درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study examines the effect of video recording in Google Drive as the self-assessing E-portfolio on high school EFL learners’ speaking fluency. To that end, a quasi-experimental comparison group research was implemented in which thirty Iranian high school EFL students were assigned either to e-portfolio or comparison groups. While the e-portfolio group assessed their own performance by keeping electronic portfolios in Google Drive, their counterparts in the comparison group presented their performance in the class. The students’ speaking fluency was assessed through both pre- and post-tests. A speaking rubric was used to get the students’ scores. The results of the independent sample t test showed that taking advantage of self-assessment through video-based e-portfolios improved the learners’ speaking fluency. The study had relevant implications for both material designers and language teachers not only to promote student speaking skills, but also to enhance students’ lifelong learning.

Despite abundant research on teachers’ motivational strategies worldwide, scant attention has been paid to this in Vietnam. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate the high school EFL teachers’ use of motivational strategies reported by students and their attitudes towards these motivational strategies. The participants consisted of 416 students taught by 30 EFL teachers from ten high schools of eight provinces in the Mekong Delta. A semi-opened questionnaire was employed to elicit students’ report on the motivational strategies employed by their English teachers, and their judgments about the value of these strategies. Findings of the study indicated that the teachers frequently used top motivational strategies as reported in previous research. Such strategies were also judged to be motivating by the students. However, noticeably, the students highly valued teacher recognition of their efforts and a harmonious behaviour and ascribed these practice to their increased motivation. Other strategies were also suggested by students that teachers should use. The implication is that cultural differences mediate students’ perceptions, and that the EFL teachers in the context should attend to fundamental strategies, and the ones preferred by students.

There is little research on the task-based teaching approach in senior secondary L2 English writing classrooms. This study carried out an exploratory sequential mixed methods study to explore the suitability and adaptations of task-based language teaching in the domain of secondary schools in small cities. First, the researcher surveyed six EFL senior secondary teachers of different teaching experiences in China by convenient and purposive sampling to get background information, then had semi-structured interviews with them individually. To followed the interviews, the researcher surveyed 148 students via an online questionnaire also by convenient and purposive sampling. Findings indicated that, although most teachers acknowledged the usefulness of TBLT, they regarded it unsuitable and unfeasible in the context of Chinese senior secondary L2 writing classrooms. Also, students in the study ranked clear instruction and vocabulary increase as the first two contributors in improving their L2 English writing. But half of all students also valued an interesting writing classroom and took it as a third facilitator to develop their writing. Besides, adaptations were suggested to include professional task design, teacher discussion, reward mechanism and teacher profession development. In the future, further research is needed to examine the findings in this study, generalizing them to different contexts, ages and domains, and exploring teachers’ individual differences and their choice of teaching approaches.

This study investigates the benefits of e-collaborative and collaborative writing tasks on the perception of Iranian EFL learners in a process-oriented approach. The study involved 74 intermediate Iranian EFL students at Islamic Azad University, Isfahan Branch. They were divided into three groups by random assignment as two experimental groups and one control group. The experimental groups were required to perform their tasks in collaboration; only one of these two groups had access to the Telegram Application outside the classroom. The control group, however, followed the conventional method of learning how to write. The participants were required to write two journals during the course. They were asked to write about their understanding, attitude, and experience on the writing activity. There were 136 diary entries to be analyzed in order to discover the themes in them. These themes were literally the emerging concepts in the diary entries related to research question of the study about the participants’ perception. After the identification of these dominant themes, content analysis was performed to interpret the data. According to the results of the study, a high percentage of students’ satisfaction showed positive perceptions of e-collaborative activities, and they reported that the instructional implementation of an e-collaborative writing project with a five-stage writing process did assist EFL learners to accomplish a collaborative writing task.

Scaffolding and shadowing techniques have been shown to improve language learners’ reading comprehension. However, little attention has been paid to the comparative effectiveness of these techniques. This study investigated the effect of three selected scaffolding techniques (peer scaffolding, distributed scaffolding, and reciprocal scaffolding) versus three types of shadowing (complete shadowing, partial shadowing, and interactive shadowing) on L2 reading comprehension. To this end, 120 intermediate level EFL learners (in 6 groups of 20 members each) were selected through convenience sampling from three language institutes in Qazvin. Each group was randomly assigned to one of the shadowing and scaffolding techniques. One way ANOVA and independent samples t-tests were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that among the three scaffolding techniques, distributed scaffolding was the most effective technique on reading comprehension. The most effective technique among shadowing groups was interactive shadowing. A significant difference was also found between the shadowing and scaffolding techniques in favor of scaffolding techniques. These findings may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for researchers, learners, teachers, and syllabus designers.

Critical thinking has been a significant issue in the realm of EFL teaching and learning. This study aimed at investigating the contribution of paper-based and web-assisted feedback on Iranian EFL learners’ level of criticality in acquiring the writing skill. Besides, it was endeavoured to explore the extent of feedback contributions to the five constituents of critical thinking. Accordingly, a non-randomized control group pre/post-test design was taken into consideration, accounting for the two experimental treatments along with one control group. The levels of critical thinking of 61 EFL learners were initially rated prior to the 11-session treatments, and finally were re-appraised at the termination of the semester at University of Hormozgan. The out-turns of the one-way between-groups ANOVA set forth a statistically significant difference between the critical thinking scores of the four groups with respect to the type of feedback they received. Moreover, the outcomes of paired samples t-test revealed a statistically significant increase in all the four within-group criticality scores from pretest to posttest. Furthermore, the results of MANOVA illuminated a significant feedback contribution to the argument level of critical thinking, substantially due to the web-assisted type. So, web-assisted feedback was concluded to play a crucial role in facilitating EFL learners' journey towards becoming more critical writers. Finally, some pedagogical implications were conveyed parenthetically.

This study evaluated the cultural content of Vision textbook series that are currently in use in Iranian public secondary school system. The aim was to find the most frequent cultural references as well as the most-frequently-represented cultural senses. For this purpose, frequency counts were used to collect the data and the culture categorization framework (Adaskou et. al., 1990) and cultural reference framework (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999), modified by Tajeddin and Teimournezhad (2014), were used to analyze the data. Results of the frequency counts indicated that the Vision ELT textbooks contained the most cultural content associated with Persian as the source culture. Similarly, the focus was primarily on the esthetic sense of culture, followed respectively by semantic, sociological and sociolinguistic (pragmatic) senses. The study ends up with implications for EFL stake-holders in Iranian context as well as the ELT enterprise in general.   

Metaphor has usually been presented as a literary device which has some rhetorical and aesthetic purposes. However, in economic discourse, metaphor has a communicative function exhibited in English business texts. This study is directed towards a comprehensive analysis of metaphor translation in English business texts into Arabic. By selecting a sample of metaphors from business articles on BBC, CNN and Project Syndicate online websites, the study analyzes the data in terms of function, significance and role each metaphor plays in its context. The study also applies the cognitive approach to metaphor in the analysis of data and shows the important role this approach has on translation studies. The cognitive theory of metaphor provides significant insights into translation studies and now metaphor translatability is no longer a question of the individual metaphorical expression, as identified in the ST, but it has become linked to the level of conceptual systems in source and target cultures. Four main strategies of translating game/sport business metaphors are detected and used in the illustrative examples throughout the article. The study reveals that translators may opt for either preserving the metaphorical image of the source language metaphor or explicating its informative value; literal translation of some business metaphorical concepts presents itself as a workable solution in many cases because of the shared mood of cognition between English and Arabic language readers.