Effects of Immersive Learning and Communicative Language Teaching on the Oral Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency of Iranian EFL Learners with Expressive Language Disorder

International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research

دوره 12، شماره 46، دی 2023، صفحه 63-81   

نوع مقاله: Research Papers

شناسه دیجیتال (DOI): 10.30495/jfl.2023.706326

نویسندگان

Mojgan Khaki¹؛ Hossein Heidari Tabrizi^{* 1}؛ Sajad Shafiee²

¹Department of English, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

²English Department, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran

چکیده

The CTML served as the primary source of motivation for this investigation, which explored the effects of Immersive Learning (IL) and Communicative Language Teaching on the Oral Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) of Iranian EFL learners with Expressive Language Disorder (ELD). Using a quasi-Solomon four-group design, the participants, who were all Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners with mild to moderate levels of ELD, were separated into experimental and control groups. There were a total of 36 participants in this study. The intervention consisted of virtual reality (VR) authoring eighty speech exercises in the form of learning chunks for twenty sessions lasting seventy minutes each. In the groups that served as controls, the content was presented using a method known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Both the pre-test and the post-test were conducted orally using the CAF test. In terms of oral complexity (syntactic complexity and diversity), oral accuracy (error-free sentences and accurate verb forms), and oral fluency (number of vocally generated syllables), the findings revealed that individuals who received IL fared better than their counterparts in the CLT group. The findings may have important implications for teaching English as a foreign language and for rehabilitative education.

کلیدواژه‌ها

EFL learners؛ Expressive Language Disorder؛ oral accuracy؛ oral complexity؛ oral fluency

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