علی اصغر رستمی ابوسعیدی

A long-standing debate among the vocabulary researchers is the depth of processing to learn vocabulary. This paper is a quantitative research which considers a revision in the “involvement load hypothesis” proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn in 2001. It investigates the role of proficiency and evaluation in this hypothesis in order to better reveal its potential contribution to vocabulary learning. It was based on task-induced involvementthat comparesdifferent tasks in incidental vocabulary acquisition in EFL context. The participants were 66 learners fromtwo different English institutes who were classified into two major high and low proficient groups based on Nelson Proficiency Test. The participants in each group were randomly assigned to three tasks prepared to compare“moderate”, “strong”, and “no evaluation” in involvement load hypothesis.The “strong evaluation”subgroup (making original sentences) in low proficiency supported Laufer and Hulstijn’s hypothesis and yielded better retention of the target words. The study suggests that the level of proficiency and evaluation in task induced involvementneeds reconsideration. The results have implications for language teachers, materials developers, and syllabus designers.

Advertisement has long been used as a tool for informing and attracting audiences in different ways. This study aims at investigating the linguistic tools of advertisement in Persian on the basis of Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar theory. The data of this study were gathered from written and verbal commercial advertisements which were recorded and rewritten in order to investigate verbal groups in the sentences in terms of process and function types and subsequently compare the two bodies. The results showed that material and relational processes had highest frequency in Persian language in terms of ideational metafunction. From the interpersonal metafunction perspective, information function was frequent in most cases. Regarding these factors, there was no significant difference between verbal and written bodies.

The present study is a research which explores the relationship between introversion/extroversion and the use of vocabulary learning strategies. The participants were 80 male and female EFL students of University of Sistan and Baluchestan who had studied EFL at the university for at least two years and were randomly selected. The participants were selected after excluding those who got L scores of above 4 or 5 from the EPI personality inventory. They were then divided into two groups of introverts and extroverts based on the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). The independent sample t-test was run to examine if there is a significant relationship between the students’ personality type (intro/extra) and their use of vocabulary learning strategies. It was found that there is no difference between introverts and extroverts in the overall use of vocabulary learning strategies as well as in the use of cognitive, memory, and social strategies. However, a significant difference was found between these two groups in the use of determination strategies. It was also found that of the four categories, determination strategies were the most frequently used category by all the participants. The results also revealed that extroverts used vocabulary learning strategies more frequently than their introverted counterparts.

This study aims to understand certain linguistic and semantic resources for the text construction, namely the constructs of cohesion, coherence. The analysis of cohesive ties was conducted on the writing samples of 40 subjects (20 most coherent and 20 least coherent) Iranian undergraduates of English. This prompted us to identify the dominant types of cohesive devices used in most coherent writing samples. The analysis of data revealed that both the writing samples were found highly dense in the use of reference. The correlation analysis also didn’t show any overlap between the referential ties and coherence.. Hence, we can claim that referential ties don’t play any role in making a text coherent. Among the five major types of cohesive classes, substitution and ellipsis were found least frequently used in both the writing samples. Their occurrence was less than 1%. It, therefore, seems that the two types of cohesive devices aren’t widely used in written discourse. In the collective data, since, their occurrence is not even noticed in any of the writing scripts where as they could be the most dominant type of cohesion of spoken discourse.

In recent years a great number of books have appeared in various fields of ESP، and the number is increasing every year. These books are specially prepared and adapted for foreign students possessing varying degrees of language skills. Experts believe that the production of ESP books is a vital task that requires several stages and procedures. To produce these materials، special attention should be paid to the age of the learners their English background، their level of knowledge in specialist field and the teaching method. The best should be done to provide materials which enable the learners to increase their English proficiency، learn the required skills for communication، and achieve their terminal behavior. Since the majority of university graduates in Iran are not equipped with sufficient knowledge of English to read and understand the original specialized textbooks، this paper aimed to test the appropriateness of materials used in ESP classes، based on a study conducted at Chabahar Maritime University. The finding of this research rejected the null hypothesis، because the observed t. was 2.83 and the value of critical t.’ with the 49 degrees of freedom at the .05 level was 2، and this signifies that the novel content based texts motivated the students and improved their English proficiency.