The Study of Learning Styles, Thinking Styles, and English Language Academic Self-efficacy among the Students of Islamic Azad University of Behbahan Considering Their Field of Study and Gender

The purpose of the present paper was the study of learning styles, thinking styles, and English language academic self-efficacy among the students of Islamic Azad University of Behbahan considering their field of study and gender. The method of the study was 'surveying' in nature. The statistical population pool of the study included all the students of the Islamic Azad University of Behbahan (7941). The sample (367 students) was determined based on Morgan and Jesri table and was selected via stratified sampling technique. To collect data, Kolb's learning styles questionnaire, Sternberg's thinking styles questionnaire and the researcher-made questionnaire on the English lesson academic self-efficacy of students were used. In order to analyze the data, different statistical techniques which included mean, standard deviation, t-test, and chi square were utilized for examining the difference between the variables of gender and field of study. The results showed that the engineering students had more academic self-efficacy than humanities students. The rate of academic self-efficacy among male students was greater than that among female students. Male students had more assimilate learning style but female students had more divergent learning style. Humanities students had more divergent accommodate learning styles, but engineering students had more convergent and assimilate learning styles. The results also showed that the prevailing thinking style among male students was the judicial thinking style, but the prevailing thinking style among female students was the executive thinking style. Humanities students had more executive thinking style, but engineering students had more legislative thinking style

Investigating the Impact of Unfocused Direct and indirect Written Corrective Feedback on Writing Accuracy of Iranian EFL Learners

Despite extensive studies concerning written error correction, it is imperative that more research be conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of error correction on improving L2 writing. Driven by this gap, this study aimed to examine whether unfocused direct and indirect types of written corrective feedback had any impact on the writing accuracy of the Iranian English language learners’ new compositions. Through the random matching technique, ninety Iranian English language learners from seven foreign language centers in southwestern Iran were split into two groups for treatment and one group for control. As part of the evaluation, a writing test was utilized to determine whether the learners had improved their writing accuracy due to the treatment. The results showed that the participants in both treatment groups improved their writing accuracy, though the learning gains from both treatment were not significantly different. This study concludes with some implications for teachers regarding their use of appropriate types of written error correction