The present study investigates the effect of metacognitive vocabulary learning strategy instruction on the recall of collocations. To this end, 75 extravert and introvert students were selected. The participants, then, were randomly assigned to two control and two experimental groups based on the TOEFL test score at upper intermediate level and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). Both experimental and control groups (each group containing two extravert and introvert sub-groups that totally form four groups) received the same type of collocation instruction, but the experimental group, in addition, received the metacognitive International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2013 www.macrothink.org/ijl 195 explicit strategy instruction. Meanwhile, our control groups received placebo. A pretest measuring the subjects" knowledge of collocations was administered. During the first parts of sessions, the class time was allocated to teaching collocations. The last thirty minutes of each session was dedicated to metacognitive strategy instruction in the experimental group. Treatment continued for eight weeks. At the end, a two-way ANOVA was run to compare the two groups plus the effect of personality on such performance. The results indicated that treatment did have an effect on the recall of collocations and also the extravert students enjoyed better performance compared to their introvert counterparts.

The present study intended to inspect whether different prompts (bare, vocabulary, and prose model) could exert different effects on the overall quality of the Iranian intermediate EFL learners' writing performances or not, and in case of effect, which of the prompts was efficacious toward the enhancement of the participants' overall writing quality. Forty male and female Iranian intermediate students learning English as a foreign language were selected via administering the Preliminary English Test (PET) and were each given three different writing prompts (bare, vocabulary, and prose model) during three consecutive weeks to write. The writing tasks involved the descriptive mode of discourse. Each task was presented in the context of a reply to an imaginary pen pal from England, Jack. A close examination of the results manifested the fact that the prose model elicited the best overall writing quality in the descriptive discourse mode when evaluated holistically. The bare prompt typically resulted in the poorest writing. The vocabulary prompt elicited writing samples that usually were of higher overall quality than those obtained with a bare prompt, but of lower quality than samples obtained with a prose model prompt.