علی اکبر انصارین

Mounting attention has recently been paid to authorial stance in academic writing due to its important role in the interpersonal aspect of writing, encompassing the ways in which authors establish connections, convey attitudes, and engage with an audience. This study was an attempt to explore how native and non-native authors of Applied Linguistics deploy linguistic features to project their authorial stance. To this end, a corpus of 100 research articles authored by native and non-native researchers was collected from journals in the field of ELT. Hyland's Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse (2005) was employed to differentiate the features produced and figure out how authors navigate the complexities of expressing their meaning while considering the ELT community expectations, and SPSS was used to analyze the data. Based on the results, the proportion of interactive resources was found to surpass that of interactional resources in both native and non-native writings, with transitions being the leading feature, followed by evidentials; and regarding the interactional resources, boosters, and hedges were the most dominant features employed by native and non-native authors, respectively. Overall, no tendency was found towards textuality through which authors consider the target audience (engagement markers), signal their confidence through the portrayal of authors' feelings (attitude markers), and take credit for their findings (self-mentions) throughout the whole corpus, particularly non-native writings. It seems that writing courses offered in non-native contexts require improvements to meet the standards of academic writing. Therefore, the study has important implications for both non-native and novice researchers and course designers.

Designing appropriate materials and activities to enhance vocabulary learning is one of the primary goals of language courses. Among the claims about efficient pedagogical tasks is the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) according to which vocabulary development is contingent on the amount of cognitive process a task involves. Building on the previous research on this hypothesis, this study seeks to explore the extent to which three post-listening tasks of different involvement loads along with single-versus dual-mode glosses affect receptive and productive vocabulary learning of advanced English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. The participants (n = 204) listened to an expository text while twenty lexical items were presented through text-only or text-plus-picture glosses. Subsequently, they were assigned to one of the task type groups (sentence writing, gap-fill, and paragraph writing). Paribakht and Wesche’s (1997) Vocabulary Knowledge Scale was employed as the pre and post-tests. The results pointed to the efficacy of dual-mode over single-mode glosses concerning both receptive and productive vocabulary learning. The sentence writing task produced the highest scores in the vocabulary tests, whereas the gap-fill and paragraph writing tasks did not significantly differ. Hence, the results only partially confirmed the Involvement Load Hypothesis. The current study corroborates other studies verifying the modality effect on vocabulary learning and suggests that task type is a significant factor in EFL vocabulary learning.

: This study aims to explore the relationship between syntactic and lexical complexity and also the relationship between different aspects of lexical complexity. To this end, speech monologs of 35 Iranian high-intermediate learners of English on three different tasks (i.e. argumentation, description, and narration) were analyzed for correlations between one measure of syntactic complexity (mean number of clauses per Analysis of Speech Unit) and two measures of lexical complexity (diversity and sophistication). Spearman’s rho was used to calculate correlations between the average scores for syntactic and lexical complexity obtained from the three tasks and also for each of the three tasks individually. The results showed that the average scores for lexical diversity and lexical sophistication correlated positively, but the correlation was found only for the narration task. Also, the average scores for syntactic complexity did not correlate significantly with any of the average scores for the two measures of lexical complexity. However, the pattern of results differed across the three tasks. In the argumentation task, syntactic complexity correlated significantly only with lexical diversity. Syntactic complexity did not correlate significantly with any of the two measures of lexical complexity in the description task. In the case of the narrative task, there was a significant correlation between syntactic complexity and both measures of lexical complexity. The results are discussed in light of Levelt’s (1989) speaking model

نظر به لزوم یادگیری حجم بالای از لغات و دسترسی اندک زبان آموز به اطلاعات لازم در محیط آموزشی زبان، بررسی تکنیک های تسهیل کننده یادگیری لغات اجتناب ناپذیر است. هدف پژوهش حاضر مقایسه تاثیر حاشیه نویسی تصویری با تدریس ریخت شناسی بر توانایی استنباط لغوی فراگیران ایرانی زبان انگلیسی در سطح متوسط بوده است. برای اطمینان از هم سطح بودن زبان آموزان و ایجاد یک نمونه همگن از شرکت کنندگان، انتخاب آن ها از طریق آزمون استاندارد PET انجام شد و محققین آنها را میان دو گروه آزمایش و یک گروه کنترل تقسیم کردند. پیش از شروع دوره آموزش، تمام گروه ها در پیش آزمون استنباط لغوی که به صورت تست خودسنجی بود شرکت کردند. این دوره تحقیقی شامل 6 هفته تدریس استنباط لغوی لغات ناآشنا بود که در متون انگلیسی زیر آنها خط کشیده و پر رنگ شده بودند. در تمام گروه ها مقدار تدریس و نوع مواد آموزشی یکسان بود با این تفاوت که به یک گروه ریخت شناسی تدریس شد و در گروه دیگر از حاشیه نویسی تصویری استفاده شد. شایان ذکر است، در گروه کنترل از روش های سنتی یادگیری لغات بهره گرفته شد و فراگیران هیچ دسترسی به حاشیه نویسی تصویری و ویژگی های ریخت شناسی لغات نداشتند. نتایج حاصل از تحلیل واریانس یک طرفه پیش آزمون و پس آزمون استنباط لغوی که توسط محققین ساخته و استاندارد شده بود، هیچ تفاوت معناداری میان عملکرد زبان آموزانی که به آنها ریخت شناسی لغوی تدریس شده بود با عملکرد زبان آموزان گروه کنترل نشان نداد. یافته ها اثبات کرد عملکرد گروه آزمایشی که به آن حاشیه نویسی تصویر داده شده بود به طور معناداری از گروه ریخت شناسی بهتر بود. از این رو، محققین امیدوارند نتایج این تحقیق بتواند گامی نو در جهت رفع بسیاری از مشکلاتی را که مدرسان و فراگیران زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی در حدس زدن لغات ناآشنای موجود در متن با آنها روبرو هستند از میان بردارد.

The study of compliment speech act has been under investigation on many occasions in recent years. In this study, an attempt is made to explore appraisals performed by native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners to find out how these two groups diverge or converge from each other with regard to complimenting patterns and norms. The participants of the study were 60 advanced Iranian EFL learners who were speaking Persian as their first language and 60 native English speakers. Through a written Discourse Completion Task comprised of eight different scenarios, compliments were analyzed with regard to topics (performance, personality, possession, and skill), functions (explicit, implicit, and opt-out), gender differences and the common positive adjectives used by two groups of native and nonnative participants. The findings suggested that native English speakers praised individuals more implicitly in comparison with Iranian EFL learners and native speakers provided opt-outs more frequently than Iranian EFL learners did. The analysis of data by Chi-square showed that gender and macro functions are independent of each other among Iranian EFL learners’ compliments while for native speakers, gender played a significant role in the distribution of appraisals. Iranian EFL learners’ complimenting patterns converge more towards those of native English speakers. Moreover, both groups favored explicit compliments. However, Iranian EFL learners were more inclined to provide explicit compliments. It can be concluded that there were more similarities rather than differences between Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers regarding compliment speech act. The results of this study can benefit researchers, teachers, material developers, and EFL learners.

بررسی انتقال دانش منظورشناختی افراد از زبان مادری به زبان دوم یا زبان خارجی، همواره یکی از موضوعات مورد توجه محققین بوده است. با این وجود، در بین نتایج به دست آمده از مطالعات اندکی که قابلیت این انتقال را مورد بررسی قرار داده اند، اختلافاتی وجود دارد. مطالعه حاضر تلاشی بوده است در بررسی قابلیت انتقال فارسی به انگلیسی استراتژی های رد درخواست توسط زبان آموزان فارسی زبان. به طور مشخص، تأثیرات درجه سختی شرایطی که در آن درخواستی رد می شود و همچنین نوع درخواست رد شده بر قابلیت این انتقال بررسی شده است. برای این منظور پرسشنامه ای به کمک 60 زبان آموز فارسی زبان طراحی شده و در نهایت توسط 74 شرکت کننده اصلی در مطالعه تکمیل شد. نتایج به دست آمده حاکی از تأثیر دو جانبه درجه سختی شرایط و نوع درخواست رد شده بر قابلیت انتقال دانش منظورشناختی افراد است. این به این معنی است که آگاهی زبان آموزان از شرایطی که تحت تأثیر آنها درخواستی را رد می کنند، در تصمیم گیری نهایی آنها در اینکه کدام قسمت از دانش خود از زبان اول را به دیگر زبان ها انتقال دهند، تأثیرگذار است.