I am pleased to announce the publication
of a new issue of Applied Research on
English Language which completes three
years of publication. The articles
comprising the present issue have been
written by a host of contributors from
different countries. These include USA,
New Zealand, Australia, and, of course,
our host country, Iran.
The first paper, “Redefining conceptions
of grammar in English education in Asia:
SFL in practice”, by Meg Gebhard,
Wawan Gunawan and I-An Chen, analyzes
how a Taiwanese EFL teacher
participating in a U.S. based MATESOL
program made sense of systemic
functional linguistics and genre based
pedagogy in designing and reflecting on
literacy instruction. The findings of the
study indicate that this teacher’s
conceptualization of grammar shifted from
a traditional sentence-level, form-focused
perspective to a more functional
understanding operating in interconnected
ways across genre and register features of
texts.
In their study, “The relationship between
working memory and L2 reading
comprehension”, Rebecca Adams and
Mohammadtaghi Shahnazari-Dorcheh
focus on the role of working memory
capacity in the development of second
language reading ability. The participants
are L1 Persian EFL learners at three
proficiency levels. Using multiple
regression analysis, the authors determine
whether there are any significant
relationships between working memory
capacity and reading measures. Results of
this study indicate a significant
relationship between working memory
capacity and reading ability at lower levels
of proficiency.
Hiba Qusay Abdul Sattar and Maryam
Farnia’s study, “A cross-cultural study of
request speech act: Iraqi and Malay
students”, is an attempt to investigate the
cross-cultural differences and similarities
with regards to the realization of request
external modifications. Both Iraqi and
Malay university students participated in
this study. Abdul Sattar and Farnia’s
corpus consists of responses to a Discourse
Completion Test consisting of eight
situations. The findings indicate that
grounders are the most common external
modifier used by the participants. Abdul
Sattar and Farnia find more similarities
than differences between the subjects in
terms of the use of mitigation devices such
as apologies, compliments and gratitude.
However, both Iraqis and Malays differ in
their perception of the situational factors.
The fourth study, “A confirmatory study of
Differential Item Functioning on EFL
reading comprehension”, by Alireza
Ahmadi and Touraj Jalili, investigates DIF
sources on an EFL reading comprehension
test. Two DIF detection methods, logistic
regression (LR) and item response theory
(IRT), were used by the authors to flag
emergent DIF of 203 Iranian EFL
examinees’ performance on a reading
comprehension test. Seven hypothetical
DIF sources were examined: text
familiarity, gender, topic/text interest,
guessing, and the social variables of
location, income, and educational status.
As the study shows, only three sources of
DIF (gender, income and interest) were
transferred to the test level.
In “The relationship between writing
strategies and personality types of graduate
Iranian EFL learners”, Mohammad Reza
Anani Sarab and Mohammad Amini
Farsani focus on personality type, one of
the most influential internal factors in
second language acquisition. More
precisely, the study is concerned with
English language learners’ writing
strategies with reference to their
personality. To this end, a writing strategy
questionnaire was employed by the authors
to tap into the memory, cognitive,
compensation, metacognitive, social, and
affective strategies of 210 participants.
The analysis of the participants’
perceptions demonstrated a significant
relationship between writing strategies and
personality types.
In the next study, “Investigating the
relationship among complexity, range, and
strength of grammatical knowledge of EFL
students”, Hamed Zandi incorporates
recent proposals about the nature of
grammatical development to create a
framework consisting of dimensions of
complexity, range, and strength. The
purpose is to see which dimension(s) can
best predict the state of grammatical
knowledge of EFL students. To this end,
the specifications of a test of grammatical
knowledge were drafted and reviewed by a
group of trained specifications reviewers.
Zandi’s study indicates that the model that
best predicts grammatical knowledge of
lower ability leaners includes range and
strength.
Finally, Hassan Soodmand Afshar and
Raouf Hamazavi focus on “Listening
strategy use, test anxiety and test
performance of intermediate and advanced
Iranian EFL learners”. Eighty (40
intermediate and 40 advanced) Iranian
EFL learners took part in this study. The
results of Pearson product moment
correlation analyses revealed a significant
negative correlation between test anxiety
and listening test performance, and a
significant positive association between
listening strategy use and listening test
performance. Furthermore, the results of
multiple regression analyses indicated that
listening strategy use was a stronger
predictor of listening test performance.
Many thanks, once again, to the current
issue’s contributors for submitting their
studies and to the reviewers for their
feedback. The Holy Ramadan has dawned
upon us. May this Ramadan be one we
benefit fully from!
)