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Abstract-This study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences group dynamics as well as group outcome. In line with its experimental comparison group design, two intact classes of junior English Literature students (N=32) participated in this study over one academic semester. Community model was employed to teach creative writing to both classes, but, while in one class students (N=16) were required to self-select their working partners, in the other they were assigned into groups by the teacher, based on their learning styles (N=16). The quantitative and qualitative data, obtained through students' initial writing drafts, revised texts and an end of the course written report, underwent One way Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) and content analysis. The findings indicated that although teacherassigned groups had no definite advantage over those of student-selected in terms of group dynamics, they noticeably outperformed student-selected groups in terms of outcome. In particular, teacher-assigned groups were more task oriented and thus more successful at accomplishing group task -here revision. The results suggest that group formation method is a contributing factor to the success of group work.

This study targeted to explore the effect of memory strategy on EFL learners’ vocabulary retention with a consideration of learners’ multiple intelligence. In this study, the memory strategy consisted of three parts of grouping, acronym and images. The participants of this study were 80 male and female EFL learners of intermediate level who underwent 12 hours of instruction in a language institute. They were chosen through convenience sampling and they then were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was directly taught how to implement memory strategies in learning vocabulary. A  pre-test post-test control group design was carried out to collect the required data through vocabulary tests, memory strategy and multiple intelligence questionnaires. The results showed that the experimental group’s vocabulary retention statistically improved. Moreover, the relationship between MI and vocabulary retention of Iranian EFL learners was reported statistically significant. This positive relationship was particularly reported between existential MI, linguistic MI scores and spatial MI scores and vocabulary scores. The finding provided information on how to teach English vocabulary in EFL classes and also recommended that teachers exploit MI in the teaching processes. It also suggests that educators, learners, policy makers, material producers, and syllabus designers move from traditional-based approaches to more innovative ways of teaching vocabulary.

Being and becoming is the ultimate objective of any educational enterprise, including language teaching. However, research results indicate seemingly unjustified differences between how females and males are treated by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers. The overall aim of this study is to illustrate, analyze, and discuss aspects of gender bias and gender awareness in teacher-student interaction in the Iranian college context. To this end, teacher-student interactions of 20 English teachers and 500 students were investigated from the perspective of gender theory. The data were obtained via classroom observations, a seating chart and the audio-recording of all classroom interactions during the study. The findings, obtained from the quantitative descriptive statistics and chi-square methods, as well as the qualitative analysis by way of open and selective coding, uncovered that there were significant differences in the quantity and quality of the interaction for females and males in almost all categories of interaction. The study also revealed teachers' perception of "gender," the problems they associate with gender, and the attitudes they have to gender issues. Apparently, while positive incentives are able to facilitate learner growth, the presence of any negative barrier such as gender bias is likely to hinder development. This has implications for teachers, and faculty members who favor healthy and gender-neutral educational climate.

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