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In order to investigate the relationship between aggressiveness and oral proficiency of Iranian EFL learners, first a TOEFL test was given to 100 EFL students in order to homogenize the sample. Out of this, 71 participants whose scores fell one standard deviation above and below the mean were regarded as intermediate and, therefore, interviewed. They were then asked to complete the Persian version of a validated aggression questionnaire. All the tape-recorded interviews were rated by two raters. Based on their scores on aggression questionnaire, the subjects were divided into two groups of aggressives and non-aggressives and the means of their scores in oral interviews were compared using t-test. Results of the t-test showed that, aggressive and non aggressive groups are different in their oral proficiency. Finally, the correlations between the two main variables and also between four subscales of aggression and all the components of oral proficiency were estimated to see exactly what the nature of the relationships is. Overall, the results of these calculations showed that aggression negatively affects oral proficiency of L2 learners. Moreover, verbal aggression and anger as different subscales of aggressiveness were found to have negative effect on the components of oral proficiency.

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The present study investigated the relationship between the reading comprehension of three types of text and the gender of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, several reading passages with the same length and readability were selected based on which a reading comprehension test was constructed on three different text types namely essay, history, and short story. After determining the validity and reliability of the reading comprehension test, it was administered to 62 male and female students who were at the same level of language proficiency based on their scores on the TOEFL Test. A one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the data, the results of which indicated that male and female EFL learners differ in their reading comprehension ability with females being better comprehenders of English passages. The results of a two-way ANOVA also showed that both males and females are better at comprehending essays followed by history and short story, i.e. different types of text are understood differently regardless of the gender of the subjects. The findings are interpreted to have direct implications for EFL teachers and instructors as well as syllabus designers and test developers.

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This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of fostering cooperative learning on EFL learners’ overall achievement. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 56 female students of Saba Language School in Tehran were selected from a total number of 90 based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET) and randomly put into two experimental and control groups. The same content was taught to both groups throughout the 24-session treatment. The only difference was that the experimental group was taught through communicative language teaching with the use of cooperative learning activities, which consisted of the three-step-interview, think-pair-share, paired annotations, round robin, and learning together, while the students in the control group were taught through the communicative language teaching approach without the cooperative teaching procedure. An achievement posttest within the content taught was given to the students in both groups at the end of the instruction and the mean scores of both groups on the test were compared through an independent samples t-test. The result showed the rejection of the null hypothesis thus concluding that cooperative learning had a significant effect on the overall achievement of Iranian EFL learners.  

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Informal fallacies of argumentation as pitfalls of reasoning appear frequently in students' written texts, specially EFL / ESL Learners' argumentative essay writings. The present study examines whether gender could be considered as a determining factor influencing Iranian advanced EFL learners' argumentative writings with regard to informal fallacies of argumentation. The corpus comprised of argumentative essays written by 120 Iranian male and female English language learners. The participants’ age and discipline were also included as independent variables. Nine major categories of informal fallacies were examined in learners’ texts and the observed frequencies were analyzed using MANOVA. The results of the Multivariate Tests for all independent variables and /or their interactions indicated no significant differences for the overall informal fallacies. However, three separate instances of differences were observed. Finally, the findings of the present are discussed in relation to the previous literature and some implications of the study are suggested. 

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This study investigated the probable relationship between Iranian EFL learners' language proficiency and intercultural sensitivity. It also looked into the feasibility of enhancing their intercultural sensitivity through actual classroom training. To this end, 36 male and female college seniors were randomly selected from two classes after being homogenized. The participants were required, initially, to complete an Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS).They, then, attended a half-a-semester-long intercultural sensitivity training course and completed the same scale once again at the end of the semester. The data obtained through pre-test and post-test were subjected to some statistical techniques such as the Wilcoxon Signed-rank test and the Chi-square test. The results of data analysis indicated that intercultural sensitivity training promoted Iranian EFL students’ intercultural sensitivity level significantly and that there exists a statistically significant relationship between students’ language proficiency and intercultural sensitivity. This study in turn confirms the possibility of teaching intercultural sensitivity and is hoped, if generalized nationwide, to enrich foreign language teaching. It can also encourage ELT practitioners to give due weight to intercultural competence as a crucial component of modern language education.  

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This pseudo-longitudinal study adopted typical-error and corrective feedback approaches to investigating interlanguage fossilization. The errors in the argumentative essays of 76 Iranian EFL learners within and across three proficiency levels were identified and classified using the model proposed by Gass and Selinker (1994). The learners were first provided with implicit and then explicit feedback to see if the two feedback types would improve written production, and if there were errors that persisted. The results indicated that word choice, plural, word form and article “the” were the most frequent types of errors, with word choice topping the list. The results also showed that, although providing learners with feedback could lead to a reduction in errors, explicit feedback was a more effective strategy. However, the t-test results demonstrated that the short-term impact of feedback could not be sustained over time, a finding congruent with those of Truscott (2007) who questioned the efficacy of error correction. Moreover, the findings revealed that the error categories of pronoun, word order, passive and possessive were likely candidates of fossilization because, although for all the other error types implicit feedback could be beneficial, these showed resistance to correction and needed explicit feedback to be eliminated.

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In educational psychology, mindsets refer to a set of core beliefs about intelligence and its role in successful learning in a specific domain. This study investigated the extent to which, the EFL learners’ mindsets might predict their English achievement considering the mediating roles of engagement and self-regulation. The data were collected by means of three questionnaires: The Language Mindset Inventory (LMI), the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI), and the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), as well as the institutes’ reports on their English achievement. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the SPSS 20 and Amos 8 Software. The results revealed that there was a significant direct relationship between language mindsets and English achievement of the EFL learners. Besides, this relationship was significantly mediated by the learners’ engagement and self-regulation.  Drawing on the findings of this research, the challenge for teachers is to cultivate in students the mindsets that emphasize growth and potentials rather than constraints and stagnation.