Vahid Nimehchisalem

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• PhD
• Professor at University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw

Upon hearing the phrase Some cats meow, a listener might pragmatically infer that ‘Some but not all cats meow’. This is known as a scalar implicature and it often arises when a speaker produces a weak linguistic expression instead of a stronger one. Several L2 studies claim that pragmatic inferences are generated by default and their comprehension...

As the most significant part of a doctoral dissertation, the Problem statement (henceforth PS) aims to convince the advisory committee and examiners about the importance of a topic under investigation. To convey intended meaning, PS requires explicit and unambiguous connections between the various parts of the problem statement by using cohesive ma...

The current study aimed to examine the effects of two types of writing tasks—an independent writing task and an integrated writing task—on 144 Chinese EFL learners’ writing production in terms of fluency, accuracy, lexical complexity, and syntactic complexity. Additionally, it investigated whether the learners’ working memory capacity has a mediati...

One of the most critical sections in a doctoral dissertation is a Problem Statement (henceforth PS). As emphasized this is where most assessors start when trying to comprehend and evaluate the merits of any research study. The PS can then be considered as the basic part of a research study, which may lead to a valuable or, conversely, worthless pie...

Burnout, recognized as a psychological syndrome, stems from enduring reactions to emotional and interpersonal obstacles at work. It highlights the tension experienced by individuals within the broader framework of their interactions with their jobs. This phenomenon has attracted considerable attention across diverse professional sectors. With the M...

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a worldwide shift in higher education, transitioning from traditional in-person teaching to online instruction. Consequently, there is a need to reevaluate classroom assessment methods for language educators. It involves a departure from summative assessment to formative assessment and sustainable assessment pract...

Textbooks are the main sources for students to learn vocabulary, a vital aspect of language skills. The study aimed to evaluate how new words had been presented in the Form 4 English Language Textbook in Malaysia. A checklist by Hussin et al. (2016) and semi-structured interviews were employed to gather evaluations from four teachers regarding the...

Tests & Us - A Collection of Real Stories (Volume 3), edited by Vahid Nimehchisalem and Hui Geng, is an engaging collection that explores the intricate and often emotional world of assessment through personal stories from authors with diverse backgrounds. It is the third volume of short stories published by the international publisher Generis Publi...

Soliciting accurate information about animals' medical cases and maintaining harmonious relationships with clients require vets to use several mitigation strategies. This study analysed hedges, bushes, and shields proposed as mitigation strategies by Caffi (2007). In light of the Rapport Management Theory conceptualized by Spencer-Oatey (2008), the...

This critical review examines qualitative studies on Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in English among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, exploring the complex interplay between individual, cultural, and contextual factors. By analyzing the impact of classroom environments, teacher behaviours, and cultural norms, this study highlights ho...

This paper studies the effects of language proficiency and learning styles on the acquisition of conditions and violations of it-cleft constructions. Pakistani ESL learners encounter difficulties in constructing grammatically accurate conditions sentences and in avoiding violations of it-cleft constructions. Hence, the study examines the conditions...

In the context of ESL writing, the prevalent approach of utilising inter-rater reliability measures, particularly Pearson’s r coefficient, for the scrutiny of peer assessment comes with inherent constraints. Rasch models have emerged as an alternative method to conventional correlation analysis for assessing rater accuracy, as they show the absolut...

Despite many studies investigating the effects of task complexity on L2 writing performance, little attention has been given to the specific effects of independent vs. integrated writing tasks and their cognitive demands on EFL learners. This study aimed to address this gap by conducting a comprehensive examination of the cognitive demands exerted...

This article relates the story of a creative writing project that began as an assignment in partial fulfilment of a postgraduate course, namely, Language Evaluation and Accountability about ten years ago. The assignment prompted the students to draft a short story of around 1,000 words, related to language assessment (Appendix). The course lecturer...

AI advancements have made ChatGPT a remarkable and versatile tool in education and linguistics, showcasing its potential to mimic human conversation and comprehend language. Scholars are intrigued by ChatGPT's text data handling, yet its application in rhetorical move analysis remains largely unexplored. Therefore, the objective of this study is to...

This is our second issue in 2024, volume 12. The articles in the current issue fall into eight different areas of literacy, including, linguistic literacy, music and art literacy, social science literacy, thinking and literacy, organization literacy, Social literacy, religious literacy, and health literacy. Our authors in this issue come from China...

The aim of this study was to design a useful self-assessment checklist for pronunciation as a pedagogical tool for use by Bachelor of Aircraft Engineering Technology students in an ESL Higher Education context in a private university in Malaysia. The emphasis on pronunciation arose from the importance attached to communications in maximising safety...

In this book, you will read short stories about assessment. These short stories have been written by students, teachers, and lecturers from different parts of the world. This is the third volume of Tests & Us. The first and second volumes of the book were published in 2017 and 2023. Since our stories come from diverse geographical locations, beside...

In recent years, teachers have gradually been returning the classroom to students, requiring students to change their learning styles and transform passive learning into active learning. Allowing students to self-assess and peer-to-peer feedback in the teaching process and building a good classroom environment can help promote active learning. Base...

Although peer feedback is a prevailing practice to promote evaluative judgement, its influence on the development of this higher-order cognitive ability has not yet been adequately explored. Specifically, there is a dearth of research that examines the benefit of providing and receiving peer feedback in developing students’ understanding of assessm...

Although peer feedback is a prevailing practice to promote evaluative judgement, its influence on the development of this higher-order cognitive ability has not yet been adequately explored. Specifically, there is a dearth of research that examines the benefit of providing and receiving peer feedback in developing students' understanding of assessm...

This research investigates the complex interplay between curriculum and assessment in tertiary-level poetry education within English language instruction , recognizing poetry's role in enhancing proficiency and cultural awareness. Employing a curriculum-centric approach, the study interviews 16 university English poetry lecturers through qualitativ...

Frontline language teachers have experienced anxiety, vulnerability, and emotional burnout as a result of the sudden transition to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study extracted Language Teacher Emotions (LTE) literature from the Scopus database during the period 2000-2022. During the first round of data extraction, 169 relevant...

Conceptual metaphors constitute a basic facet of human cognition, enabling individuals to comprehend abstract concepts by means of more concrete experiences. Previous research has found that metaphors are frequently employed in discourse and have a substantial impact on how we think. However, less consideration has been given to how conceptual meta...

Conceptual metaphors (CMs) constitute a basic facet of human cognition, enabling individuals to comprehend abstract concepts by means of more concrete experiences. Previous research has found that metaphors are frequently employed in discourse and have a substantial impact on how we think. However, less consideration has been given to how conceptua...

p>Burnout, recognized as a psychological syndrome, stems from enduring reactions to emotional and interpersonal obstacles at work. It highlights the tension experienced by individuals within the broader framework of their interactions with their jobs. This phenomenon has attracted considerable attention across diverse professional sectors. With the...

p>Burnout, recognized as a psychological syndrome, stems from enduring reactions to emotional and interpersonal obstacles at work. It highlights the tension experienced by individuals within the broader framework of their interactions with their jobs. This phenomenon has attracted considerable attention across diverse professional sectors. With the...

This is our final issue in the eleventh volume of IJELS. As our readers may have noticed, since our previous issue, we have started to classify the articles under different sections depending on the area of literacy that they cover. The articles in the current issue fall into 10 different areas of literacy, including linguistic literacy, music and...

This paper reports on the washback effects of Malaysia's School-Based Assessment (SBA) on Form 4 students after almost a decade of its implementation in the country. It critically examines how SBA has affected Form 4 students' overall perceptions about the learning of the English language at school. This study also investigates the challenges that...

The authors had the privilege of co-chairing the symposium titled “Promoting Innovative Learning-Oriented Feedback Practice”, which took place online, hosted by the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics (MAAL) on 19th August 2023. The event featured distinguished speakers including Lawrence Jun Zhang, a Professor from the University of Auckl...

The authors had the privilege of co-chairing the symposium titled “Promoting Innovative Learning-Oriented Feedback Practice”, which took place online, hosted by the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics (MAAL) on 19th August 2023. The event featured distinguished speakers including Lawrence Jun Zhang, a Professor from the University of Auckl...

This is the report of the MALAYSIAN ASSOCIATION OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS (MAAL) SYMPOSIUM ON “PROMOTING INNOVATIVE LEARNING-ORIENTED FEEDBACK PRACTICE” on 19th August 2023.

In this study we investigated the effects of a speed reading course on the reading comprehension of Malaysian undergraduate students and compared the effects of a speed reading course on reading comprehension of impulsive vs. reflective Malaysian undergraduate ESL students. Based on our results, it can be concluded that although a speed reading cou...

The study examines the grammatical knowledge of English cleft constructions among Pakistani ESL learners across L2 proficiency levels and learning styles (field-dependent/independent). Cleft constructions have been found to be problematic and difficult to master for Pakistani ESL learners, across proficiency levels and learning styles. Second langu...

Speaking anxiety is considered one of the factors that affect language learning. However, studies that focus on learners from China under hybrid learning are severely limited and need to be further explored. This study sought to compare the difference in speaking anxiety levels of Chinese students who were taking online classes and those who were t...

This study aims to investigate undergraduates' perspectives toward personality traits, presentation skills, and audience factors based on their experiences in online oral presentations as assessment tasks during English language classes. It also examines the factors affecting online oral presentations and suggestions to overcome them. To achieve th...

You are reading the second, or April, issue of the eleventh volume of IJELS. The current issue includes interesting articles with interesting topics that range from performing arts literacy to entrepreneurial literacy.

Language assessment literacy (LAL) is a relatively new area that has given birth to many instruments to enable researchers and policymakers to measure pre- and in-service teachers’ literacy. This project was an attempt to develop and assess the first Malaysian Language Assessment Literacy (MLAL) Index for secondary school English language teachers....

Metaphor in the local language plays in daily life besides their role in rhetoric and poetry. Thiswork shall focus on the positives and negatives of using the metaphor of animals in AlGhaddafi’s used animal metaphors in his speeches, under the Cognitive Linguistics and theCritical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). Studies conducted on Classical Arabic metap...

This book compiles the second volume of our short stories written in a number of Language Evaluation and Accountability courses offered for a few times since 2019. As you will see, the stories carry different flavors and represent a variety of cultures as their writers come from different countries. Since the writers of these stories come from dive...

As the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) is premised on monolingualism, which ignores the cross-cutting properties of multilingual environments, this study investigates the English Learning Self and its structural characteristics of students in a junior high school in a minority-inhabited area of Guizhou Province, China. These ethnic minority stu...

The issue of assessment in Malaysian international schools has rarely been explored. This qualitative study focuses on the views of three groups of stakeholders regarding the English language assessment of young learners in one such school. Primary-age children, their parents, and their teachers were interviewed online in iterative sessions for the...

To make stronger claims about the function of anxiety in online setting and its interaction with writing performance, there is a need to carry out extensive studies in various settings and with participants of different background experiences. Hence, this mixed method study set out to examine the effect of E-learning of English writing on Iranian m...

The use of pragmatic markers as an aspect of language competence is necessary to present ideas and facts coherently. These markers mainly modify talk so that talk is comprehensible and meaningful, and help the audience follow the sequence of ideas. Failing to use these markers can negatively affect the audience's comprehension of the presentation a...

In the development of language assessment in higher education, assessment criteria and tasks have diversified immensely. There has been an increasing acceptance of the importance of learning-oriented assessment (LOA) in facilitating the development of students' potential for effective learning. With the three key principles of learning-oriented ass...

The authors co-chaired this symposium, entitled How to Make Peer Feedback Work and hosted online by the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics (MAAL) on 1 September 2022. The speakers, Juuso Henrik Nieminen (Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong), James Wood (Associate Teaching Professor, Seoul National University), Wei Wei (Associate...

The authors co-chaired this symposium, entitled How to Make Peer Feedback Work and hosted online by the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics (MAAL) on 1 September 2022. The speakers, Juuso Henrik Nieminen (Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong), James Wood (Associate Teaching Professor, Seoul National University), Wei Wei (Associate...

Patron in Chief Dr. Muntazar Mehdi Assistant Professor National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad Editor in Chief Dr. Muhammad Issa Assistant Professor University of Baltistan, Skardu Editors Irshad Hussain Lecturer University of Baltistan, Skardu Muhammad Mustafa Lecturer University of Baltistan, Skardu Altaf Hussain Lectur...

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and language teaching, willingness to communicate (WTC), a construct of oral communication, has been extensively researched as it is considered a facilitative factor for language development. Most studies examine this construct using the quantitative method. There are fewer studies that have examine...

ABSTRACT There have been a considerable number of studies on the research article genre (RA) from different perspectives of form and function. However, limited studies have examined the overall organizational structure of articles with all the main sections of the research article, Introduction, Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD). There are also v...

The acquisition of the English present perfect is considered one of the most difficult grammar categories to learn for second language learners. This study aimed to shed light on some of the intricacies of the acquisition of the English present perfect by L1 Chinese ESL learners in Malaysia. The findings of this study, therefore enhance the underst...

Towards auto didacticism in the learning of English language in Malaysian universities, students are required to do oral presentations as an academic task such as presentations of articles reviews, book chapter summaries and mini or final project proposals. To conduct these 28 classroom oral presentations, students usually employ a number of techno...

Gardner’s (1985) in his socio-educational model introduced the variable of ‘integrativeness’ as a construct that focuses on English as a Second Language (ESL) learners’ attitudes towards the native English community. Later, Yashima (2002) proposed ‘international posture’ as an affective construct that re-examined ‘integrativeness’. Research conduct...

The Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW) was developed because of the need for a genre-specific scale to assess English as a Second Language (ESL) university student writers' argumentative essays. The present study reports the findings of field-testing ASAW. For this purpose, argumentative samples (n = 110) were collected and remote-score...

The objectives of this study are (i) to identify the distributions of prepositions in the CEFR Grammar Profile at each level, (ii) to compare the prepositions in the CEFR Grammar Profile with the BNC in terms of frequency order, (iii) to compare the prepositions in the CEFR Grammar Profile with the EMAS Corpus in terms of mastery level and (iv) to...

An important aspect of the emerging user care discourse is the apologies offered by companies. Previous research has focused on public apologies; however, there has been little focus on the users’ comments in response to apologies. This case study aimed to investigate (i) the structure of the public apologies in terms of their frequency and sequenc...

This study is expected to shed light on the further clarification of figurative language use and complement the research of social practices effects of discourse. It is expected to provide more information about the vocabulary and structural sets from the perspective of lexical and grammatical signals in the language of leaders. All that shall a co...

The increasing importance of using movies to enhance second language teaching and learning has been addressed by researchers and educators. A few scholarly studies have effortlessly put forward significant findings on using movies in the area of theoretical bases, pedagogical aspects and learners’ perspectives. However, more studies need to be expl...

The noble aim of publishing an article is to drive the wheel of scientific research forward; pragmatically speaking, though, and that is the case of many authors, a publication is a set criterion for their graduation or promotion. When publishing an article is mentioned, authors tend to contemplate rejection. Some fear rejection to the point of ref...

The increasing importance of using movies to enhance second language teaching and learning has been addressed by researchers and educators. A few scholarly studies have effortlessly put forward significant findings on using movies in the area of theoretical bases, pedagogical aspects and learners' perspectives. However, more studies need to be expl...

Learning intonation is one of the most important aspects of language learning. At the same time, learning the intonation is one of the most difficult parts of language learning and teaching. Therefore, this study investigated the difficulties of learning intonation, i.e. tonality, tonicity, and tones, among Iraqi undergraduate EFL students in Thi-Q...

When COVID-19, with its contagious properties and fatal signs, was detected, the reactions of human communities were interesting and weird at the same time. First came the denial; that COVID-19 was just another ordinary flu. However, denial was soon replaced by denunciations, and when people were busy blaming others for the situation, only within a...

This paper reports the results of a study that investigated the structure of the Problem Statement (PS) section, following Swales' (1990) Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model as the first objective. Move analysis was used to analyze the rhetorical moves of the PS sections of the research projects. The second objective was the identification of the...

When we say that Some people have lungs, we implicate that not all people have lungs. This scalar implicature arises when we produce a weaker expression instead of a stronger one. Studies on bilingual adults suggest that L2 learners, regardless of their proficiency level, are sensitive to under-informative sentences and they exhibit a superior prag...

Writing ability is essential in Second Language (L2) learners' educational and professional life however, apprehension obstructs to perform with confidence and fulfil their aspirations (Daly, 1975). Writing apprehension can be defined as 'a relatively stable anxiety disposition associated with L2 writing, which involves a variety of dysfunctional t...

Despite the increasing concerns about the importance of assessment, the studies that directly address the assessment beliefs and practices among Libyan secondary school English language teachers are scarce. The present study aimed to investigate the Libyan teachers’ classroom-based assessment beliefs and practices and the relationship between them....

Jean Kirshner holds a Ph.D. in Education and Human Resource Development from Colorado State University and specializes in literacy and teacher education. I came to know Jean and her school adoption project in the process of publishing her article in our previous issue. She graciously accepted my invitation for this interview that we carried out thr...

In the English as a second language (ESL) research context, teachers are committed to ensuring that students are aware of their writing skills and the kinds of errors they make in their writing. This explains why teacher feedback is frequently practised in the writing classrooms. Self-assessment is another supplementary strategy that provides oppor...

This study analyses leadership apologies to gain insights into effective leadership performance from the perspective of apologising. The study explores Obama's leadership qualities that are projected through his apology discourse mainly the strategies used to construct his apologies and values that emerge from them. The study concluded that leaders...

The present article reviews the research on writing Self-Assessment (SA) conducted in the period of 2000-2020. The article discusses the theoretical foundation for SA following the review of conceptualization of SA by various researchers. We were particularly interested in (i) examining whether the concept of SA has witnessed an expansion during th...

The widespread use of the English language raises concerns about maintaining the mutual intelligibility across different nonnative English varieties. Some have viewed nonnative English varieties as distorted forms of English that cannot stand on their own that would cause the language to disintegrate into mutually unintelligible varieties. This stu...

Findings in medical research articles (MRAs), in particular, the discussion section interest not only the discourse community but also the ordinary people. Therefore, the writing needs to be comprehensible to both experts and laymen alike. To achieve a successful writing of a MRA, the author's knowledge of lexical bundles (LBs) and rhetorical moves...

Findings in medical research articles (MRAs), in particular, the discussion section interest not only the discourse community but also the ordinary people. Therefore, the writing needs to be comprehensible to both experts and laymen alike. To achieve a successful writing of a MRA, the author's knowledge of lexical bundles (LBs) and rhetorical moves...

Writing is considered as an important but a difficult language skill for undergraduates. To develop writing skills, undergraduates need to be given the opportunity to interact with and help one another in the writing process. They also need to be supported by teachers in the process. However, most of the traditional teaching methods adopted by writ...

Numerous corpus studies have suggested that teaching materials design could greatly benefit from the empirical information about language use provided by corpus linguistics. In spite of the awareness that corpus-based research can offer valuable insights for materials development, still relatively small number of studies report on the practical app...

The 1st Postgraduate Student Seminar on Current Issues in Language, Literature, and Culture was organized by the Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia and held on February 13, 2020 at the faculty. The event was officiated by the Head of Department, Associate Prof Dr. Rosli Talif. Throughout...

The ever-increasing spread of English as a major international language has facilitated the emergence of distinct English varieties. These new varieties of English are now being adopted for international and intercultural communication. However, one of the consequences of having different varieties is the possible lack of mutual intelligibility amo...

This study investigates Nigerian undergraduates’ experiences of a problem-based learning approach (PBL) in an ESL writing classroom. The study involves an intact class of second-year students (n=18) in an English Composition course. A questionnaire was used to collect data on the participants’ experiences and perceptions of PBL. Semi-structured int...

Currently, ministries of education in some developing countries, such as Malaysia and Iran, are planning to transform their often-centralized tests to school-based assessment. This is good news but before making any changes, one must ask if stakeholders in such communities are ready for any changes. The objective of this study was to compare the co...

This paper aims to explore the development of language assessment literacy (LAL) through the period of the last 2 decades from 1999 to 2018. It commences with a review of AL studies in the last 20 years. Which follows evaluating 14 journal articles related to LAL. These studies are demonstrated by a discussion of the various components of LAL and t...

Previous studies have examined learner factors such as anxiety, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation in ESL/EFL (English as a second language/English as a foreign language) writing. Studies have affirmed that self-efficacy and achievement motivation could enhance writing performance, whereas anxiety may hinder writing achievement. This study a...

Previous studies have examined learner factors such as anxiety, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation in ESL/EFL (English as a second language/English as a foreign language) writing. Studies have affirmed that self-efficacy and achievement motivation could enhance writing performance, whereas anxiety may hinder writing achievement. This study a...

The discussion section forms an integral part in the writing process of a research article (RA). It is a pivotal section where proposition of findings and rebuttal of claims conflate. For such writing to be credible and be accepted by the discourse community, it is important for writers to structure their arguments along the accepted communicative...