Research Output
Articles
Publication Date: 2026
Language Teaching Research (1362-1688)
The present study investigated the effects of integrating the flipped classroom (FC) with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing, measured in complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). To this end, 60 university students with intermediate proficiency in English were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The former experienced the FC integrated with MOOCs; the latter underwent traditional face-to-face classes. All participants took two essay writing tests: one at the beginning of the study as the pretest and another at the end as the posttest. The results showed that integrating the FC with MOOCs had a significantly positive effect on the experimental group’s writing in terms of CAF and its subcomponents. However, there was no significant difference between the two study groups in terms of the type-token ratio in the complexity of the text and the number of dysfluencies in the fluency. The implications of the study are discussed. © The Author(s) 2026
Publication Date: 2023
International Journal of Language Testing (24765880)13(2)pp. 38-55
The present study investigates the efficacy of preparation time in four speaking tasks of TOEFL iBT. As the current pre-task planning time offered by ETS is very short, 15 to 30 seconds, we intended to explore how the test-takers’ speaking quality would change if the preparation time was added to the response time, giving the respondents a relatively longer online planning opportunity. To this aim, two groups of TOEFL iBT candidates were studied under pre-task and online planning conditions. Totally, 384 elicited speaking samples were first transcribed and then measured in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). The results yielded by a series of One-way MANOVA revealed the online planning group significantly outperformed the pre-task planning group in terms of accuracy and fluency across all four speaking tasks. Although with less robustness, the online planners had significantly higher speech complexity represented by lexical diversity and left-embeddedness. The results obtained through this study may challenge the efficacy of the currently provided preparation time in TOEFL iBT speaking subsection. ©FFC 2023.
Publication Date: 2020
English Text Construction (18748767)13(1)pp. 84-107
This study aims to determine the linguistic and discoursal differences in essays produced by Iranian test-takers of TOEFL-iBT in response to integrated and independent writing tasks. A sample of 40 essays, written by 20 Iranian test-takers of scored integrated and independent writing tasks, was compared and analyzed in terms of the four latent constructs of text easability (fourteen variables), cohesion (nine variables), lexical sophistication (nineteen variables), and syntactic complexity (six variables), using the Coh-Metrix 3.0 program. Results indicate differences in the linguistic and discoursal features of integrated and independent writing tasks. The findings reveal that the scores on writing tasks of EFL test-takers can be anchored empirically through the analysis of some discourse qualities like cohesion. Independent tasks contain more connectives and particles so they can result in better discourse structure organization and the generation of more cohesive devices. Stakeholders of the test should verify test constructs in terms of particular contexts like EFL and communicative views of language proficiency. Consequently, the findings contribute to the ongoing validity argument on TOEFL-iBT writing tasks for designing and interpreting scoring schemes for the writing component of the test. © John Benjamins Publishing Company
Publication Date: 2020
Language Testing in Asia (22290443)10(1)
The present study reports the process of development and validation of a rating scale in the Iranian EFL academic writing assessment context. To achieve this goal, the study was conducted in three distinct phases. Early in the study, the researcher interviewed a number of raters in different universities. Next, a questionnaire was developed based on the results of the interview along with the related literature. Later, the questionnaire was sent to thirty experienced raters from ten major state universities in Iran. Results of the country-wide survey in this phase showed that there was no objective scale in use by the raters in the context. Therefore, in the second development phase of the study, fifteen of the raters who participated in the first phase were asked to verbalize their thoughts when each rating five essays. At the end of this phase, a first draft of the scale was developed. Finally, in the last validation phase of the study, ten raters were asked to each rate a body of twenty essays using the newly developed scale. Next, eight of the raters participated in a follow-up retrospective interview. The analysis of the raters’ performance using FACETS showed high profile of reliability and validity for the new scale. In addition, while the qualitative findings of the interviews counted some problems with the structure of the scale, on the whole, the findings showed that the introduction of the scale was well-received by the raters. The pedagogical implications of the study will be discussed. In addition, the study calls for further validation of the scale in the context. © 2020, The Author(s).
