Task-based reading activities are of crucial value today, and consequently learners' proficiency is more important than their abstract knowledge of language rules. It seems that learners' familiarity with task-based reading activities may increase learners' proficiency. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of task-based reading activities such as text completion and pupil generated questions on vocabulary learning and retention of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To conduct the study, three intact classes of learners who had already finished Top Notch Fundamental A and B (Saslow & Ausher, 2011) in previous semesters in an English language institute were selected as the participants of the study. To ensure the homogeneity of the participants, those who got a score between 30-47 from the total score of 60 in OPT were selected as the intermediate level for main participants of the study (N=47). As the data were normally distributed, one way ANOVA and repeated measure ANOVA were employed for the statistical analyses of the study. The findings indicated that using task-based reading activities such as text completion and pupil-generated questions has significant and meaningful impacts on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary learning and retention. The implementations of the study are discussed.

The present study investigated the effect of input enhancement on the acquisition of English politeness strategies by intermediate EFL learners. Two groups of freshman English majors were randomly assigned to the experimental (enhanced input) group and the control (mere exposure) group. Initially, a TOEFL test and a discourse completion test (DCT) ensured homogeneity of the groups in terms of general proficiency and pragmatic competence. Then, the participants received the instructional treatments on English politeness strategies (PSs). They read and listened to dialogues containing the intended PSs. The target PSs were in bold typeface in enhanced input group's dialogue booklet and in regular font in mere exposure group's booklet. Subsequently, the groups took the DCT posttest. The analysis of the pretest and posttest data revealed the following results: Iranian intermediate EFL learners differed from English native speakers in their use of PSs; there was a low relationship, an insignificant correlation (rxy = .25), between general proficiency and pragmatic competence (i.e. competence in English PSs) of Iranian intermediate EFL learners; and input enhancement had a significantly greater effect on the acquisition of English politeness strategies (both comprehension and use of PSs) than simple exposure to PSs. The study implies that EFL learners should be provided with a specific instruction on English PSs and PSs should be presented in a noticeable way (e.g. typographically enhanced).

The present study investigated the possible contribution of plays as a medium of instruction for pragmatic development through explicit and implicit instruction. To this end, 80 English-major university students formed four intact experimental groups: two literary and two nonliterary groups. One of the literary groups (Implicit Play) received typographically enhanced plays containing the speech acts of apology, request, and refusal, and the other (Explicit Play) received the same plus metapragmatic instruction on the speech acts. The medium of instruction for the nonliterary groups were dialogs containing the given functions; they were also given either enhanced input (Implicit Dialog) or input plus metapragmatic information (Explicit Dialog). All the groups took a written discourse completion test (WDCT) and a multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT) before and after instruction. Analysis of the groups' performance on the WDCT pretest and posttest did not show an advantage for the literary medium, that is, there was no significant difference between literary and nonliterary groups. It was rather the mode of instruction that mattered most; explicit groups outperformed their implicit counterparts. As for the groups' performance on the MDCT pre and posttest, analyses revealed that the groups had improved, but there was no significant difference among the groups as a result of the four teaching conditions, suggesting that pragmatic instruction regardless of the medium and mode of teaching can improve learners' knowledge of speech acts.