Developing English reading fluency (ERF) is challenging due to cross-linguistic differences between L1 and L2. This study replicated, with modifications, prior study of "syntactic enhancement and secondary school EFL Students' reading fluency in South Korea." The current project investigated the impact of visual-syntactic text formatting…

This study investigates the relationships among working memory (WM), syntactic parsing ability (SP), and L2 reading performance across varying proficiency levels. A cohort of 120 L1-Persian EFL learners was categorized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced proficiency groups based on their IELTS scores. Participants completed a reading span…

Acquisition of verbs and their syntactic and semantic properties can act as the core of any sentence across languages. EFL learners encounter learnability problems in the perception of English verbs' argument structures manifested by different verbs. The current study aimed at investigating and diagnosing the problems Iranian EFL learners face…

This study investigated the potentials of face-to-face and computer mediated conversation (CMC) as two speaking modalities on students' engagement. To this end, 30 Iranian male intermediate EFL learners were selected on the basis of their performance on OPT (Oxford Placement Test) and assigned into the research groups. The progression of face- to-…

This study investigated the immediate and sustained effects of revision-mediated (RICF) and attention-mediated (AICF) indirect coded corrective feedback on the written syntactic accuracy development of 50 upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners assigned to two RICF and AICF groups. They received eight-session treatments, followed by an immediate…

As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging for the foreign language learners. However, the body of literature is heavier on the side of humor production than humor perception. The current study explores the extent to which Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners perceive different…

The variable success in learning a second language (L2) may be best explained by varying degrees of motivation. This study investigated whether individual differences in appraisal dimensions of motivation explained explicit and implicit syntactic knowledge. Participants learned three syntactic structures under implicit and explicit training…

Despite teachers' mainstream practices in L2 writing classrooms addressing different dimensions of writing over time, much of the research on feedback in recent years has been of relative short duration and has mainly focused on accuracy. The current longitudinal study investigated the influence of sustained teacher written feedback on accuracy,…

The current study focused mainly on the role of the linguistic complexity of IELTS writing Task 2. In other words, it investigated the differential effects of two interrelated linguistic complexities of writing Task 2 on the three levels of discourse representation and what IELTS candidates perceived through analyzing IELTS writing topics both at…

This experimental study, using a pretest-treatment-posttest design, compared the effects of focused direct written corrective feedback and additional writing practice on L2 learners' written syntactic complexity. The participants were 60 Iranian elementary EFL learners, whose L2 proficiency as well as L2 writing syntactic complexity and accuracy…

This study investigated the effects of strategic planning and task structure (personal, narrative, and decision-making tasks) on L2 writing outcomes. One hundred and twenty intermediate English as a foreign language learners were randomly divided into strategic-planning and no-planning-time groups. The strategic-planning group performed the three…

This study investigates the potential of individual, collaborative, and E-collaborative writing modalities on the development of syntactic complexity (SC), their sustained effect on SC development, and the potential meditating role of SC of L1 (First Language) in SC of L2 (Second Language). To this end, 90 Iranian intermediate EFL learners…

The impacts of task characteristics on second language (L2) writing require further exploration. This study examined the effects of increasing task complexity on L2 argumentative writing. Upper-intermediate L2 learners performed two writing tasks with varying degrees of complexity in relation to the number of elements and the degree of reasoning.…

Investigating the effects of task design and implementation features on second language (L2) production is necessary, as the findings can provide potential insights into pedagogical and assessment task design and sequencing as well as into the nature of L2 learners' attentional resources. To this end, this study probed into the effects of task…

Awareness in derivational morphology is the ability to manipulate derived words, recognize relationships between different morphological forms of a word, and produce new derivations of words. The current study attempted to investigate the impact of morphological instruction on awareness in relational, syntactic and distributional aspects of…