درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

In order for a classical foreign-language drama to be performed in the target country, a suitable translation is required so that the audiences understand the physical version of the play. This research indicates that the translation of a drama on pages differs from the translation of that drama on stage. This study was conducted to examine the differences between the translation on page and stage of Macbeth, the result of which can help improve the quality of the translation on the stage of a play. In this study, the researcher compares the translated text of Macbeth's play with its translation on stage. This comparison is based on Kowzans' (1968) framework that introduced 13 theatrical systems with 5 subcategories namely; Spoken Text, Body Expression, Stage Appearance, External Appearance of Actor(s), and Inarticulate Sound. The frequency of each of the categories was calculated and it was found that the spoken text category has the largest number of differences between the translation on pages and stage by 42% percent since the spoken text deals with the translated text more than other categories. The results of this study will be beneficial for strengthening the actor's relationship with the text, and translators' quality of translation.

Poetry translation deals with many difficulties as translators need to consider socio-cultural, linguistic, dialect, and aesthetic aspects. The poetry translation involves the interpretation of the real meaning of the main text and creates a readable and enjoyable poem in target language as a literary text. Thus, to address such an important aspect, translators have to consider language standardization and signals to the audience. The <em>do-baytis</em> of Baba Tahir written in <em>Fahlavyiat, </em>have specific dialect and aesthetic features in rhyme and meter. This research analyzed the strategies used in two translations of the traditional Iranian couplets - an English prose by Heron-Allen (1902) and a back-translation of English poetry based on Heron-Allen prose by Curtis Brenton (1902). The analysis was grounded on domestication and foreignization. The results show that the dialect was standardized and foreignized through paratextual references. Upon sharing the results with a group of Iranian EFL students in a translanguaging task, it was revealed that they have limited awareness regarding the translation of literary works from Persian to English.  The findings can raise the awareness of professional translators, translator educators, translation students and teachers and those involved in literary translation. 

Since an effective technique to assess the level of thinking ability is to identify the types of questions one generates, the present research by employing a hybrid question framework, intended to investigate the status of thinking ability among Iranian EFL students in two majors of TEFL and English Literature in M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. To this end, through convenience sampling, a group of 51 students was asked to read two simple short texts and make any type of question(s) that would spring to their minds in essay-type format. Then, using purposeful sampling, 15 participants out of 51 were selected for a semi-structured interview. The findings revealed that nearly half of the participants did not generate thought-provoking questions, which might imply that beyond-routine thinking is not well attended to in the related context. Moreover, as the English Literature students were more capable of producing thought-provoking questions than the TEFL students, it can be inferred that an academic major can be considered an essential factor impacting one’s way of thinking. Furthermore, since the students of English Literature/TEFL in Ph.D. degree outperformed those in M.A. degree, it can be concluded that the academic degree can be accounted as an aiding factor influencing the level of thinking ability as well. Furthermore, in searching for the reasons affecting (non-) production of thought-provoking questions, several factors were discovered and categorized into impeding and promoting ones.

Score decision-making is largely an undocumented process in performance assessment. To conduct a more in-depth cognitive study in scoring, one must ask if these underlying processes can be identified efficiently and objectively. To this end, the present study attempted to shed some light on how Iranian teachers as untrained raters rate speech samples of learners and how their cognition functions in the decision-making process in terms of the scores they assign. A series of monologues were obtained from a group of language learners; afterward, English language teachers were asked to rate them. The raters were asked both to assign a score and provide comments regarding why they assigned a specific score. Having rated the samples, the raters were individually interviewed. The results of the recorded interviews and the comments they had provided on scores were subjected to qualitative analysis like coding and extracting both idiosyncratic and shared features of the raters’ cognition. The results revealed that some of the factors attended to by the raters were both linguistic and relevant to speaking proficiency construct like fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Some other factors influencing the raters while rating were non-linguistic and not directly related to speaking proficiency construct like the tone of voice, personality feature of the testee, etc. It seemed that the untrained raters did not have a clear definition of oral proficiency construct. The implications of the study for rater training programs have been discussed.

Performance testing including the use of rating scales has become widespread in the evaluation of second/foreign oral language assessment. However, no study has used Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) including the facets of test takers’ ability, raters’ severity, group expertise, and scale category, in one study. 20 EFL teachers scored the speaking performance of 200 test-takers prior and subsequent to a rater training program using an analytic rating scale consisting of fluency, grammar, vocabulary, intelligibility, cohesion, and comprehension categories. The outcome demonstrated that the categories were at different levels of difficulty even after the training program. However, this outcome by no means indicated the uselessness of the training program since data analysis reflected the constructive influence of training in providing enough consistency in raters’ rating of each category of the rating scale at the post-training phase. Such an outcome indicated that raters could discriminate the various categories of the rating scale. The outcomes also indicated that MFRM can result in enhancement in rater training and functionality validation of the rating scale descriptors. The training helped raters use the descriptors of the rating scale more efficiently of its various band descriptors resulting in a reduced halo effect. The findings conveyed that stakeholders had better establish training programs to assist raters in better use of the rating scale categories of various levels of difficulty in an appropriate way. Further research could be done to make a comparative analysis between the outcome of this study and the one using a holistic rating scale in oral assessment.

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of CALL on intermediate EFL learners’ vocabulary learning and comparing it with traditional teaching method. To this end, a quasi-experimental design was used in which 80 students were chosen based on their performance in an Oxford Placement Test (OPT), and were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Six reading comprehension passages consisting of 72 new words were selected from the book “504 essential words” and used as the pretest of the study. Then, the experimental group received twelve sessions of treatment which was teaching vocabulary through different tools in the computer such as related pictures, video, textual highlights, PowerPoint slides, or Narsis software while the control group received the traditional way of teaching such as providing oral pronunciation of words, explaining their parts of speech, and offering a direct translation of words in Persian. Afterward, both groups attended the post-test of vocabulary at the end of the study. The scores of learners in pretest and posttest were analyzed statistically via running independent T-test. The findings revealed that CALL instruction was more effective in enhancing learners’ vocabulary learning in comparison to the traditional vocabulary instruction. The findings indicated that the experimental group had a better performance than that of the control group, and the learners in the CALL group learned more vocabulary than the learners in the traditional group. The findings of this research have implications for teachers and learners as teachers can use CALL in EFL classes to help them be independent learners, and make vocabulary learning more attractive and enjoyable to learners. The findings can help material developers and syllabus designers to consider the importance of CALL while planning textbooks and materials.

The burgeoning prominence of information technology has positioned mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) as an integral milestone of English as a foreign language (EFL) learning. With its mark deeply left on multiple manifestations of language learning, the MALL has substantially revolutionized the way second languages are taught and learned. In this illumination, the widespread integration of highly prominent portable devices such as smartphones and tablets has introduced to the market multitude of mobile applications for L2 learners, broadening the ground of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) to integrate MALL as an innovative direction of L2 learning. The Cake software is one such application that is a promising venue that teaches learners the English language through realistic, interesting, and engaging English videos. The app is primarily intended to assist language learners in enhancing their learning experience through watching videos that focus on situationspecific linguistic material. The focal point of this article revolves around is to offer an overview of the Cake application by illuminating its key functionalities and discussing its upsides and downsides. The article suggests Cake as a platform for English language learners to improve their speaking and listening capabilities. Furthermore, the application may aid English language teachers in introducing the app to the learners as a supplementary resource.

Culture is an indispensable part of Foreign Language Education Policy (FLEP), especially in English Language Teaching (ELT). In addition, the spread of English around the globe has resulted in English users’ tendency to embed their local culture in their English communication (Kirkpatrick, 2012). However, literature remains silent on culture representation in FLEP, especially in an ideologized country like Iran. To address this issue, due to lack of an explicit FLEP in Iran, the present study analyzed the cultural schemas addressed in the seven major national policy documents of Iran, namely 20-year National Vision, Comprehensive Science Roadmap, Support for Comprehensive Science Roadmap in the Domain of Languages, Cultural Engineering Document, National Curriculum, Fundamental Reform in Education, and Islamicization of Universities. Results of content analysis using MAXQDA Software unmasked Islamic-Iranian culture as the baseline for ELT in Iran. In order to further examine the representations and implications of ‘Islamic-Iranian culture’ hidden in the documents, open coding, axial coding, and labeling along with constant comparative procedure revealed various Islamic cultural schemas. However, very few instances of Iranian cultural schemas were unveiled. The findings were discussed in light of the hidden curriculum and the power relations behind the extracted cultural schemas

Second/foreign language classroom interaction is believed to have its own idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. Many studies have focused on the importance of turn-taking systems for students to gain and hold the floor. Nevertheless, a limited number of studies has explored teachers’ turn-allocation strategies in their instructional interactions. Motivated by this gap, through the methodological framework of Conversation Analysis (CA), the present study attempted to investigate the frequently employed turn-allocation strategies that Iranian EFL teachers use in their classroom interactions with their students. To this end, a corpus of nine hours of English instruction was video-recorded and analyzed through Sacks et al.’s (1974) model of turn-allocation. The results of in-depth qualitative analysis indicated that Iranian EFL teachers used multiple resources to allocate the turn to their students. More specifically, it was found that Iranian teachers generally allocate turns to their students through directing their gaze towards them as well as nominating them by their names. Moreover, the teachers, in this study, used non-verbal strategies of head nods and pointing gestures to nominate the next speaker to take the turn. The study ends with some implications for the EFL teachers in that they can manage their turn-allocation techniques more efficiently in their instructional interactions.

The present study investigated the translation of genderism Persian-English. Genderism is an ideology that shows partiality based on biological sex and separates society into two groups in a way that one sex is subordinate to another sex and it is reflected in languages; thus, there are sexist concepts in each language; the concepts are usually culture-oriented. The main question was: How have the sexist concepts been translated from Persian to English? The corpus of this comparative and qualitative study was Zoya Pirzad’s novel (2001 ) Cheraghha-ra Man Khamush Mikonam (L.T. I’ll turn off the lights ) and its translation by Franklin Lewis (2012) Things We Left Unsaid . The framework of the evaluation was Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model. The results revealed that translation of genderism is a challenging task, and the sexiest language of the SL was modified during the translation process; hence, the tone of sexist implications of the source text has been changed to more sexist concepts or anti-sexist concepts.

There are two different trends for the study of metadiscourse, including interactive and reflexive. The reflexive model suggested by (Mauranen, 1993) and (Ädel, 2010) cares about reflexivity in language. As reflexivity plays a pivotal role in spoken genres, this study aimed to study the frequency and functions of reflexive metadiscourse markers in academic interviews. Hence, this study focused on a corpus of three academic interviews carried out in English native academic context that was taken from “The Michigan Corpus of Academe Spoken English” (MICASE). The corpus was analyzed using the model by Ädel that includes four functional categories of metalinguistic comments, discourse organization, speech act labels, and references to the audiences . The results showed that about one-quarter of the personal pronouns were metadiscourse. Besides, among the personal pronouns that perform metadiscourse function, singular first-person pronoun was the most frequent while plural first-person pronoun was very rare. It was also found that among the four functions, the interviewees and interviewers paid more attention to metalinguistic comments and references to the audience . The results of this study could add to the knowledge of those participating in interviews in general and in the academic context in particular.

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of using online peer and teacher feedback on Iranian EFL learners writing performance. To this end, a group of 28 homogenous learners were selected to participate in this study. They were divided into two equal sets; the first group received online peer feedback and the second group received online teacher feedback. In order to obtain the results of the treatments, two types of t-tests were run. First, to check the effectiveness of the two types of online feedback, paired sample t-tests and to make the comparison between the TF and PF independent sample t-test was run. Results of the study indicated that both types of online corrective feedback are effective. However, the TF group outperformed the PF one. Therefore, technology integration in L2 classrooms and, more specifically, providing learners with online corrective feedback will lead to more progress in EFL learners' writing performance.