درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The worldwide spread of English as the dominant language of globalization has accelerated the development and implementation of Foreign Language Education Policy (FLEP) in many countries. However, Iranian macro policymakers seem to be reluctant to develop an overt FLEP due to ideologized agendas. This study employs document analysis to explore FLEP in eight major national policy documents in Iran including, inter alia, National Vision 2025, Comprehensive Scientific Roadmap, and National Document of Education. This analysis was based on Kaplan and Baldauf’s (1997, 2003) framework for language-in-education planning, which covers Access, Curriculum, Methods and Materials, Evaluation, Personnel, and Resourcing policy as its major components. The data, coded through MAXQDA Software, revealed that the documents relatively deal with almost all components of FLEP excluding the Resourcing policy. Curriculum policy and Methods and materials policy receive the highest attention. Further, some contradictions, conflicts of interest, and gaps are observed in the documents regarding FLEP. Although these documents deemed English necessary for the development of the country, there are worries that it may lead to Westernization. The findings also show that FLEP in Iran is top-down and hardly reflects the needs and attitudes of the community. This has resulted in the failure of ELT in public schools and, in turn, its boom in the private sectors.

The quality of students’ relationships with their peers plays an important role in developing their academic achievement. The present study aimed at constructing an accurate, reliable, and valid instrument that could assess the EFL students’ perceptions of peer support. The instrument includes different subscales, namely Informational Support, Emotional Support, Instrumental Support, Feedback, and Companionship Support. The Peer Support Questionnaire was administered to 212 Iranian undergraduate EFL students studying at two public universities in Iran. An exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, and the overall factor loading estimates indicated a quite satisfactory level of convergent validity for the developed Questionnaire. Both the degree of factor loadings and the construct validity test supported the convergent validity of peer support factors and their related items. The findings demonstrated that PSQ could be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the concept of peer support in both academic and educational settings.

Dans la présente recherche, notre objectif est de savoir comment l’emploi de la langue maternelle en cours de FLE, peut simplifier et influencer l’apprentissage du français chez les apprenants iraniens, dans les universités et dans les instituts de langue. Selon les observations qui ont été faites dans les instituts de langues étrangères, l’utilisation de la langue maternelle dans l’enseignement du français, est considérée comme sévèrement nuisible et à bannir, tandis que les professeurs d’universités se montrent en général plus tolérants. La nouveauté de cette étude consiste à étudier les besoins pédagogiques des apprenants iraniens du FLE, en ce qui concerne l’emploi de la langue maternelle en classe de langue. À cet égard, nous avons élaboré un questionnaire contenant quinze questions, en tenant compte des éléments différents comme le sexe, la situation maritale, l’âge et le niveau d’études des apprenants, qui a été soumis à 61 étudiants en français. Après avoir analysé les réponses, à partir du test de Kolmogorov-Smirnov et du test T, l’importance de la langue maternelle en classe de FLE, a été validée, autrement dit, l’emploi de la langue maternelle en classe de FLE, a été reconnu comme un élément accélérateur et simplifiant pour les apprenants iraniens..

The present study aimed to examine and validate a rubric for translation quality assessment using Rasch analysis. To this end, the researchers interviewed 20 expert translation instructors to identify the factors they consider important for assessing the quality of students’ translation. Based on the specific commonalities found throughout the interviews, a 23-item assessment rubric was constructed on a four-point Likert scale. More specifically, this study used the Rasch rating scale model for polytomous data to investigate the psychometric properties of the rating scale in terms of dimensionality, reliability, use of response category, and sample appropriateness. Then, a translation exam was administered to 60 translation students at the BA level in Iranian universities. Following this, the rubric was employed to assess the quality of students’ translation. The results revealed that the Rasch model fits the data well. Thus, the findings of the study indicated that the rubric is potentially valid and useful, and can be used as a measure of translation quality assessment in the Iranian context.

Among the latest efficient approaches in language teaching, Task-based Language Teaching has turned up to be the main approach in a way that it is currently recognized as the leading teaching approach in language instruction (Ji & Pham, 2017). Using the proper tasks based on the proficiency level of the learners can facilitate the process of language learning. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of open and closed tasks on improving Iranian EFL learners’ oral performance at intermediate and advanced levels. This study is a quasi-experimental research with pretest and posttest design. The participants of the study included 55 female EFL learners at Jahadeh Daneshgahi language institute in Tabriz city, who were selected through cluster random sampling method. The data were collected through 10 open tasks and 10 closed tasks along with an oral pretest and an oral posttest checklist that examined grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, breakdown-response, interaction, and speech flow of learners’ oral performance. The tasks were selected from the Four Corner series (Richards & Bohlke, 2012). The data were analyzed by a two-way MANCOVA test and ANCOVA. The obtained results indicated that open and closed tasks can improve EFL learners’ oral performance and there is no significant difference between open and closed tasks in developing learners’ oral performance in both levels. Besides, at the advanced level, the amount of oral performance development is greater than the intermediate level. The outcomes of this study can be useful for EFL teachers and learners regarding using the optimal kind of tasks in improving oral performance.

The present empirical study investigated the relationship between Iranian undergraduate TEFL learners’ self-regulation and their self-efficacy. For this end, there have been a total number of 120 college students learning English as a foreign language who volunteered to complete the two quantitative questionnaires of self-regulation and self-efficacy respectively. The participants were informed of the anonymous nature of the data collection process in advance. They were also told that their responses would certainly be kept confidential and that they had the right to quit at any part of the survey. It took around 15–20 minutes for each respondent to complete the survey. In the meanwhile, some of the participants (around ten) also willingly answered the qualitative descriptive semi-structured questions of the interview, until that the interview responses were saturated. After the process of data collection, the findings were measured through correlation analysis, indicating that self-regulation and self-efficacy were jointly linked and had a directly positive relationship. Accordingly, it was revealed that the employment of these two highly associated psychological constructs could systematically guide and help learners to enhance their learning capabilities and lead them to ultimate desired learning goals. Ultimately, it was concluded from the findings of the current study that the delicate association between self-regulation and self-efficacy was really helpful for learners to lead them successfully to their academic goals.

Although grades are the most ubiquitous currency of educational measurement around the globe, their meaning, particularly in understudied settings as in Iran, is still shrouded in mystery. The purpose of this study was to investigate EFL teachers’ class grades by focusing on the less verbalized aspects of grading to see what a grade means. Five Iranian English language teachers working part-time in a private EFL institute were interviewed using the repertory grid interviewing technique, Kelly’s (1955) unique data collection instrument used extensively in personal construct theory (PCT). The results of the content analysis revealed that of the 92 elicited constructs, over 70% were categorized as non-academic, pointing to a heavy reliance on such criteria for grading, and consequently leading to the invalidity of assigned grades. Further, the results of principal component analysis (PCA) of each teacher’s elicited constructs endorsed hodgepodge grading by demonstrating single main components that accounted for the most variation in teacher grading and that comprised both academic and non-academic factors. However, this phenomenon was interpreted slightly differently when seen from the PCT perspective. Implications of this study for teacher professional development and teacher education programs are discussed.

This study investigated the comparative effects of audio-visually prompted collaborative dialogue on the listening comprehension development of symmetrical, asymmetrical, and asymmetrical teacher-fronted EFL learner groups. Besides, it explored the attitude of the participants of the groups concerning the effectiveness of collaborative dialogue for their listening comprehension improvement. The participants of the study were 120 Iranian female EFL learners who were conveniently chosen from several English language institutes and put into three experimental and one control groups, each with 30 learners. In the first experimental group, coequal learners engaged in collaborative dialogue. In the second experimental group, the expert peer(s) and less knowledgeable peers applied collaborative dialogue, and in the third experimental group, in addition to the peers, the teacher was involved in collaborative dialogue with the group members. As for the control group, the collaborative dialogue was abandoned and the participants worked individually. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that collaborative dialogue in asymmetrical teacher-fronted, asymmetrical peer and symmetrical peer groups were respectively the most effective procedures for listening comprehension development of the EFL learners. Also, it was found that the participants of the asymmetrical teacher fronted group had a more positive attitude towards the efficacy of audio-visually prompted collaborative dialogue compared with asymmetrical and symmetrical peer groups. The findings underscore the cognitive and affective efficiency of a more knowledgeable source, either a teacher or a peer, in asymmetrical dyadic interactions for the less knowledgeable partners' ZPD sensitive development.   

Vocabulary and grammar are two significant components of English which learners often find challenging in their process of learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Therefore, finding the best way to teach grammar and vocabulary has always been a controversial issue among English teachers and researchers. The present study is an attempt to investigate the effect of dictogloss (DG) task, as one of the focus on form techniques, on EFL learners’ vocabulary versus grammar development. To this end, a quasi-experimental design was utilized to examine the effectiveness of the treatment. In this design, two classes were chosen, one as the experimental group (n=20) and the other as the control group (n=20). The participants were 40 female learners of English as a foreign language at intermediate level. In the experimental group the selected grammatical structures and vocabulary were taught using the DG technique, while in the control group the traditional method of teaching, present-practice-produce was used. The results gained from comparing pretest and posttest scores indicate that, although the experimental group outperformed the control group in learning vocabulary, there was no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control group regarding grammar scores. Therefore, it can be concluded that using DG task was more effective on vocabulary learning of learners than grammar development. The findings of this study will be of help for both English teachers and learners regarding finding the best method of teaching and learning English grammar and vocabulary.

The current study investigated the distribution of animal terms in the Persian book of Marzbannameh and their metaphoric repetition in the users’ opinions, thoughts, and worthiness. By investigating the Persian book of Marzbannameh as one of the famous literary books which is rich of animal conceptual metaphors, a corpus of 376 animal terms in content has been chosen and analyzed. Four raters who were the Persian Literature teachers analyzed accurately the pertinent book for evaluating the available animal metaphors. And, two other raters who were the Persian Literature professors were asked to study the decisions and present the final propositions if they had different ideas about a concept. Moreover, as a supporting research method, focus groups were engaged by the Persian Literature teachers and professors to give their ideas and thoughts about the positive and negative qualities of the contained animals in the selected book. The results offered that animals are not distributed alike in this book, are used with diverse conceptualizations and stood for both positive and negative connotations. Also, it was found that the domestic animals generally have positive characteristics; however, some of them violate this rule, connoting just negative characteristics. After all, the wild animals, except for hawk, generally have negative characteristics.