درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Even though many classroom-based studies reported the possible advantages of oral corrective feedback (OCF) for language learning, little information is available about teachers’ beliefs about OCF in classrooms and its relationship with their experience. This study attempted to compare the stated beliefs and classroom practices of three female English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers about OCF. In so doing, data was collected through video-recording three sessions of their teaching procedure and the follow-up stimulated recall interviews. The results of the study showed that irrespective of their teaching experience, the participating teachers unanimously believed that provision of OCF in the class is of prime importance. However, the use of all types of OCF practices was just observable in experienced teachers’ classes and the novice one preferred the duality of explicit correction and metalinguistic feedback and did not provide any recasts and elicitations. It was also found that learner-related issues seemed to be working within the limits of teaching experience in shaping the three teachers’ beliefs about providing OCF practices. Moreover, the novice teacher showed to resort to her own language learning in justifying her OCF practices. Implications of the findings are discussed and some suggestions are provided for further research.

The present research probed the sociocultural challenging variables which may affect EFL learners’ identity formation during their language studies in an Iranian context. A thorough analysis of the literature encompassing EFL teachers’ opinions and EFL coursebook analyses was performed to develop a comprehensive view of the recognized sociocultural domains and variables. Furthermore, an open-ended questionnaire was designed and distributed among 50 adolescent male and female EFL learners at the age range of 13-21 years (M=16) as Erickson’s identity confusion stage to identify the newest sociocultural challenging variables in the present Iranian context. The result of the research led to compilation of a Sociocultural Variables Inventory presenting an extended range of variables operating in the context of Iranian EFL learners’ identity formation. The inventory could act as a basis for research in the fields of TEFL, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and further interdisciplinary research.

Hedges, as tools to express tentativeness and doubt, have been studied in plenty of research papers in the Iranian EFL research setting. However, their use in a learner corpus, portraying Iranian learner English, is in need of more research attention. With this end in view, this study aimed at investigating how Iranian EFL learners who have majored in English-related fields in Iran deployed hedges in their academic, expository essays. This study was conducted through running the corpus analysis software MonoConc Pro-Semester version 2.2 on the electronically compiled Iranian Corpus of Learner English, totaling 436,035 words. Automatic and manual analyses suggested that hedges comprised only 7.4% of the total metadiscourse in the Iranian Corpus of Learner English, with 0.68 occurrences per 1,000,000 words. In a comparable native corpus, a sub-corpus of the British Academic Written English, hedges were used with 1.43 occurrences per 1,000,000 words (21% of the total metadiscourse in the corpus). Log-likelihood statistical analysis confirmed statistically significant differences between the two corpora in terms of the use of hedges, with underuse of hedges in the Iranian academic, expository essays relative to the English natives’ essays. Implementations of the results for English academic writing instruction including genre-based, explicit teaching of hedges through data-driven techniques with the aid of tools such as AntConc software and corpora such as the BAWE are considered.

Academic literacy is a transformative approach to EAP studies that highlight the backgrounds and needs of the EAP learners in order to empower them by participating in the social practices of the international research community. From this perspective, EAP textbook development research aims to find how textbooks could empower EAP learners though considering their real needs. Accordingly , this study aims to find how EAP textbooks match/mismatch with the EAP learners’ needs. The sample of the study included 40 participants who were selected through purposeful homogeneous sampling. All participants who had passed ‘English for the Students of Science (ESS)’ as the main textbook of the EAP course completed a structured interview questionnaire that its findings were gone under content analysis and a nonparametric test of rankings themes, i.e. Friedman test. Then textbook was evaluated in terms of the established frameworks. Finally, identified themes of the interviews were compared with the content of the textbook evaluation. Findings of the study showed that EAP learners prioritized reading, writing, listening, and speaking English language skills respectively as the main language needs in the EAP community of practice. The study also found that although the design of the EAP textbook matched learners’ needs at the macro-level of needs analysis, there was little enough evidence in the content of the book that could support and match these EAP learners’ needs. The findings might have many implications for EAP textbook developers, learners, and teachers. 

The current study was conducted to discover the impact of the positive assessment on Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners speaking skill and their self-efficacy. To accomplish the research, 40 Iranian females (17 to 8 years old) were selected from Shokooh Andishe Language Institute in Mashhad. A KET test which administered to determine the participants’ level of proficiency. Then, they were divided into two groups, one control group and one experimental group (each included 20 participants). Two instruments, including KET speaking test and a self-efficacy questionnaire, were administrated to both groups as pretests. The experimental group received the treatment based on the principles of positive assessment i.e. using phrases such as very good, excellent, giving small gifts, using thrilling labels and so forth. At the end of the study, the same instruments (as post-tests) were conducted to collect the required data for the analysis. To measure the statistical differences between the means of two groups, some independent samples T-tests were calculated. The results of the analyses indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group both in the case of speaking skill and self-efficacy. The findings of this research might be useful for EFL teachers and EFL learners, also they can be helpful for training programmers, institutes, and course designers.

The main priority for university translation educators is to improve the quality and outcomes of translation courses. To achieve such a goal, the instructors are required to integrate learners' needs, identified with the help of a needs survey, into syllabus content. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to identify the Iranian English majors' difficulties in translating English texts since once a problem is identified, exploring the best pedagogical solutions would follow. The aim was accomplished through qualitative descriptive research conducted at Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch tracing the errors committed by the English majors in their exam papers in academic years 2016-2019. Following the model proposed by Miremadi (2008), the syntactic and lexical problems were identified in the exam papers collected during six semesters. Moreover, three more categories were added to the list as the data analysis moved forward: culture problems, stylistic problems, and miscellaneous errors with detailed subdivisions. What appeared to be worthy of attention in the results was the students' weakness in text and sentence segmentation to find the function of the components to approach textual meaning, resulting from the students' poor English language proficiency. The results also revealed the students' poor topical knowledge as well as the lack of knowledge of translation techniques and strategies.

Plagiarism is considered as a serious problem in academia around the world. The issue of plagiarism has recently received global inquiry in different fields of science, especially in foreign language (L2) academic writing. To meticulously assess the Iranian academics for plagiarism at both theory and practice grounds, developing an accountable instrument seemed to be inevitable. To bridge the gap, in phase 1 of the study, a conceptual framework for Iranian academics’ grasp of plagiarism and its components was designed after a thorough review of literature. In phase 2, a number of M.A. graduates and graduate students (n = 224) in six State and Islamic Azad universities in Iran were recruited to partake in piloting the newly-designed plagiarism questionnaire. After a two-step revising the inefficient items (n = 11), the final draft of the developed questionnaire with 36 items was administered with the main sample of participants (n = 288). An Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to identify the components of the instrument, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis to measure its construct validity. As a result, the final draft of the Sociocultural Plagiarism Questionnaire contained 31 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items in four components of awareness (10 items), attitude (8 items), sociocultural beliefs (8 items), and perception (5 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items), which were suggested as having fundamental contributions to the Iranian academic writers’ sensitivity to plagiarism. Findings of the study suggested that (a) the Iranian academic writers’ normative sociocultural beliefs can probably reduce their sensitivity to plagiarism, (b) while the Iranian academics might have relatively high awareness and deep perception about plagiarism, their attitude toward plagiarism seems relatively neutral or even insensitive.