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The purpose of this study is to determine if training courses in writing can cause a change in the learners' use of cohesion in their writing. 68 participants (32 male, 36 female) wrote two compositions on only one topic with a two-month interval (i.e., pre-test and post-test). In the mean time, they received overt instruction on cohesive ties (specifically on the use of reference, reiteration, synonyms, and superordinate words in their writing. Frequencies were counted and changed into percentages. Paired-samples t-tests were conducted. Results after analysis of the data indicated that overt instruction is a predictor of success in the use of cohesive ties in IELTS writing tasks. The greatest improvement was observed in the use of reference and superordinate words.

The present research accounts for the characteristic tense patterns of the verbal system in Laki Nurabadi dialect, in comparison to Farsi language. The study takes the following course of progress. It consists of an analysis of a set of related phenomena within the sample, including a brief introduction to the dialect position in Iranian language family, together with a survey of structural analyses within it. The paper presents the dialectal conjugation verb patterns in a dichotomous fashion of the major categories of past/non-past forms, compared to the triple past/future/present classification of Farsi. The analysis of the past forms, accordingly, includes: past simple, past continuous, past and present perfect; as well as, subjunctive and progressive forms. The non-past analysis, additionally, describes: present indicative, present subjunctive, and present progressive forms.

Much of the recent literature in the field of SLA research has a primary reliance on experimental design and quantitative analysis. Since SLA is so complex and multidimensional a phenomenon, it is difficult to study in an unnatural experimental design. In such a setting, some of the variables that affect the very nature of language learning may be missed or eliminated within experimental design. Furthermore, the complexity and elusiveness of SLA often make it difficult to formulate the appropriate questions or to identify the relevant variables. At the same time, the profession is becoming more socially responsive and more politically involved, and the facts that language pedagogy is context sensitive, and it is not just about cognitive factors have been well documented. These new developments are in contrast with some concepts such as objectivity, generalizability and idealization that we have in our research orientation. The purpose of this paper is to show that research orientation in SLA does not match with the new developments that we have had in the profession, and to shed more light on the core assumptions underlying qualitative research, proposing it as an alternative and a more relevant way of doing research in SLA.