درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This research aimed at investigating different strategies used by translators in translating political English concepts into Persian between two revolutions. To this purpose, the researchers extracted and examined six cases of English political concepts from a book called “Iran between Two Revolutions” and their corresponding Persian translations. Qualitative research was used to gain insights into the experiences, perspectives, and thoughts for analyzing the quality of the translation. To analyze the data, first the samples were analyzed based on Chesterman's communicative norm, and then, they were compared with their Persian equivalents to determine to what extent the communicative norms had been observed in the translation of political concepts. The results of the analysis showed that the translators faced problems in translating political concepts concerning equivalence, synonyms and cultural specific items.

This study is to determine how bilingualism could influence the list of Persian basic color terms and their order. Using a monolingual Persian and a bilingual Kurd sample students, and a color list task, it is assumed that bilingualism could change the ordering of the non-basic color terms in the second language, but not the basic ones. Another assumption is that, the old usual methods for obtaining mean position and saliency, based on Sutrop (2001) would not determine the BCTs in Persian. The data suggest that Persian has 6 BCTs; Qermez, Âbi, Sabz, Zard, Siyâh, and Sefid. The BCTs are retrieved by monolinguals much faster than bilinguals. Mean Position and frequency in school and university students had differences in number supporting the hypothesis that staying for more than two years in a bilingual environment and L2 use frequency are the two effective factors in BCTs order.

This study compares lexical retrieval amongst monolinguals and intermediate bilinguals and advanced bilinguals. It also investigates the possible effects of their language learning strategies on their respective lexical retrieval advantage. The study used a mixed methods design and the groups consisted of 20 Persian near-monolinguals, 20 Persian-English intermediate level bilinguals, and 20 Persian-English high-proficiency bilinguals. Auditory and visual lexical Memory Span Tasks were utilized to evaluate the lexical retrieval of all the language groups. The way that bilinguals used their L2 on a daily basis was examined using semi-structured interviews. It was suggested that the knowledge of two languages will not necessarily result in lexical retrieval advantages in bilinguals when compared to monolinguals. However, it was found that the specific language learning strategies used by the bilinguals could potentially influence their lexical retrieval advantages. Furthermore, when comparing lexical retrieval in different language proficiency groups, the method by which bilinguals manage their two languages as well as the environment they are located in should be taken into consideration.

The role of oral corrective feedback has been investigated by SLA researchers from various perspectives. Focusing on Iranian EFL context, the present study aimed to explore the role of receiving corrective feedback in the learning of English grammatical structures. It also probed the association between the type of corrective feedback and EFL learners’ learning styles. This was an experimental study examining a sample of 128 intermediate-level EFL learners through pretest-posttest control group design. Data of the study was analysed through one-way ANOVA conducted on post-test scores. Results of the study indicated that there were statistically significant differences between experimental groups and control group in terms of receiving feedback. These findings implied the outperformance of the metalinguistic feedback group over recast group and also the superiority of providing EFL learners with feedback compared to no-feedback. The results obtained from two-way ANOVA revealed an effectively significant interaction between the type of oral corrective feedback and the learners’ learning styles. The study discussed how both types of corrective feedback and learning styles could manipulate L2 acquisition which might have some implications for EFL language teachers in the classroom.

Pienemann (1998, 2015) put forward Processability Theory to enlighten why language learners follow definite developmental paths. The aim of the present study was to run a comparative investigation into the difficulty order of different grammatical structures for male and female Iranian EFL learners predicted by Processability Theory. 185 Iranian university students took part in this study. They received a Demographic Questionnaire and a Validated Researcher-Made Grammar Test designed based on the stages of Processability Theory. Item Response Theory (IRT) Rasch Modeling was used to analyze the collected data. Results pertained to the research questions revealed that the stages predicted by Processability Theory do not account for the Iranian male/female EFL learners. Another major finding emerged from the data was that the difficulty level of different grammatical structures presented by Pienneman in PT doesn’t match the difficulty order obtained in this study by male/female EFL respondents. All things considered, results of the study provided a reliable counterevidence for the assumptions of the theory.

The present study aimed at providing a typology of Iranian supervisors’ written feedback on L2 graduate students’ theses/dissertations and examining the way different speech functions are employed to put the supervisors’ thoughts and feelings into words. In so doing, a corpus of comments, including 15,198 comments provided on 87 TEFL theses and dissertations by 30 supervisors were analyzed. We employed an inductive category formation procedure to form the typology of comments, and followed a deductive procedure to put the comments into the three categories of expressive, referential, and directive speech functions. The findings showed that supervisors provided seven main categories of comments on theses and dissertations: grammar and sentence structure, content, method, organization, references, formatting, and academic procedures. Furthermore, the findings indicated that supervisors employed comments with different patterns and for different purposes on MA and PhD students’ texts.

Motivated by the concept of Communicative Language Ability and the eminence of the IELTS exam, this study intended to scrutinize the representation of functional knowledge (FK) and socio-linguistic knowledge (SK) as sub-components of pragmatic knowledge in the writing performances of both tasks of the online General IELTS-practice resources across three band scores. This quantitative inter-scores/intra-tasks and inter-tasks investigation aimed to reveal firstly whether the writers of three band scores 7, 8, and 9 differed from each other in their FK and SK level, and secondly whether the tasks differed in activating them. This study adopted a taxonomy of five illocutionary acts and 20 register features to investigate representation of FK and SK in a well-established corpus of 180 writing performances through both manual analysis and Multidimensional Analysis Tagger software. While the results of statistical analyses revealed no FK differences between the bands in task one (T1), T2’s higher bands involved more functional features because of the expression of a diverse range of psychological states, no speaker’s involvement, and less commitment to a future course of actions. Furthermore, socio-linguistically, band 9 scripts encompassed more logical relations, but conversational and spoken style in T1 and more integration, less simplified structures and ego-involvement in T2. The inter-task analyses uncovered T1’s greater activation of FK through self-mentions, others involvement, emotion, and intention expression. Nevertheless, when it came to SK register features, T2 overdid in both spoken and written genre elements except in persuasion, writers’ involvement, mental acts expression, and interactive discourse creation.