درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The purpose of the current study was to investigate culture representation in ACT series, a recently developed EFL textbook by Iran Language Institute, with a focus on the visuals. Two models were taken into account for content analysis: Cortazzi and Jin (1990) to investigate the type of culture (i.e., source, target, & international) and Adaskou, Britten, and Fahsi (1999) to investigate the dimension of culture (aesthetic & sociological). Analysis of 1581 visuals indicated that textbook developers have placed a high value on presenting international and source cultures while target culture has received comparatively little attention to fulfill the mission for which the series was developed. Additionally, as of the two dimensions of culture, visuals representing the sociological dimension of culture outnumbered those manifesting the aesthetic dimension. To conclude, it can be claimed that ACT series can be beneficial in promoting intercultural awareness among its audience and providing the learners with an opportunity to communicate their cultural and national identity with other bilingual speakers of English. The study ends with some future lines of research for the interested researcher.

This study analyzed the requirement of English education for arts students and the language needs for arts administrators in the workplace in Taiwan. A total of 83 participants, comprising 37 graduate students majoring in the arts and 46 company administrators in art-related jobs, responded to a questionnaire requesting their opinions concerning English education. The results indicated that the language skills that the students required were similar to those that company administrators used in the workplace. Reading was the skill that company administrators used the most, and speaking was the least used skill. However, among the 30 language tasks, the comparison of mean scores indicated a discrepancy in needs between the students and company administrators. The arts students required sufficient vocabulary and adequate reading practice, because they were required to take English proficiency tests as a graduation requirement and their course materials included English articles and journal papers. Regarding the company administrators, introducing artwork and presenting products were crucial because they must sell artwork. The results can serve as fundamental information for reforming and preparing English curricula and courses tailored to the needs of arts students in Taiwan.

Although EFL learners pass different courses in writing at university and are expected to be able to express their thoughts in various forms of writing, their texts suffer from many problems. Therefore, the current study aimed to identify the type of problems that postgraduate EFL learners encounter in writing their thesis proposals. To this end, first, the problems marked by supervisors in thirty-two proposals written by TEFL and Translation Studies students were classified into two general categories: macro and micro problems. Then, these problems were classified based on Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) and Tardy’s (2009) models of academic genre. After that, a questionnaire about writing problems was administered to participants to elicit their perceptions towards writing MA proposals. The responses were then analyzed according to Dornyei’s (2003) suggestions for analyzing qualitative data. The findings revealed that discoursal and linguistic problems were among the highest frequent problems. The analysis of the questionnaires also indicated that EFL postgraduate learners hold negative attitude towards proposal writing, and considered discoursal problems as their major challenge in writing. There was consistency between their ideas and the real problems.

To better understand the pattern of language use and classroom interactions, this sequential mixed-methods study investigated the teachers’ use of self-repair strategies based on their level of reflection. To this end, 33 Iranian EFL teachers were selected from various institutions in Tehran. Data for the quantitative phase were collected from the reflectivity questionnaire developed by Akbari, Behzadpour, and Dadvand (2010). Regarding the qualitative phase of the study, 70 hours of English instruction and classroom interactions of the 33 teachers were recorded and analyzed, using Fox and Jasperson’s (1995) classification of self-repair strategies. The quantitative analyses of the results, employing one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), indicated that there was a significant difference between the reflective groups in terms of the total repair strategy use. Further, the results of Kruskal Wallis analysis revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between high and low reflective teachers in terms of the repair strategies types “H, J, K, and L”, which generally refer to the “Replacement, Repetition, and Addition of a lexical item”. The results of the qualitative analysis also showed that the most frequent self-repair strategy of high, mid, and low reflective teachers was strategy “A” or “repetition of a lexical item”.

This study investigates the effects of gender, teaching experience, and brain dominance on English teachers’ teaching styles. In doing so, 68 English teachers (males and females) were selected from several language institutes in Shiraz, Iran. Considering the degree of teaching experience, the participants were categorized into three groups, namely novices, the moderately experienced, and professionals. Two instruments, including Hemispheric Dominance Test and Teaching Style Questionnaire were used to collect data. Using statistical package for the social science (SPSS) 20, the collected data were analyzed. The results of independent samples t-test revealed that male and female teachers differed significantly in terms of teaching styles, as far as the sub-component “formality” was concerned. Furthermore, the results of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test indicated that teaching styles in the three groups of teachers significantly differed. However, the analysis of MANOVA regarding the difference between brain dominance and teaching styles did not reveal any significant difference. Some related issues were also discussed.

The present study sought to investigate the differential effect of using native-accent and non-native accent materials on the Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ listening comprehension. To this purpose, 60 primary EFL Iranian learners participated in the study. The participants were randomly divided into a control group (N=30) and an experimental group (N=30). First, a Quick Placement Test which consisted of vocabulary, grammar, and reading items was administered in order to ensure the homogeneity of participants. As the intervention of the study, the control group was provided with the listening materials accompanied by the use of their native-accent audio files, whereas the experimental group was exposed to the same listening tasks and materials which were pronounced by the non-native teacher. The experimental intervention lasted for six forty-minute sessions. To collect the data, the listening component of Pearson Test of English General (PTE General) was used as the pre-test and the post-test to measure listening comprehension of the participants. The results indicated that using non-native accent listening materials was more effective than using native-accent materials in enhancing listening comprehension of the EFL learners. These findings were discussed in the light of English as an International Language (EIL) debate and the theory of inter-language speech intelligibility benefit.

The present study aimed at highlighting the possible effects of age, proficiency level, and the structural composition of Garden-Path (GP) sentences on EFL learners' comprehension. 80 Iranian EFL learners were recruited from the initial pool of 114 participants based on the results of an English proficiency test; 40 advanced, and 40 intermediate learners were selected. Moreover, two age-groups of teenagers and adults were specified based on the study's necessities. In order to determine the accuracy and also the time needed for comprehension of GP sentences, a software application was designed, which provided learners with a set of GP and non-GP sentences and depicted the elapsed time for each participant to show the correct understanding of the presented sentences on the screen. As statistical analyses revealed, the participants, apart from age and proficiency levels, had less difficulty in comprehending non-GP items. It was also concluded that different types of GP sentences imposed different degrees of difficulty for the participants to comprehend. Furthermore, "proficiency level," unlike "age," was found to be a determining factor for the comprehension of GP sentences for Iranian EFL learners.

The current pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study attempts, firstly, to probe the effects of teaching formulaic sequences (FSs) on the second or foreign language (L2)  learners' oral proficiency improvement and secondly, to examine whether teaching FSs through different resources (i.e. animation vs. text-based readings) have any differentially influential effects in augmenting L2  learners' oral proficiency or not. To this end, a cohort of 60 young L2 learners of an immersion program school in the southwest of Iran was randomly divided into three groups, two experimental and one control. During 24 instructional sessions, one experimental group received the FSs instruction through animation, and the second experimental group noticed FSs through text-based readings.  The control group was taught using the school mainstream L2 textbooks without any focus on FSs. The results indicated that both FSs groups outperformed the control group. Moreover, animation-based instruction significantly increased the efficacy of FSs instruction, pointing to the issue that educational technology is a better strategy for teaching FSs rather than the traditional way of reading.