Bob Woodward

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (738)
• EFL Learners' Perceptions of (Im) Politeness: The Possible Gender Differences by Mavadat Saidi & Mohadese Khosravi

  

  Document11 pages

  EFL Learners' Perceptions of (Im) Politeness: The Possible Gender Differences by Mavadat Saidi & Mohadese Khosravi

  International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

  No ratings yet
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

  

  From Everand

  Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (234)
• Principles: Life and Work

  

  From Everand

  Principles: Life and Work

  Ray Dalio

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (599)
• Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

  

  From Everand

  Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

  Frank McCourt

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (440)
• The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

  

  From Everand

  The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

  Thomas L. Friedman

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (2259)
• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

  

  From Everand

  The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

  Brené Brown

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1090)
• Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore

  

  From Everand

  Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore

  Jay Sekulow

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (137)
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

  

  From Everand

  The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

  Ben Horowitz

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (344)
• Bad Feminist: Essays

  

  From Everand

  Bad Feminist: Essays

  Roxane Gay

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1015)
• Steve Jobs

  

  From Everand

  Steve Jobs

  Walter Isaacson

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (806)
• John Adams

  

  From Everand

  John Adams

  David McCullough

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (2409)
• The Glass Castle: A Memoir

  

  From Everand

  The Glass Castle: A Memoir

  Jeannette Walls

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (1712)
• The Outsider: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Outsider: A Novel

  Stephen King

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1839)
• The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

  M.L. Stedman

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (789)
• The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

  

  From Everand

  The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

  Viet Thanh Nguyen

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (121)
• Brooklyn: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Brooklyn: A Novel

  Colm Toibin

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (1937)
• The Woman in Cabin 10

  

  From Everand

  The Woman in Cabin 10

  Ruth Ware

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (2322)
• A Man Called Ove: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  A Man Called Ove: A Novel

  Fredrik Backman

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (4609)
• Little Women

  

  From Everand

  Little Women

  Louisa May Alcott

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (104)
• Manhattan Beach: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Manhattan Beach: A Novel

  Jennifer Egan

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (792)
• Wolf Hall: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Wolf Hall: A Novel

  Hilary Mantel

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (3811)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  

  From Everand

  The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  Stephen Chbosky

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (2102)
• The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel

  Garth Stein

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (4200)
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  

  From Everand

  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  Betty Smith

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (1929)
• Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

  Jesmyn Ward

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1103)
• Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

  

  From Everand

  Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

  Carmen Maria Machado

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (821)
• The Constant Gardener: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Constant Gardener: A Novel

  John le Carré

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (104)