درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The language register used in academic communities has the special features of density, complexity, and abstractness which are associated with nominalization with which new members of the communities might not be familiar. To explore the possible distance between novice and established members regarding their awareness of this grammatical feature, the present study investigated the employment of nominalization in the writings of Iranian graduate students (both MA and PhD students) and experienced figures in applied linguistics. Forty five research articles in the discipline by the three groups of writers served as the corpus of the study. A rigorous analysis began by identifying and outlining nominalization instances manually through and per all rhetorical sections of the articles. The occurrences of the two types of nominal expressions was counted and normalized. So as to detect the possible significant differences between the samples, chi-square tests were run. The results revealed that the experienced writers used significantly more nominalization in their writings. However, although the total nominal expressions used in MA texts were more than those used in PhD texts, the difference turned out not to be significant. There were also similarities and variations in the ranking patterns of the two types of nominalization in four rhetorical sections of the three groups of the articles. It can be concluded that the differences might reflect the distance between the novice and the established authors regarding their awareness of the importance of nominalization in academic writing. The implications of the study for EAP courses were also discussed.

Almost in every stage of their language learning process, the learners have motivation for what they do and receive a negative or positive feedback for it. The current study was after finding the would-be effect of motivation on 58 elementary EFL learners’ pronunciation gains successive to teacher and peer oral corrective feedback. To this aim, two intact groups at elementary level of proficiency were employed as the study participants, each of which was exposed to treatment through one type of oral corrective feedback (either teacher or peer feedback type) following the initial administration of a tailor-made recognition test of pronunciation. Thus, following pretest, an adopted motivation questionnaire was assigned to participants in both groups to gauge their motivation type (intrinsic or extrinsic) in learning a foreign language. Subsequent to the treatment applied via teacher and peer corrective feedback methods, the posttest was administered to all the study participants. The oral corrective feedback was utilized to provide implicit instruction to the EFL learners regarding their pronunciation at the segmental level. The results revealed that no statistically significant difference existed between the two groups regarding their pronunciation enhancement. Thus, it was indicated throughout the research that neither learners’ motivation type nor the corrective feedback type offered by the study played a significant role in ameliorating learners’ performance on pronunciation posttest. The issue problematized in the current study may help teachers rethink the way they provide corrective feedback in their classes, and be more vigilant of and sensitive to the preferred ways of feedback provision on the part of learners in the light of motivational and attitudinal factors.       Keywords: motivation; second language pronunciation; oral corrective feedback   جستاری درباره تاثیر انگیزه یادگیرندگان بر بهبود تلفظشان در سایه دریافت بازخورد اصلاحی از معلمان و همکلاسان   یادگیرندگان زبان در هر مرحله از فرایند یادگیری از انگیزه برای آنچه انجام می دهند برخوردار بوده و بازخورد مثبت یا منفی در قبال آن دریافت می کنند. هدف تحقیق حاضر بررسی تاثیر انگیزه زبان آموزان سطح مقدماتی بر بهبود تلفظشان بدنبال اجرای جلسات بازخورد اصلاحی شفاهی بود. بدین منظور در ابتدای کار دو گروه از زبان آموزان سطح مقدماتی انتخاب گردیده و پس از اجرای پیش آزمون تلفظ، هر کدام به یکی از دو شیوه بازخورد اصلاحی (از طریق معلم و یا همکلاسان) مورد بررسی قرار گرفتند. همچنین جهت تعیین نوع غالب انگیزش زبان آموزان (درونی یا بیرونی)، پرسشنامه انگیزش توسط محققان ارائه گردید، و در انتهای کار پس آزمون تلفظ از فراگیران به عمل آمد. گفتنی است بازخورد اصلاحی شفاهی با هدف اجرای آموزش غیر مستقیم تلفظ به زبان آموزان صورت گرفت. بر پایه نتایج حاصله، هیچ تفاوت معناداری در میزان پیشرفت زبان آموزان دو گروه در پس آزمون مشاهده نگردید. بنابراین محققان از یافته های تحقیق حاضر اینگونه استنباط نمودند که نه نوع بازخورد اصلاحی ارائه شده و نه نوع انگیزش زبان آموزان هیچکدام تاثیر عمده ای در ایجاد تفاوت معنادار بین عملکرد دو گروه در پس آزمون تلفظ نداشتند. در نهایت چنین به نظر می رسد که نتایج پژوهش حاضر می تواند به معلمان کمک کند تا در نحوه ارائه بازخورد اصلاحی در کلاس تجدید نظر نموده و نسبت به ترجیحات زبان آموزان در این خصوص با توجه به انگیزه و نگرش های آنان آگاهانه تر و دقیق تر عمل نمایند.   کلید واژگان:انگیزش، تلفظ در زبان دوم، بازخورد اصلاحی شفاهی

The importance of demotivation in language learning has been overshadowed in the commonplace research on language learning motivation and even in mainstream psychology (Dörnyei, 2005). The purpose behind conducting this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ demotives for studying in general and English language in particular. Besides, the importance of educational context was investigated through explaining the changes in students’ responses based on the type of university and gender. In Iran, university education is highly important for youngsters and the type of university with their various contexts is determining for their future. There are popular state universities among which one technical university as well as its satellite campus were selected. Besides, a distance-education and a unisexual university were represented in the present sample, overall comprising 194 bachelor students of different majors. Consequently, the factors considered as demotives are ranked, elaborated on and analyzed in order to shed light on the educational context-specific demotives and the pros and cons of current practices of EFL instruction in the universities.

The role of teachers in the educational context could go beyond simply teaching the subject matter. It is not uncommon for some students to be greatly influenced by certain teachers and even consider them as their role models. An interesting and novel way of inferring the impact a teacher has on the students is through revealing the status of the teacher as perceived by the students. The present study pursued two goals: first, to construct and validate a teacher status scale (TSS); and second, to reveal the relative status of English language teachers as compared to other school teachers in students’ perceptions. Regarding the first goal, an 18-item teacher status scale was designed and, using the data collected from 200 students, its construct validity was substantiated through Rasch model. As for the second goal, 650 junior high school students rated their 300 teachers. The data was then analyzed using Chi-square test. In addition, 135 students participated in short interviews and a total of 530 minutes of recorded interviews constituted the qualitative data. Based on the results, English teachers were found to have the highest status of all school teachers as perceived by the students. Finally, statistical results were discussed, and implications were provided for English language teaching in the formal context of education.