درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study was an analytical account of EFL postgraduate learners’ use of verbs in citing other scholars in their own writing. Particular interest was differing extents of these verbs as categorised by Myer (1997), namely verbs representing a statement of scholarly writing, verbs communicating knowledge of scholarly writing, and verbs denoting cognition of scholarly writing, each of which has subcategories. To achieve this, 40 postgraduate dissertations and theses by the University of Dar es Salaam students were purposively selected. From these citation verbs from the introduction and literature review chapters were posted to the Microsoft Excel sheets and frequencies of occurrences were computed for each verb before assigning them to their relevant categories. The findings indicate the predominance of verbs of cognition of scholarly writing (notably perception and interpretation verbs) followed by those denoting knowledge of scholarly writing (notably procedural verbs). The least used category was verbs belonging to a statement of scholarly, especially inclusive verbs with only 10 instances of occurrence.

The generalizability aspect of Construct validity, as proposed by Messick (1989), requires that a test measures the same trait across different samples from the same population. Differential Item functioning (DIF) analysis is a key component in the fairness evaluation of educational tests. University entrance exam for the candidates who seek admission into master's English programs (MEUEE) at Iranian state universities is a very high stakes test whose fairness is a promising line of research. The current study explored gender and major DIF in the general English (GE) section of the MEUEE using multiple-indicators multiple-causes (MIMIC) structural equation modelling. The data of all the test takers (n=21,642) who took the GE section of the MEUEE in 2012 were analyzed with Mplus. To determine whether an item is flagged for DIF both practical and statistical significance were considered. The results indicated that 12 items were flagged for DIF in terms of statistical significance. However, only 5 items showed practical significance. The items flagged for DIF alert the test developers and users to potential sources of construct-irrelevant variance in the test scores which may call into question comparison of the test takers’ performance, especially when the tests are used for selection purposes.

One of the important abilities of learners is to monitor their own learning process and take charge of their development. To this end and based on the correlational nature of the study design, total of 125 students (for the Winter semester of 2017) educating at Zanjan Universities (89 B.A. students of Islamic Azad University and 60 B.A. students of Payam-e-Noor University) were chosen as the statistical population. Using Cochran formula and stratified random sampling method (each university was considered as one separate strata), the sample size was determined as 108 (65 students educating at Islamic Azad University and 43 students educating at Payam-e-Noor University). To gather the information, Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope’s, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Sternberg’s Thinking Styles Inventory, and Learner Autonomy Questionnaire (LAQ) developed by Zhang and Li were used. The results of K-S test showed that non-parametric test was liable to be used in order to study the research hypotheses. Using Spearman correlation coefficient, a relationship was found between autonomy and language anxiety among Iranian university students. The other research question was an attempt to determine if there was a relationship between learner autonomy and thinking style which was confirmed through the use of Spearman correlation coefficient. Ultimately, the association between language anxiety and thinking style was addressed through the use of Spearman test which confirmed this relationship. Findings of the current study suggest pedagogical implications for second or foreign language teaching and learning as well as textbook writers and curriculum designers.

Over the past decades, education took a critical-oriented shift. This perspective changed the role of teachers, students, and classrooms. A teacher's role changes from an instructor to a reflective practitioner, a student is considered an active agent of his/her learning, and a classroom is a place for identity endeavor. The assumption underlying such an approach conceptualizes education as a means for social control, not separated from social and cultural influences. This study sought to examine the impediments overshadowing the practicality of critical language pedagogy (CLP) and to explore English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' attitudes toward the dynamicity of transformative L2 materials preparation (TLMP) model. To undertake the study, the model was used in an M.A. language teaching methodology course with 40 prospective teachers. They were asked to write reflective journals (RJs) on several topics, followed by two class-assessments and two self-assessments, all focusing on the course procedure as well as learners' progress in attaining the intended outcomes of the course. Notably, they were requested to report their personal beliefs towards the dynamicity and functional efficacy of the proposed model and the extent to which it contributed to promoting their critical thinking skills and intellectual development. Qualitative data analysis included an in-depth content analysis of written data derived from RJs. The results attested that the participants positively appraised the practicality of the model.

Learning in every context is influenced by the social factors such as the people with whom the learners are communicating in that specific learning environment. As the role that social factors can potentially play in the process of education seems not to have been explored comprehensively in the field of English language teaching, in general, and in the Iranian educational context, in particular, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of both social goals and achievement goals on emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement, in an academic context. The participants of the study consisted of 302 undergraduate students (88 females, 206 males, 8 unspecified), majoring in English literature at two state universities and two private universities in Iran. The data were collected through one questionnaire consisting of items relating to different types of social goals and various types of engagement. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Regression Analysis were conducted to analyze the data. The results of CFA confirmed the validity of such goals in our context. Also, regression analysis showed that mastery goals, social status goals, and social concern goals predicted variance in different facets of engagement.

The transformational approach (Freire, 1998) can be achieved through critical pedagogy. The present study describes the development and validation of a questionnaire to access critical pedagogy for evaluating teachers’ perceptions of critical pedagogy in two different contexts i.e. public and private schools. This study used a mixed-method design. In the qualitative phase, 15 experienced high school teachers from public and private schools in Sabzevar, Iran, participated in a semi-structured interview. Based on the result of the constructivist grounded work and the literature review, the main constructs of critical pedagogy were described. Then, an eight-construct operationalization of language teaching was presented, describing the fundamental principles of language teaching from the point of view of critical pedagogy. In the quantitative phase, 180 valid questionnaires, obtained from 59 males and 121 females, were used to run the Confirmatory Factor Analysis using the software LISREL 8.5. This resulted in a 70-item, five-point Likert-scale instrument with satisfactory construct validity which was based on the 21 constructs of critical pedagogy. As a validated measurement, the Critical Pedagogy Questionnaire can be highly useful for the researchers and designers in the field of ELT, English teachers, and instructors to evaluate the perception of their learners on critical pedagogy.

: 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

Nowadays, English has become an international language and is used for communication and interaction among different countries and cultures across the world. So, the ability to communicate in a comprehensive way is one of the major goals of any second language educational setting. The aims of the present research were to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ social intelligence (SI) and their willingness to communicate (WTC) across gender, as well as to find out any possible difference between male and female learners in SI and their WTC relationship. To this end, 240 male and female EFL learners from different institutions were selected as the participants of the study with different age ranges based on convenient sampling. Then two standardized questionnaires, i.e., SI and WTC, were administered for all participants to answer. After collecting the required data and its analysis, the findings revealed a positive and significant correlation between male and female SI and their WTC. In addition, further statistical analysis using formula showed no difference between learners’ SI and WTC relationship across gender. The findings of the present research could be applicable for EFL learners, teachers, and material developers. Keywords:

The study examined language learning anxiety factors, hindering EFL learners’ process of learning, particularly in speaking settings and recommended useful approaches to cope with it. Using the quantitative approach as well as a qualitative semi-structured interview and focus-group discussion method, this study tried to examine the factors behind language anxiety among Iranian language learners both in the classroom and in the social context. 100 TEFL students participated in this study. The language proficiency was measured by TOEFL IBT test to make sure that the students were homogeneous. The findings suggested a variety of approaches to cope with language anxiety. It also revealed that there was a significant relationship between the participants’ language anxiety and their language proficiency. The results of the interviews showed that the teachers had a key role in increasing and decreasing the students’ language anxiety concerning psychosocial linguistic factors. The findings of the study can be helpful for providing some teacher-training courses, teaching language teachers some effective psychological techniques to decrease language learning anxiety factors, improving language learning process. Keywords: language le