List of Articles Ashraf Haji Maibodi

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  1 - The Effect of Critical Thinking Skills on Reading English Novels
  Ashraf Haji Maibodi
  This experimental study examined the effect of critical thinking skills on reading English novels and its influence on EFL learners reading proficiency. For the purpose of this study participants in addition to their text book read and received instructions on the unabr More

  This experimental study examined the effect of critical thinking skills on reading English novels and its influence on EFL learners reading proficiency. For the purpose of this study participants in addition to their text book read and received instructions on the unabridged short novels for one semester. Sixty Iranian EFL junior undergraduates participated in this study and were randomly divided to two groups of thirty each. To test the hypothesis, two independent t-tests were conducted to see the difference between the two groups. The results of the study showed that students in group A were more critically oriented than their counterparts in group B. The pedagogical implication of this study suggests that direct instruction in critical thinking has an impact on EFL learners’ reading proficiency. This article is intended to help teachers who are interested in developing and encouraging critical thinking in their language classrooms. EFL learners need to learn how to establish realistic goals, monitor their own learning and reflect and challenge their own attitudes so that they may get closer to the idea of being good language learners. The findings of this study revealed that there was a significant improvement in students’ attitudes, confidence, and interest especially, in their novel-reading ability. Manuscript profile
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  2 - Assessing the Impact of Individual Differences in the Production of Speech Act of Requests in Institutional Discourse
  Ashraf Haji Maibodi
  10.30486/relp.2019.663446
  This paper, anchored in interlanguage pragmatics, studied the effects of individual differences such as language proficiency, gender, and age on the production of speech act of requests in institutional discourse. To this end, 187 Persian EFL university students at thre More

  This paper, anchored in interlanguage pragmatics, studied the effects of individual differences such as language proficiency, gender, and age on the production of speech act of requests in institutional discourse. To this end, 187 Persian EFL university students at three academic levels (undergraduates, postgraduates and PhD students) participated in this study. Triangulation was undertaken to collect and analyze the data in three phases. In phase one, through convenience sampling, the Oxford Placement Test was employed to identify the proficiency level of the students. In phase two, a three way ANOVA between subject analyses showed quantitative differences among the three groups. In the third phase, in-depth qualitative analyses of test items and retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) revealed developmental information about the cognitive and individual traits followed in pragmatic awareness. Results showed that sociocultural, socio-psychological, and socio-affective aspects of the discourse situations influenced not only students’ pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic choices but also their negotiation of lexical and grammatical forms in planning the requests. One significant implication is that not only linguistic competence is essential for the EFL learner, acquiring pragmatic competence is also important. Manuscript profile
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  3 - Revisiting Blended Learning in TPACK: A Content-Based Study of Themes and Implications
  Mojgan Barekat Amin Naeimi Ashraf Haji Maibodi
  10.30486/relp.2022.1952313.1363
  Blended learning is used in education to combine information and communications technology. The technology role in blended learning might be improved in cases of effectively combining different aspects such as pedagogy, content, and knowledge. TPACK framework brings tog More

  Blended learning is used in education to combine information and communications technology. The technology role in blended learning might be improved in cases of effectively combining different aspects such as pedagogy, content, and knowledge. TPACK framework brings together these conceptionsnto workable solutions for blended learning instruction. It seems crucial to have digitally literate teachers. Digital literacy is far beyond supporting teachers to understand and engage with the world; it enables them to challenge, shape, and change their worlds. With the integration of pedagogy, technology, and TPACK in teaching, utilization of the blended learning model requires an overview. This study is a systematic review of blended learning, digital literacy, and TPACK to identify the blended learning research's main themes and implications. To this end, 20 research articles on blended learning and TPACK, which were selected from applied linguistics journals published by Iranian universities, were reviewed. The findings revealed that the main themes were advantages, difficulties, proper use, disadvantages, the effect of learners' differences, teachers' characteristics, and comparison of different contexts. Besides, the most prominent theoretical implications were the importance of technology, the role of teachers, the change and development of blended learning, and the development of learners' autonomy. The findings of this study could propose a roadmap to facilitate the adoption of blended learning, which is one of the possible solutions to face the major challenges of education in the current era. Manuscript profile