One way to develop intercultural sensitivity in learners is through the inclusion of intercultural training in ELT and teacher training courses. This study aimed at enhancing the intercultural sensitivity of EFL pre-service teachers through interactive culture-focused speaking tasks. Therefore, a task-based syllabus was designed based on the principles of constructivism and intercultural themes...

Researchers and scholars have been attracted by the idea of using integrated writing task along with independent writing task to best assess the EFL learners’ writing competence. This study was conducted to compare the writing performance of EFL students in integrated and independent writing tasks. It also aimed to find out if writing performance varies with task types. A number of thirty Irani...

The testing effect is the finding that retrieval practice can enhance recall on future tests. One unanswered question is whether first-test response mode (writing or speaking the answer) affects final-test performance (and whether final-test response mode itself matters). An additional unsettled issue is whether written and oral recall lead to differences in the amount recalled. In three experi...

Accumulating evidence suggests that some degree of attentional control is required to regulate and monitor processes underlying speaking. Although progress has been made in delineating the neural substrates of the core language processes involved in speaking, substrates associated with regulatory and monitoring processes have remained relatively underspecified. We report the results of an fMRI ...

Pre-operative determination of the dominant hemisphere for speech and speech associated sensory and motor regions has been of great interest for the neurological surgeons. This dilemma has been of at most importance, but difficult to achieve, requiring either invasive (Wada test) or non-invasive methods (Brain Mapping). In the present study we have employed functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging...

Task variation is an integrative method aiming at the importance of learner-to-learner interactions in a wide range of learning contexts and fostering authentic use of language and meaningful communication. This study investigated the impact of task variation on the accuracy and complexity of Iranian EFL learners’ oral speech. In so doing, 80 intermediate EFL learners, majoring English at the I...

Researchers and scholars have been attracted by the idea of using integrated writing task along with independent writing task to best assess the EFL learners’ writing competence. This study was conducted to compare the writing performance of EFL students in integrated and independent writing tasks. It also aimed to find out if writing performance varies with task types. A number of thirty Irani...

This study sought to test Robinson’s (1995, 2003b) cognition hypothesis by investigating the effects of cognitive task difficulty on ESL learners’ written and oral task performance. 1 Ten exchange students at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa were given four sets of picture-based narrative tasks: a simple writing task, a difficult writing task, a simple speaking task, and a difficult speaking ...

Objective: Many studies have suggested that there is a relationship between coherence and cognitive processes. This study aims at investigating this hypothesis through assessing the relationship between cognitive variables and coherence in the discourse of two groups of Persian-speaking younger and older adults. Methods: In order to evaluate our participants' cognitive capabilities, we recrui...