This study examined the effects of input-oriented and output-oriented tasks with different involvement load indices on Iranian EFL learners' comprehension and production of lexical collocations. To achieve this purpose, a sample of 180 intermediate-level EFL learners (both male and female) participated in the study. The participants were in six experimental groups. Each of the groups was random...

This study investigated the impact of code-switching on speaking ability of Iranian low proficiency EFL learners. Moreover, it was an attempt to show what functions existed behind code-switching strategies used by the EFL learners. To this end, 60 male and female Iranian EFL learners age-ranged between 20 and 30 participated in the study. Data collection instruments which were used were the Int...

this research study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate the test takers’ perceptions and anx- iety in relation to an english language proficiency test called community english program (cep). this study also evaluated the direct and semi-direct modes for speaking module of this test. to this end, 300 eng- lish as foreign language (efl) students were recruited in the study as test ta...

Role-plays provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate how to use English in real life situations and make them focus more on communication than on grammar. Oral presentations like conversations are a great way for students to practice their English skills. Therefore, this paper makes an attempt to investigate whether teaching conversation through role play affects the students’ speaki...

this study focuses on the relationship between lower-intermediate level efl learners’ metacognitive awareness and accuracy in self-assessment of a speaking test. we tried to raise the learners’ metacognitive awareness through practice in goal-setting and planning. to do so, 103 lower-intermediate level students took a pretest of speaking, completed a metacognitive awareness questionnaire, and h...

Individuals often feel anxious in anticipation of tasks such as speaking in public or meeting with a boss. I find that an overwhelming majority of people believe trying to calm down is the best way to cope with pre-performance anxiety. However, across several studies involving karaoke singing, public speaking, and math performance, I investigate an alternative strategy: reappraising anxiety as ...

This paper examines techniques that allow a well-trained source system built on one task to be rapidly adapted, or ported, to another target task. The two tasks considered in this paper are Hub5, or Switchboard, as the source system and VoiceMail as the target task. The two tasks are acoustically similar, both being telephonebandwidth speech tasks, but differ in speaking style. SwitchBoard is c...