خلاصة:
Good language learners slot in a repertoire of strategies and when language tests are at stake, test-taking strategies and test-wiseness pave pay to a prolific outcome. Among such tests, TOEFL iBT seems to be a prerequisite to academic success and a nightmare many Iranian students struggle with. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to raise awareness about the type of questions in iBT, brush up the necessary skills integratively, and help them employ strategies that can facilitate optimal results during the preparation course and as they were taking the test. Furthermore, we intended to investigate if the level of proficiency alone was sufficient or strategies played a more important role. Therefore, 34 iBT candidates (18 intermediate and 16 advanced) sat an iBT test and later took part in special strategy training courses. They were interviewed on the effectiveness of the strategies during the course and after they sat the second exam. As the results revealed, there was a significant difference between the two sets of exam results and being test-wise and the strategies of goal setting, covering, interleaving, and considering the context along with spaced practice and compensation strategies helped the candidates perform better without further language classes.
ملخص الجهاز:
Learner Strategies and Test-Wiseness of the Intermediate and Advanced Iranian TOEFL iBT Test Takers Amirreza Nemat Tabrizi Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.
As the results revealed, there was a significant difference between the two sets of exam results and being test-wise and the strategies of goal setting, covering, interleaving, and considering the context along with spaced practice and compensation strategies helped the candidates perform better without further language classes.
Despite such diversity of topic, learner strategies employed during the preparation course with an added awareness of test type and with regard to the proficiency level of the skills and sub skills necessary, seem to be a promising domain that could aid many hapless TOEFL takers approach the test with composure and unnecessary distress helping them pluck their courage and the needed knowledge base to better handle the tasks.
In a study carried by Nourmohammadi and Tahami (2018), it was revealed that Iranian EFL learners use different types of test-taking strategies in answering multiple-choice items in reading comprehension tasks.
This study has sought to clarify among many factors that warrant a desired score on the TOEFL test, how leaner strategies and test-wiseness can help the test takers get better marks even if their level of proficiency cannot be increased and if it mainly depends on strategy use during the preparation course and being applied right at the exam session.
g. , Goh, 2000; Goh & Taib, 2006; Mareschal, 2007; Graham & Macaro, 2008; Cross, 2009; Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010) all of which show that more proficient learners use more metacognitive strategies especially in listening tasks.