Ebrahim Khodadady

Ferdowsi University Of Mashhad | FUM · Department of English Language and Literature (Faculty of Letters and Humanities)

The 11 taxa of self explaining its actualization through Quranic Orientation Scale (QOS) were revised and expanded. Along with a demographic scale, the QOS was administered to 1123 grade 4 senior high school (G4SHS) students among whom 147 took a schema-based close multiple choice item language achievement test (S-Test) as well. The responses on th...

Objective: The validity of Quranic Orientation Scale (QOS) developed by Khodadady and Dastgahian [1] was explored. They extracted its underlying factors through Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) and rotated them via Promax with Kaiser Normalization (PKN). This study, however, rotated the extracted factors via Varimax with Kaiser Normalization (VKN) to...

This study aimed to find out what cognitive taxa constitute the schema of Top Peer Pressure (TPP) among Junior High School Students (JHSSs), which taxa associated with the JHSSs’ English and school achievement and whether JHSSs’ taxa differ from those of Undergraduate University Students (UUSs). To this end the TPPS was administered to 304 HSSs and...

Background: The schema of top peer pressure (TPP) consists of nine hierarchical cognitive taxa measured by the Top Peer Pressure Scale (TPPS): domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species and word. The TPPS taken by undergraduate university students’ (UUSs) has shown that their TPP consists of eight taxa among which four, i.e., dom...

Background: Divorce has become an individualistic as well as collective problem in all societies requiring a sound theory and statistics to address it explanatorily and empirically. Objective: Almost all studies in various fields of knowledge have addressed divorce categorically. The present study was, however, designed to explore it as a cognitive...

Introduction: The Quranic Orientation Scale (QOS) is the only measure of practicing monotheistic self actualization which enjoys content validity because of being developed on a Holy Scripture. No study has, however, explored its association with language achievement. Methods: One hundred forty seven female 16 to 19 (mean=17.43, SD=0.536) years old...

Background: The physical science of biology and social sciences of psychiatry, psychology and religion address “self” as one of their main themes of investigation. Objective: to find out which self-described by these sciences represents “sapiens” distinguished from all other organisms because of having wisdom. Methodology: a representative text of...

The present study explored the reliability and construct validity of the 82-item Integrated Spiritual Intelligence Scale (ISIS) designed by Amram and Dryer (2008) in Iran. To this end the ISIS was translated into Persian by employing schema theory and administered to nine hundred and fourteen undergraduate and graduate students majoring in various...

Objectives: to develop a novel religious orientation scale based on the Quran and validate it with pre-university students of secondary education Method: All the Quranic ayat which addressed its believers directly regarding their religious orientation were scrutinized in terms of pre-university students’ characteristics, resulting in the selection...

Religious orientation has been studied in relation to a host of variables such as motivation (Barrett, Patock-Peckham, Hutchinson, & Nagoshi, 2005), prejudices (Duck & Hunsberger, 1999), psychological distress (Salsman, & Carlson, 2005), sexual orientation (Haldeman, 2004) and spirituality (Baetz, Griffin, Bowen, & Marcoux, 2004). Its role has not,...

This study aimed to find out whether the microstructural approach of schema theory (MICAST) can be employed to evaluate the reading passages of textbooks. To this end, the macrostructural approach of schema theory (MACAST) was utilized to assign twelve passages of a textbook taught at the upper intermediate level of language proficiency to descript...

The present study explored the relationships between inference and deduction abilities as two aspects of critical thinking (CT), tasks dealing with the CT and its two aspects, and the English language achievement (ELA) of advanced learners of English as a foreign language in Iran. To this end, the 172 participants’ scores obtained in the last three...

Despite much research done on language learning textbooks, there still exist several questions unanswered about what these textbooks’ contents are about. This study is thus an attempt to investigate the 15 reading passages of Ready for First Certificate of English (FCE) in the light of schema theory. In doing so, the microstructural approach to sch...

This paper examines two research papers selected on the basis that they belong to the same genre, i.e. English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Drawing on the underlying principles of genre we assumed that since these papers belong to the same genre they share similar patterns in terms of their constitutive schemata. By means of Schema theory, offered...

This study explored the relationship between cognitive styles and achievement in English as a foreign language (EFL). To this end, the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test, consisting of draw a woman test (DAWT) and draw a man test (DAMT), was administered to 658 grade two, three and four students who had registered in Imam Reza primary schools in Mashha...

This study aimed to explore whether the Parenting Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) relates significantly to the English language achievement of grade one senior high school (G1SHS) students in Mashhad, Iran. To this end, the PAQ designed by Buri (1991) was translated into Persian and administered to three hundred and nineteen students in two versions...

The present study aims to linguistically and cognitively analyze all the words comprising three English textbooks taught at advanced levels in a foreign language context. The textual analysis of the books was conducted on the basis of the microstructural approach to schema theory. To this end, eighteen reading passages comprising the textbooks were...

This study aimed to 1) explore the social capitals of students who had registered in the three branches of Khorasan Language Institute (KLI) to learn English, 2) establish their factorial validity and 3) explore their relationship with English language achievement. To this end the 40-item Social Capital Scale (SCS) developed by Khodadady and Alaee...

The perspective of English as an International Language (EIL) has been proposed mainly to alleviate the tenets of language and cultural imperialism and, of course, to facilitate communication through different varieties of English. Hence, English language classrooms are the preliminary venue for the inception of such a rudimentary movement. Bearing...

This study aimed to explore the relationship between social and emotional intelligences. To this end, Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) was translated into Persian and employed as a measure of social intelligence. It was then administered along with the Persian Emotional Intelligence Scale (EQS) to one hundred eighty one students majoring in...

This study aimed to explore the relationship between spiritual intelligence and language achievement. To this end, the Persian Spiritual Intelligence Self Report Inventory (SISRI) designed by King (2008) and translated into Persian and validated by Khodadady and Moosavi (2014) was administered to three hundred forty four grade three senior highs sc...

This study aimed to explore the relationship between the characteristics of teachers and grade four senior high school (G4SHS) students’ achievement in English as a foreign language (EFL). To this end, the 102-item English Language Teachers’ Attribute Scale (ELTAS) designed by Khodadady, Fakhrabadi, and Azar (2012) was administered to 1483 G4SHS st...

This study aimed to revalidate the Foreign Language Identity Scale developed by Khodadady and Navari (2012) and explore the factors underlying the construct from theoretical as well as empirical perspectives. To this end, the scale was first analyzed linguistically and cognitively by employing the microstructural approach of schema theory. The anal...

This study aimed to explore the relationship between English language education policy (ELEP) and teacher effectiveness (TE) at grade three senior high schools (G3SHS) in Mashhad, Iran. To this end, the English Language Policy Inventory (ELPI) designed and validated by Khodadady, Arian, and Hosseinabadi (2013) and English Language Teachers’ Attribu...

This study explored whether the domain of teacher effectiveness as well as its underlying factors or genera relate significantly to English achievement when it is measured by schema-based cloze multiple choice item tests (S-Tests) and their tailored versions. To this end, the English Language Teachers’ Attributes Scale (ELTAS) designed by Khodadady...

This study explored the latent variables underlying C-Tests by analyzing the performance of 416 undergraduate and graduate university students majoring in English Language and Literature, English Language Teaching and English Translation in Mashhad, Iran. The C-Tests designed by Klein-Braley (1997) were changed into two other types of tests called...

This study reports the ways Iranian intermediate and advanced EFL learners repair their talk while interacting with their teachers and the differences between these two groups. Sixty Iranian EFL learners (30 intermediate and 30 advanced) were divided into four classes and two sessions of each class were recorded. The cases of repair were chosen and...

The present research project was conducted to explore the effect of schema-based teaching (SBT) and translation-based teaching (TBT) on vocabulary knowledge, structure and reading comprehension ability of forty-one female grade one high school (G1HS) students. They were assigned to SBT and TBT groups on the basis of their performance on a schema-ba...

This study administered the Persian cultural capital scale (CCS) compiled by Khodadady and Natanzi (2012) to three hundred and ten grade three high school (G3HS) students. The subjection of the collected data to the principal axis factoring and rotating the extracted latent variables via Varimax with Kaiser Normalization produced nine factors, i.e...

The present study had two purposes. First, the relationship between language anxiety and motivation was examined among Iranian EFL learners. Secondly, a foreign language achievement model based on language learning anxiety and motivation was developed and tested by structural equation modeling. To achieve the purposes, foreign language classroom an...

The study explored whether the 25-item Motivations Underlying English Language Learning (MUELL) Scale designed in this study is a reliable and valid psychological measure and relates significantly to achievement. To achieve the objectives, the MUELL was administered to 493 female learners who studied English as a foreign language (EFL) in three bra...

This study attempted the effectiveness of two types of vocabulary instruction (i.e. schema-based instruction (SBI) and translation-based instruction (TBI) on the acquisition of second language words. Inspired by intact group design, fourty-nine intermediate Iranian learners of French were divided into three groups; two experimental groups (SBI and...

This study explored whether the metaphors written by 504 Iranian learners of English and 140 English teachers behaved like semantic features of the schemata they likened themselves to. The 239 student and 249 teacher metaphors elicited from the participants were submitted to four raters who assigned them to 13 conceptual categories established by S...

This study reports the performance of five thousand one hundred and eighty three undergraduate and graduate students on a language proficiency test called Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT). It consists of one hundred traditional multiple choice items selected from the disclosed Test of English as a Foreign Language and measures th...

This paper studied the responses of 1704 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to the Persian Characteristics of Effective English Language Teachers (CEELT) questionnaire and their 95 teachers' self report on Persian Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I) in order to replicate Ghanizadeh and Moafian's (2009) study with a more homogeneous sam...

This study explored the relationship between parent education as an indicator of social capital and achievement in English as a foreign language (ELT). To this end, a demographic and a schema-based close multiple choice item test (S-Test) developed on a course textbook were administered to one thousand three hundred and fifty two grade three state...

The present study explores the relationship between field-dependence/independence cognitive style and listening comprehension ability. Participants were 200 (152 female and 48 male) English students enrolled in universities and language institutes in Mashhad, Iran, who responded to the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and the IELTS listening comp...

This study aimed to design and validate a Persian cultural capital scale (CCS) with Iranian university students majoring in English language, literature and translation as well teaching English as a foreign language. To this end, twenty more cultural capital indicators specified by researchers were added to eleven compiled by Khodadady and Zabihi (...

This study explored whether there was a relationship between the level of language proficiency and repairing conversation in English classes. For this purpose, sixty participants learning English as foreign language were divided into four coed classes, i.e., two intermediate and two advanced classes, and two sessions of each class were recorded dur...

This study reports the performance of 253 undergraduate and graduate students of English on the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and a schema-based cloze multiple choice item test (SBCMCIT) and its subtests as measures of cognitive styles and English language proficiency, respectively. Although field independent (FI) test takers outperformed thei...

This study explored whether there was a relationship between the level of language proficiency and repairing conversation in English classes. For this purpose, sixty participants learning English as foreign language were divided into four coed classes, i.e., two intermediate and two advanced classes, and two sessions of each class were recorded dur...

This study explored the factorial validity of a writing self-regulation scale (WSRS) by administering it to 125 learners of English language preparing to sit for the writing module of the IELTS examination in Tehran, Iran. The submission of the written responses elicited on the WSRS to the Principal Axis Factoring and Varimax rotation of the data r...

This study explored the effect of portfolio and self assessment on writing tasks on the one hand and self regulation ability on the other by assigning sixty freshman undergraduate university students majoring in teaching English as a foreign language to a control and experimental group. They had enrolled in the Writing Essay course at Tabaran Unive...

An achievement test based on schema theory (S-Test) was developed on the passages comprising the English textbook taught at grade three in state high schools in Iran and administered concurrently with a validated and reliable Social Capital Scale (SCS) to four hundred seventy seven male and female participants. The Z-scores obtained on the S-Test w...

This study reports the performance of 430 undergraduate and graduate students of English on standard C-Tests, the disclosed TOEFL, lexical knowledge test (LKT) and semantic schema-based cloze multiple choice item test (S-Test). Among the four tests, the first has been shown to be affected by their context. Two other versions were, therefore, develo...

This study explored the relationship between identity and learning English by designing and administering a 30-item Foreign Language Identity Scale (FLIS) to 470 female participants enrolled in English courses offered at advanced levels in private institutes in Mashhad, Iran. The application of the principal axis factoring to the responses and rota...

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the use of formulaic sequences (FSs), speaking ability and speech fluency. Formulae form a considerable portion of native-speakers' speech and mastering them helps learners to appear more native-like. In this study 41 learners of English were interviewed and their speech fluency, level of prof...

This study is one of the first attempts to investigate the effect of schema-based general English teaching and testing on English language learning in an Iranian academic context. A total of 90 undergraduate theology students studying general English at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) were assigned to an experimental and a control group. For t...

The present study explored the reliability and construct validity of the 82-item Integrated Spiritual Intelligence Scale (ISIS) designed by Amram and Dryer (2008) in Iran. To this end the ISIS was translated into Persian by employing schema theory and administered to nine hundred and fourteen undergraduate and graduate students majoring in various...

This study attempted the effectiveness of two types of vocabulary instruction (i.e. schema-based instruction (SBI) and translation-based instruction (TBI) on the acquisition of second language words. Inspired by intact group design, fourtynine intermediate Iranian learners of French were divided into three groups; two experimental groups (SBI and T...

This study explored the effect of employing two language teaching approaches, i.e., schema-based instruction (SBI) and translation-based instruction (TBI) on the structure and vocabulary knowledge as well as reading comprehension ability of sixty undergraduate students studying general English in a medical school in Mashhad, Iran. While the SBI app...

This paper reports a textual analysis of letters written by 21 male and 21 female participants in Persian. Each writer wrote two letters, one to a dating service and another one to a hypothetical person chosen and introduced by the center. Therefore, a total of 84 letters were collected from the participants. Schema theory was used to find the poss...

This study employed a Persian Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) and a disclosed Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to explore the relationship between cultural intelligence (CQ) and English as a foreign language (EFL) proficiency. The administration of these two measures to one hundred forty five undergraduate university students majorin...

The aim of the study is to investigate beliefs students usually held about language learning, based on the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) questionnaire (Horwitz, 1988). For this purpose, 423 University learners of English in Iran were selected. Running descriptive statistics and the scree plot test, five factors were extracted: F...

The present study investigated the influence of concept mapping as a post-reading strategy on EFL learners' critical thinking ability. The study utilized a pretest – posttest control and experimental group design. To do so, thirty six EFL learners at upper intermediate and advanced levels were randomly assigned to experimental (n=18) and control (n...

This study explored the relationship between text authenticity and test takers' performance on C-Tests. To fulfill the objective a single C-test was developed on an authentic text (AC-test) and along with standard C-Tests (Klein-Braley 1997) and a disclosed version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was administered to one hundred...

This study explored the relationship between social and cultural capitals and English achievement by developing, administering and validating a 35-item questionnaire to 706 students of five public and private high school students in Mashhad, Iran. The application of the Principle Axis Factoring to the participants' responses and rotating the extrac...

This study reports the performance of 419 undergraduate and graduate students on three questionnaires addressing their biodata, social and cultural capitals and personality factors. The statistical analysis of the students' diploma Grade Point Averages (GPAs) and monthly family income (MFI) showed that the GPAs and MFIs of students majoring in Engl...

This study attempts comprehensively to investigate the effect of form versus meaning-focused tasks on the development of collocations among Iranian Intermediate EFL learners. To this end, 65 students of Mashhad High schools in Iran were selected as the participants. A general language proficiency test of Nelson (book 2, Intermediate 200A) was used...

This study explored the relationship between social and cultural capital and school achievement by developing, administering and validating a 35-statement questionnaire to 403 undergraduate and graduate students majoring in Teaching English as a foreign language and Persian Language and Literature and correlating their extracted factors with the gr...

This study aims at examining the effects of visual and verbal intelligences-based teaching of vocabularies on Iranian EFL students' vocabulary retention and production. Therefore, 71 male and female intermediate students, who were selected from two different language institutes in Mashhad (Iran), served as the participants of this study. They were...

This study translated the 21-item Religious Orientation Scale (ROS) into Persian and explored its factorial validity in Iran by administering it to 329 undergraduate university students and employing three methods of factor extraction, i.e., Maximum Likelihood (ML), Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Among the th...

This paper reports the performance of 38 non-native senior university students of English on two achievement tests: a traditional content-based multiple choice item test (MCIT) and a schema-based cloze MCIT measuring course objectives. The former was developed on the whole content of a teaching methodology textbook sampled in a stratified manner an...

This paper reports a textual analysis of 22 authentic and unmodified newspaper and magazine articles dealing with a current political issue within the period of nine months. The analysis was based on schema theory, which divides all the schemata, i.e., words comprising the articles, into three main categories: semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic....

The present study reports the performance of 63 senior non-native undergraduate university students on C-Tests, a decontextualised C-Test, a spelling test, a matching vocabulary test (MVT) and a disclosed Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). It was postulated that the availability of the first half of deleted words might render the items...

This study designed a 40-item social capital scale (SCS) and explored its reliability and factorial validity by administering it to one thousand three hundred and fifty two grade three high school students in Mashhad, Iran. The internal consistency analysis and application of the Principal Axis Factoring to the data and rotating the extracted facto...

Creativity, as an important psychological trait, has not been sufficiently touched by professionals in language teaching to date. Thus the present paper aims at examining the relationship between creativity and foreign language achievement. To this end, a test of creativity was administered to a sample of 272 undergraduate language learning univers...