درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The aim of this study was fourfold: (1) to investigate the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of Iranian Engineering students’ writing (2) to examine the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of their WhatsApp assisted writing (3) to determine whether their emotional intelligence (EI) increases through literature-based activities in a WhatsApp assisted setting and (4) to survey the effect of literature-based activities and the produced emotional intelligence on the complexity and lexical diversity of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing. In phase I, as students went through literature-based activities, no significant differences of accuracy were found; despite the fact that the mean difference and standard deviation scores were indicative of effective treatment, literature-based activities. In phase II, the results obtained from the analytic procedures of literature-based activities on the accuracy of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing showed that the experimental group showed higher accuracy of writing. In phase III, the result of emotional intelligence improvement was more remarkable in the WhatsApp assisted writing. Additionally, the WhatsApp assisted written productions were significantly more diverse in using lexis, t-units and clauses but not other parameters of complexity. The results have some implications for teachers and researchers in the ESP setting. 

کیفیت زندگی کاری (QWL) معلمان یک چترواژه است که به میزان رضایت معلم از شغل خود و شرایط کلی کار اشاره دارد که تحت تأثیر سه عامل حمایت سازمانی از جمله مشارکت در تصمیم گیری، انصاف درپاداش و فرصت رشد می باشد (ویلگاس-ریمرز، 2003). مطالعه حاضر رابطه بین حمایت سازمانی درک شده (POS) و QWLرا در بین معلمان دوره متوسطه زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی بررسی کرده است. برای این منظور از روش همبستگی توصیفی استفاده شده است که در آن تعداد 173 معلم شرکت کردند که به روش نمونه گیری خوشه ای چند مرحله ای از بین جمعیتی متشکل از معلمان زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی در مدارس متوسطه ی تهران (N=1826) انتخاب شدند. ابزار گردآوری داده ها شامل پرسشنامه نگرش مبتنی بر مدل POS آلن، آرمسترانگ، رید، و ریمنشنایدر(2008) و همچنین پرسشنامه QWLوالتون (1973) بوده است. برای تجزیه و تحلیل داده ها از روش های همبستگی پیرسون و رگرسیون خطی چندگانه استفاده گردید. رابطه بین POSو QWL0.71 یافت شد. به عبارت دیگر، سه بعد POSمی تواند QWL را 71 درصد تحت تأثیر قرار دهد. به طور خاص، سه بعد مشارکت در تصمیم گیری با 21.4، انصاف درپاداش با 24.7، و فرصت رشد با 64.1 درصد می تواند برای پیش بینی QWL استفاده شود. این یافته ها از آن جهت حائز اهمیت است که نشان می دهد POSبه طور قابل توجهی با QWLمعلمان زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی ارتباط دارد که آن نیز به نوبه خود می تواند بر عملکرد این معلمان در مدارس تأثیر بگذارد.

There has been a burgeoning of research in teacher, peer, and self-assessment in terms of reliability and validity, the use of rubrics, the implementation of these kinds of assessments in different academic settings, the effect of demographic variables in these assessments, and the benefits of these assessments. However, the effect of these assessments on subsequent learning has rarely been explored. To fill that void, this study set out to examine the effects of these kinds of assessments on subsequent learning as evidenced by students’ final exam scores. Two intact classes were chosen and teacher, peer, and self-assessments were employed in a general English class. The scores achieved on the students’ oral presentations exhibited a statistically significant correlation between the teacher awarded scores and those on the final examination of general English proficiency as a course. Peer awarded scores could also predict final exam scores, though not as good as teacher awarded ones. Self-assessment failed to correlate significantly with final exam scores and teacher/peer assessments. The reasons for the findings are discussed further in the paper.

Metadiscourse is a set of linguistic ties used to communicate attitudes and denote the grammatical attributes of a text. The present study was conducted to inspect using hedging, boostering, and self-mentioning metadiscourse markers in the well-known Persian and English psychology books. Based on the chosen corpora of the study, this inquiry purposed to realize what the general preferences are in the use of hedging, boostering, and self-mentioning metadiscourse markers in Persian and English psychology books. The corpora of four psychology books, two by Persian- speaking psychologists and two by English-speaking psychologists, were chosen and analyzed based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse. The data obtained and collected from the chosen corpora were analyzed by Ant Conc 3. 5 . 7 and SPSS statistical software. By analyzing the corpora of the study quantitatively, it is resulted that Persian-speaking psychologists used more metadiscourse markers than that of English-speaking psychologists in their books. Secondly, it is detected that Persian-speaking psychologists used fewer hedging metadiscourse markers in their books than that of their English-speaking counterparts. Thirdly, it is found that Persian-speaking psychologists used more boostering metadiscourse markers in their books than that of their English-speaking counterparts. Next, it is realized that Persian-speaking psychologists used more singular first-person self-mentioning metadiscourse markers in their books; however, their English-speaking counterparts used more plural third-person self-mentioning metadiscourse markers in their books. In addition, textual analysis has shown the difference of Persian and English sub-corpora in using hedging, boostering, and self-mentioning metadiscourse markers.

One of the important issues in EFL instruction is the idea of eliminating students’ linguistic errors through providing corrective feedback (CF). Accordingly, this study investigated the effect of various CF types (i.e., comprehensive, selective, and no feedback) on advanced EFL learners’ writing in different writing conditions (i.e., individual & collaborative). 132 EFL advanced learners aged from 14-20 were considered as the main participants. Learners were divided into 6 groups (i.e., three individual and three collaborative writing conditions). Furthermore, each writing condition included three groups with selective, comprehensive, and no correction orientations. Data collection tools and procedures encompassed an institutionalized Placement Test, pre-test, and post-test. The treatment that lasted for nine sessions was followed by a post-test. Data were submitted to a series of ANOVA tests with follow up pair-wise comparisons and independent-samples t-tests. Findings indicated that: (1) CF, especially selective one, was more effective in enhancing learners’ writing accuracy, and (2) members of the collaborative writing groups outperformed those in the individual ones in terms of their writing accuracy development. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed in relation to enhancing writing accuracy of the learners.

This study compares three integrated tasks of the TOEFL iBT speaking subtest in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To this end, a group of TOEFL iBT Iranian candidates took a simulated TOEFL iBT some days prior to their real exam. The collected oral responses were first transcribed and then quantified using software such as ‘Syllable Counter’ and ‘Coh-Metrix3’ for fluency and complexity, respectively. For accuracy, however, the responses were tallied manually. The results revealed the responses to the three speaking tasks were significantly different in terms of fluency. The difference in the accuracy index also turned significant, though the pairwise comparisons showed some inconsistencies. As for the selected complexity measures, lexical diversity, the mean number of modifiers per NP, and latent semantic analysis all showed significant differences between tasks 2 and 3 on the one hand and task 4 on the other. Left-embeddedness, however, revealed no significant difference among the three tasks. The results may support the influential role of prompting texts in such integrated speaking tasks

Translation studies essentially deals with a socio-communicatively driven and contextualized enterprise. Viewed hence, it seems that no discipline tends to provide the possibility of studying the interrelations between interlocutors to generate meaning within the interactive social context as precisely as sociolinguistics (Federici, 2018). A sociolinguistic approach to translation seems to be increasingly gaining ground, at the crossroads of Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) and sociology within the sociological turn (Wolf, 2010). Accordingly, the present study took a sociolinguistic approach to shed some light on The Great Gatsby (1925) and its Persian translation by Emami (2000). In so doing, an extended version of Hatim and Mason’s (1997) sociolinguistic model was employed to examine the texts in question. The source text (ST) and its target text (TT) version were investigated at both textual and extra-textual levels in light of the model’s respective sub-components. The results of this comparative study, analyzed individually for each register variable, revealed that the translator dealt rather superficially with both use-related categories of register variation like tenor and user-related aspects like idiolect. By contrast, the predominant features of literary expression were mostly retained in the translation.