علیرضا جلیلی فر

This experimental study attempts to see whether incorporating supplemental podcasts into the blended module of second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning leads to better learning outcomes in comparison with other common teaching and learning methods as self-study and conventional. To that end, undergraduate students from Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences were summoned up via an announcement to take part in the study. Volunteers were homogenized via Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) and were then randomly divided into three groups to learn English vocabulary items via three different scenarios during 32 sessions. The collected data from the participants’ answers to the attitude questionnaire and interview as well as the data from assessing their performance throughout the course were analyzed both descriptively and inferentially. The analysis of the data revealed that the podcast-mediated blended L2 learning scenario appeared as the most successful scenario in L2 vocabulary learning. Consequently, it could be concluded that providing miscellaneous practicing opportunities for students would facilitate learning process and contribute to learning improvement.

Concerns over the phony nature of textbooks and artificiality of their contents in reflecting authentic language have been raised by a number of researchers. It has been argued that many language teaching programs result in the failure of learners of English to successfully communicate in the target language. The problem with these programs is that there is no general agreement about the success of these materials in developing the pragmatic competence necessary for interlocutors’ mutually intelligible communication[D1] . Hence, this study explored communicated requests for nonverbal/verbal goods and services (RNGS/RVGS) in the dialogues of 5 textbooks and 8 English movies. The utterances of the textbooks and movies were evaluated on six criteria deriving from research on speech act theory, politeness, and conversation analysis. These included whether the textbooks discussed second pair parts, the forms of requests, the context of request occurrence, the nature of the devices through which the requests are mitigated, and multi-turn request forms. The results of the analysis revealed that, except for re-requests and dispreferred responses of RNGS,textbooks’ strategies including forms, face, contexts of RVGS, and strategies of RNGSwere not realized through adequate examples compared to their variants in movies.Most importantly,except for bald on record, internal mitigators of RVGS, external mitigators, and direct and indirect forms of RNGS, the other request strategies in the textbooks showed less variety than those of their counterparts in the movies. Internally mitigated RVGS were the onlystrategies variouslyexploited in the textbooks.The findings revealed that textbook designers should improve their instructional materials by incorporatingmore accurate samples of communicated requests in their future textbooks.

Among the linguistic resources for creating grammatical metaphor, nominalization rewords processes and properties metaphorically as nouns within the experiential metafunction of language. Following Halliday's (1998a) classification of grammatical metaphor, the current study investigated nominalization exploited in an English applied linguistics textbook and its corresponding Persian translation. Selection of these textbooks was motivated by consulting 10 ELT professors. Analysis started by identifying nominalization instances and recurrent patterns of nominalization in the books through adopting a mixed approach. The frequency of nominal expressions was counted, and eventually chi-square was run to find out the probable significance of nominalization use in English and Persian academic text samples. The quantitative differences in using nominalization turned out to be significant, and results revealed variations in the ranking patterns of nominalization in both texts. Qualities as entities tended to recur more in English than in Persian. However, the noun to noun modifier was frequently exploited in the Persian translation. The similarities in the employment of nominalization patterns might reflect the awareness of both the author and the translator of the role of metadiscourse markers in scientific texts. The main reason for the differences lies in the matter that knowledge is realized in different languages. The findings of this study have implications for textbook writers, English for Academic Purposes students, and translators.

علیرغم اهمیت پایان نامه ها بعنوان بخش مهمی از تحصیلات تکمیلی، در سال های اخیر، بیشتر مطالعات ژانر محور بر روی مقالات تحقیقی صورت گرفته است (بانتن، 2002: سویلز، 1990). علاوه بر این، از میان مطالعات مبتنی بر راهبرد نقشی Move)) که در مورد بخش های مختلف پایان نامه های تحصیلات تکمیلی انجام شده، مطالعات بسیار کمی در مورد بخش آخر پایان نامه ها، بخش پیشنهادات برای تحقیق بیشتر، و تحلیل درشت ساختار آنها صورت گرفته است. بنابراین، هدف از این تحقیق، مقایسه و بررسی ژانر این بخش از پایان نامه های کارشناسی ارشد و دکتری در رشته زبانشناسی کاربردی و شناسایی علائم استعاره ای بکار برده شده در هر راهبرد و مرحله (Move/Step) می باشد. بدین منظور، مجموعا 160 بخش پیشنهادات برای تحقیق بیشتر پایان نامه های کارشناسی ارشد و رساله های دکتری انتخاب و براساس الگوی پیشنهادی شامل شش راهبرد (Move) و پانزده مرحله (Step) و مدل طبقه بندی علائم استعاره ی هایلند (2005) مورد بررسی و تحلیل قرار گرفتند. یافته های تحقیق، سه مرحله ی (Step) اجباری در بخش های یک، دو، و پنج ((M1S1, M2S3, M5S1 را نشان داد. همچنین، نتایج مقایسه این دو گروه حاکی از آن بود که تفاوت معنا داری در بخش های توجیه تحقیق حاضر، پیشنهادات برای تکرار تحقیق، کاربردهای تحقیق، و اننتظارات محقق وجود داشت. نتایج حاصله از این تحقیق می تواند برای توسعه ی سبک های بلاغی بخش بحث مفید واقع شود، و براین اساس، راهکارهای آموزشی مهمی برای متخصصان و نویسندگان تحصیلات تکمیلی بومی و غیر بومی ارائه می کند.

Academic writing ability is an important goal that learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) try to attain. While ESL students’ academic writings have been widely explored, owing to few studies investigating appraisal resources in EFL students’ argumentative writing, the gap still exists about EFL students’ academic writing. This study aimed to see how Kurdish-speaking learners of English employ appraisal resources in their writings. It further aimed to explore whether the appraisal framework can be utilized as an assessment scale for evaluating the students’ argumentative writing. To this end, the study investigated the argumentative essays written by 15 bilingual Kurdish-Iranian graduates of English within the framework of the appraisal theory. The instruments applied in this study consisted of a modified rating scale for assessing the essays in terms of the macrostructures exploited in them and the framework for the analysis of appraisal resources. Quantitative findings revealed high-graded essays employ more attitudinal items and fewer monoglossic resources than low-graded ones. Qualitatively, the high-graded essays articulated attitudinal values in nominal forms and sometimes in a backgrounded manner while these values were mostly presented by surge of feelings and in a foregrounded way in the low-graded essays. Regarding engagement, unlike the high-graded essays, the low-graded ones were poor in recognizing other voices and alternative positions. Inspired by the strength of the appraisal model evaluating writing, results suggest that high-graded essays are successful in positioning readers attitudinally and clarifying the ethical message to readers.

This study aimed at providing learners with an opportunity not only to bring together their core and disciplinary knowledge to acquire major skills of learning English as a foreign language (EFL), and the intellectual challenge of these issues at the interface of media, language and religion, but also help the materials generators to produce suitable types of content to be delivered through the medium of mobile technology. Therefore, it sought to examine the new way of teaching EFL in the form of correspondence with respect to Iranian learners' native culture and language. For the purposes of this study, English was the target language for 680 Iranian students with pre-intermediate level of language proficiency whose native languages were Persian, Arabic, Georgian, and Turkish. This study took as its point of departure the existence of important differences between the two learning materials (off the shelf vs. Islamic culture) types; thus, applying the Qur'ānic criteria of intelligence, knowledge and virtue parallel with the digital representation of common textbook materials, materials delivery was adapted to the cellphone screen to be accessed by learners' in 18 virtual sessions. Learners took part in two summative and 18 formative components included in the assessment design of this study. Also, they all answered a questionnaire which yielded information concerning their attitude towards the target language, and learning through the wireless technology. Learners' short texting correspondence as well as their performance in battery and their answers to items of questionnaires formed the reference for analyzing the results. The gains from English Islamic materials were outweighed by the effects of obtaining materials which involved more categorized cases.

حوزه ارتباطات سیار با تلفیق ویژگی های رایانه ها و تلفن های همراه عرصه را برای ارتباط سریع فراگیران با دست اندرکاران آموزش و پرورش فراهم ساخته است. هدف این پژوهش بررسی تأثیر ابعاد گوناگون تهیه و تدوین محتوای آموزشی در آموزش زبان انگلیسی به 123 نفر از فراگیران کم سواد ایرانی (70 نفر زن و 53 نفر فراگیر مرد) از بازه سنی 35 تا 55 سال از طریق فناوری های نوین ارتباطی بود. اعضای نمونه آماری در این مطالعه از میان فراگیران سازمان نهضت سوادآموزی واقع در پنج شهرستان استان اصفهان انتخاب شدند. با توجه به اهمیت نقش دستورالعمل در آموزش محتوا برای پردازش و یادگیری اطلاعات، این مطالعه سعی در بررسی تأثیر شیوه ارائه دستورالعمل به طور خاص (سبک رسمی و غیررسمی دستورالعمل) و کاربرد پیوست بر عمل کرد کم سوادان فارسی زبان در یادگیری واژگان زبان انگلیسی از طریق تلفن همراه دارد. در جهت نیل به این مقصود، در طی پنج هفته 36 واژه جدید زبان انگلیسی به سبک غیررسمی و رسمی از طریق تلفن همراه با کاربرد پیوست در اختیار سوادآموزان قرار گرفت. سوادآموزان در پایان، در آزمون جامعی متشکل از سه خرده آزمون چهارگزینه ای، یادآوری و نوشتاری شرکت نمودند. در مقایسه با روش های پیشین، نتایج پژوهش نشان داد ماهیت اختصار پیامک امکان استفاده از سبک غیررسمی برای پیشبرد آموزش زبان انگلیسی به شهروندان کم سواد را پدید می آورد. به علاوه کاربرد پیوست تصویری در تسهیل یادگیری و عمل کرد بهتر سوادآموزان فارسی زبان نقش عمده ای را ایفا می نماید.

Politicians adopt a variety of linguistic strategies in their speeches to connect with their audience. To name one, appraisal, as a system of interpersonal meaning, is concerned with evaluation where resources are used for negotiating social relationships. Despite their significance in shaping texts, there have hardly been any extensive inventories of appraisal tools contrasting electoral speeches. The current study examined the evaluative strategies used by presidential candidates during the American 2008 and Iranian 2009 national polls. To this end, we applied qualitative and quantitative analyses and the results revealed significant differences among the winners and losers of each group. While affect and judgment were substantially utilized by the winners in both American and Iranian contexts, appreciation resources were context-sensitive. Differences in the kind and nature of attitudinal markers revealed their different political, social, economic and international statuses at election time.

The present study on politeness is an attempt to examine (dis)agreeing strategies utilized by EFL learners while chatting on the internet. Subjects of the study were forty male and thirty-three female Iranian natives whose internet relay chat (IRC) interactions, composed of 400 excerpts, were collected between December 2007 and September 2008. Data analysis was based on the general taxonomy of politeness strategies suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987) which is the baseline of many politeness studies today. The results indicate that IRC is a mode of communication whose characteristics are typically different from face-to-face and real-life conversational settings. Some common face threatening acts (FTAs) like ‘direct disagreements’ are performed widely in chat channels. Furthermore, gender-oriented differences were found not to be statistically significant on the internet.

The present study investigated the effect of single and multiple genre movies on listening comprehension of upper intermediate language learners. To this end, a language proficiency test was administered to 40 male and female postgraduates of different majors attending International English Language Testing System (IELTS) classes and ultimately 25 upper intermediate language learners were selected. The participants were tested based on two sets of multiple-choice post viewing questions which probed into their comprehension of the content and generic structure of the multiple genre movie Hide and Seek and the single genre documentary film Arctic Tale. The results showed that multiple genre movies are far more effective in promoting the participants’ listening comprehension than single-genre movies. Multiple genre movies depict a picture of our own life; hence, participants feel more connected to the movie content. The study suggests the important role of film genre in listening comprehension.