درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) presents teaching techniques and procedures along with the underlying theory and principles and is comprehensible to readers who are new to the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). David Nunan (2015) proposes rich illustrations of theoretical constructs through providing practical examples of how to develop teaching materials and tasks from sound principles; he also presents content through various textual types including classroom vignettes which show language teaching in action, question and answer sessions. The book consists of twelve concise chapters: Language Teaching Methodology, Learner-Centered Language Teaching, Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Grammar, Discourse, Learning Styles and Strategies, and Assessment.

This study tried to investigate the impact of task-based instruction (TBI) on the enhancement of Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skill. The study also tried to scrutinize the impact of TBI on learners’ emotional intelligence. To meet these ends, 60 students were randomly divided into two groups, the experimental group and the control group. At the very first session of the term, two speaking examinations were conducted for both experimental and control group. After the speaking examinations, the participants were asked to answer Bar-On’s emotional intelligence questionnaire. The experimental group was instructed through task-based approach and the control group received instruction through present-practice-produce (PPP) approach. The scores obtained by two raters from the interview post-tests were analyzed through non-parametric tests, and the data obtained from EQ questionnaires were analyzed through t-tests. Results of the statistical analysis revealed that the experimental group performed significantly better on the speaking post-test than the control group. Furthermore, the findings also indicated that the learners in the experimental group became more emotionally intelligent than those in the control group.

This study aimed at investigating shades of identity in TEFL textbooks. Most identity studies have focused on authors as knowledge producers. They have neglected authors' roles in constructing identity. Further, few scholars have considered disciplinary specific textbooks in their analyses of identity. Trying to bridge these gaps, we applied Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics to investigate identity through the lens of sociocultural theory. The study corpus consisted of nine commonly used textbooks on language testing, language teaching, and linguistics in Iranian EFL context. The textual analysis revealed various levels of self and other-regulation mediated by interpersonal, textual, and ideational metafunctions. These findings suggested that studying their disciplinary specific texts, students of TEFL may develop not only their academic knowledge but also their ideological positions and academic voices.

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.

The aim of the current study was to investigate whether L2 dialogue shadowing practice would have an effect on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ conversation ability. For this purpose, 30 Iranian intermediate EFL learners at Padideh language center participated in the experiment of the study. The participants were divided into two groups of 15 who were assigned to the experimental and control group of the study randomly. A pretest of conversation ability was administered to both groups, the experimental group received 10 sessions of teaching L2 conversation as well as dialogue shadowing technique (DST) while the control group received a placebo, in other words, teaching L2 conversation via existing method. After the treatment, the same test was administered as posttest to both groups of study. The data obtained from the tests in this study were analyzed via independent sample T-test between performance of the groups, and the paired-sample T-test was used between the pretest and posttest of each group to show the progress. The results revealed that Iranian EFL learners in the experimental group performed better and received higher score in conversation test after 10 sessions of treatment.

Metacognitive reading strategies play a significant role in reading comprehension and educational success. Being noticeably absent from many Iranian classrooms and largely unaware of by many language learners and teachers, metacognitive reading strategies have fallen into oblivion in English language teaching, research, learning, and assessment. The present study was an attempt to measure the metacognitive reading strategy (MRS) awareness among Iranian university students majoring in English Translation Studies. It also aimed at determining whether gender and learners’ different academic levels would make any difference in using various types of MRS. Furthermore, it investigated the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ awareness of MRS and their reading comprehension performance. A sample of 45 EFL university students majoring in English Translation at Chabahar Maritime University participated in this study. They were asked to complete the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) questionnaire adapted from Tavakoli (2014) and to take a TOEFL Junior Standard Reading Comprehension Test. The results revealed that although the overall strategy use among these students was low (M=2.42), support reading strategies were used the most and problem-solving strategies were the least frequently used ones. Additionally, no significant difference was found between males and females as well as different academic levels in the use of MRS. No significant relationship was found between students’ overall use of metacognitive reading strategies and their reading comprehension achievement. The study concludes with a number of pedagogical implications and lists several guidelines for future research.

The present study investigated the potential role of tasks in engaging Iranian EFL learners in task-supported language learning, affecting on learner-centered instruction and the correspondence between the objectives and contents in current pre-university English course book (Learning to Read English for Pre-University Students). To do this, 100 Iranian EFL teachers of pre-university grade were invited to participate in this study. They were asked to fill out a 5-point Likert scale checklist (adapted from Lawrence, 2011). The checklist was initially piloted on 20 EFL teachers in order to see to what extent the items were clear and comprehensible to the subjects of the study and to find out the internal consistency or reliability of the items. The results of statistical analyses indicated that teachers tended to agree on the point that tasks have significant capability in engaging learners in communicative language use or task-based language learning. The vast majority of the teachers expressed that using tasks in textbook can improve learner-centered instruction. The evaluation of the textbook showed the contents are corresponded to their objectives.