درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study set out to identify the problematic areas of pronunciation among Iranian female EFL learners. Further, this study investigated the relationship between empathy and authentic pronunciation, along with gender as a moderator variable. Comparing segmental features and phonological processes of both languages helped teachers to predict the target errors. To reach such a goal, a total of 69 Iranian undergraduate EFL learners were recruited from the Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, majoring in English literature and translation studies participated in the study. The subjects were conveniently sampled and were taking the course Conversation I. After administrating the Basic Empathy Scale (BES: Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006), the students were assigned to two groups: high-empathic group and low-empathic group. Both groups participated in an oral interview twice (before and after segmental form-focused instruction). The data were collected through taping participants’ pronunciation of some words. Two raters analyzed students’ pronunciation in terms of segmental features. The results demonstrated that the absence of some phonemes in the Farsi sound system and some phonological differences between the two languages caused difficulties for EFL learners. Furthermore, it was witnessed that those in the high-level group (i.e., more empathic learners) were more successful in acquiring authentic pronunciation than those in the low-level group.

The present study aims at discussing whether metaphors in the Qur’an, revealed more than 1400 years ago, are dead, moribund or live and how these three types of metaphors have been translated in three English and three Persian translations of the Qur’an. The results reveal that among 70 metaphors examined, while only about 32.85% are live metaphors, about 67.14% are moribund, but none of the cases are completely dead. Furthermore, based on Newmark’s (1988a) classification of procedures for translation of metaphors, there is no image in 15.21% of the procedures used in the English and Persian translations of live metaphors while there are images in 84.78% of them. On the other hand, 43.26% of the procedures used in translations of moribund metaphors transfer the images whereas 56.73% of them omit the images, although these metaphors are not dead. Yet the point is that when the majority of Qur’anic metaphors, that are moribund, had been considered by translators as dead metaphors and their images had been omitted, the translations fail to represent one of the important aspects of the original text’s literary style that is its metaphorical and literary language.

The primary purpose of the present study was to explore whether there was any significant relationship between attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction of Iranian EFL teachers on the one hand, and their choice of teaching strategies. Strategies mostly used by participants of the study with low, mid, and high levels of self-efficacy comprised another purpose of the study. To this end, a questionnaire was developed, piloted, validated, and its reliability was estimated for collecting the required data. Subsequently, based on cluster sampling, 420 male and female teachers from three different educational districts of Tehran responded to the questionnaire. Three separate MANOVAs were run to investigate the effect of teachers’ attitudes on strategies they employed for teaching grammar, vocabulary, and reading. This was followed by the same approach to study the effect of teachers’ self-efficacy and job-satisfaction levels, as well. The results revealed a significant relationship between three factors (attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction) and teachers’ choice of teaching strategies. Moreover, based on the scores obtained from the answers to the questionnaire, participants were classified into three levels of low, mid, and high which corresponded with their degrees of attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction. Accordingly, it was shown that high level of attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction strongly affected teachers’ use of vocabulary teaching strategies; mid to high level of attitude and efficacy affected use of reading and grammar strategies. Also, it appeared that strategies for teaching vocabulary are used more frequently among teachers than grammar and reading.

This study aimed to assess the quality of English translations of Imam Khamenei’s (D. Ẓ. A.) letters addressing the youth in the West based on House’s revised (1997) model of translation quality assessment. Such texts are considered political and/ or religious, and their translations require meticulous quality assessment. Yet, rarely did the researchers find any study addressing this important area of translation. Therefore, the current study, which employed a qualitative type of research, focused on the translation of such type of texts. The assessment revealed dimensional mismatches between the original and the translated versions in the areas of field, tenor, and mode. The findings of the current study can help improve the quality of the translation of the speech.

Code-switching is known to be a widespread phenomenon among bilinguals and in ESL/EFL teaching/learning process; it refers to any alternate use of two codes or languages within the same conversation or even the same utterance. The present study is an attempt to investigatethe functions, types and frequencies of code switching in students discourse in the context of ELT classrooms.The study also explores the relationship between the language proficiency level of the students and their use of code switching. To achieve this end, two groups of students (at two different levels of proficiency) from two classes of general English courses in an institutional program in Oil Ministry Center of Isfahan were selected as participants. All sessions of an entire semester were videotaped. A coding scheme was developed for classifying students’ instances of CS into relevant functions.The data were tabulated, and frequencies and percentages were conducted by SPSS program. The findings indicate that the majority of CS in the classroom is highly purposeful, and related to pedagogical goals. Also, the research found that pedagogical functions were more frequently fulfilled through CS compared to social functions. The findings of this research suggest that code switching is a necessary tool for teachers due to a number of pedagogical considerations in ET classrooms and can give teachers a clue to have a better understanding of student code switching in ELT classrooms and use CS in the direction of teaching and effective learning.