Due to the special (procedural) nature of the language (verbal communication) ‘knowledge’, the dominant trends in applied linguistics research in the last few decades have been advocating ‘acquisition’ rather than ‘learning’ activities where the main focus in SL & FL education should be on ‘meaning’ while some ‘focus-on-form’ being justified. But the ‘form’ to be ‘focused-on’ is mostly misconce...

The sway of the pendulum in language pedagogy towards conscious learning processes marks the paramount role of metalinguistic awareness. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to compare the impact of teacher-oriented vs. learner-generated metalinguistic awareness activities on Iranian TEFL students’ writing accuracy. Sixty participants in three intact classes were randomly assigned a...

this study aims to compare the effects of four types of ffi on second language vocabulary learning. to do so, the study adopted a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, including five groups, each receiving a distinct treatment. the participants were 80 fourth-grade male students ranging in age from 17 to 19. before the treatment phase, the participants took a researcher-made test of vocab...

With the aim of more emphasis on pragmatics and its inclusion in EFL classrooms, this study attempted to investigate the effectiveness of obtrusive and unobtrusive focus on form instructions on learners’ pragmatic performance of criticizing in English. 54 Iranian learners, all at intermediate level, participated in this study, and they were divided into three groups: 19 participants receiving o...

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of input-enhancement and production of sentences, containing the target structures, on learning grammar by Iranian Intermediate EFL learners. Sixty male students in three input, output, and control groups participated in the study. After checking the homogeneity of the participants with a proficiency test, the researchers administered a pre...

We report on a study which investigated the effects of three types of feedback realized in instructional dialogues with a computer-based language learning system for German. The interaction was framed within a directions giving task and the linguistic form in focus was the dative case in prepositional phrases. The feedback types differed with respect to the focus they put on form versus meaning...

negotiation, as an interactional strategy and proactive focus on form (fof) have received increased attention in second language research. the combination of negotiation and proactive fof, however, has not been examined in relation to l2 vocabulary learning. to address this gap, the present study investigated how the amount of negotiation and proactive fof impacted learners’ vocabulary knowledg...