درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This meta-analysis is an investigation into the impressibility of two dimensions of the speaking skill, namely accuracy and fluency, in relation to the experimented treatments among Iranian EFL undergraduates. Having surveyed a collected bank of 74 research reports, the relationships among the variables in the 14 included studies were examined. More specifically, the analysis involved a statistical review of 67 effect sizes (at 95% CI) calculated from studies conducted between 2006 and 2016, including 890 participants. The analysis indicated that in 77% of the experimented treatments, the students performed as well as the students in the regular programs with no significant improvement in oral accuracy. The analysis also demonstrated that 63% of the treatments did not yield significant improvement in oral fluency in comparison with the regular instruction. Moreover, the synthesis of the effects of the contextual factors showed that low-level (i.e., elementary) learners experienced a better improvement in speaking performance. The analysis also revealed that, among the experimented treatments, dialogic tasks were most effective on oral accuracy while interviews were influential in promoting the students’ both oral accuracy and fluency. Finally, the quality of the study reports was analyzed and some directions for further research were suggested.

While teachers’ confidence in their abilities is a crucial asset in teachers’ professionalism and their identity development, their efficacy doubts are also considered useful. Given the diversity of English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts, this paper probes the dynamic nature of efficacy doubts the teachers face and are expected to resolve in English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) instruction. To this end, based on the existing theoretical frameworks in EGP and ESAP methodology and interviews with 25 university English teachers, two questionnaires were developed and administered to 170 Iranian EGP and ESAP university instructors. The results of factor analysis confirmed five factors underlying ESAP teachers’ teaching efficacy doubts and four factors for EGP teachers’ teaching efficacy doubts. The results may promise implications for ESAP and EGP teacher education programs; teacher educators may address the common efficacy doubts identified in this study and expose the current in-service and future ESAP and EGP teachers to the typical factors which may potentially hamper their efficacy and help them resolve their efficacy doubts as a means towards professional development

During the last decades various researchers noticed that the traditional approaches to teaching had failed to teach learners to their utmost actual ability, therefore they put great efforts into developing post-modernist approaches and techniques such as critical thinking (CT) and cooperative learning (CL) for improving learning.The present study was an attempt to investigate the comparative effect of practicing CL and CT skills on EFL learners’ writing in a process-based approach to writing on EFL learners’ writing. Sixty Iranian female EFL learners at the intermediate level of English proficiency at Kish Language School were selected among a total number of 90 based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET) and randomly assigned into two groups of CL and CT. Then the researchers administered an argumentative paragraph writing test to ensure the homogeneity of the two groups regarding argumentative writing before the treatment. Both groups were taught the same content through process-based approach throughout the 20-session treatment. Finally, the participants took a paragraph writing posttest including three writing prompts in argumentative genre. The mean scores of the two groups on the posttest were compared through an independent samples t-test. The results led to the rejection of the null hypothesis with the conclusion that CT instruction was significantly more effective than CL in improving EFL learners’ argumentative paragraph writing.

این مقاله به بررسی تکواژ اشتقاقی در پسوندهای خاص در زبان های فارسی و روسی می پردازد. شواهد مثال از کتاب «ذخیره خوارزمشاهی» اثر معروف سید اسماعیل جرجانی برگرفته شده است. نویسنده این دانشنامه پزشکی به رغم ورود اصطلاحات فراوان زبان عربی به زبان فارسی، به منظور حفظ و صیانت زبان فارسی با اجتناب از کاربرد کلمات و اصطلاحات عربی و لاتین، اثر خود را به زبان مادری یعنی زبان فارسی نگاشته است. نویسندگان این مقاله تلاش کرده اند تا با روش های گوناگون، پسوندها را در این دو زبان مطالعه و بررسی کنند. با توجه به دستاوردهای پژوهش حاضر می توان گفت که سازنده ترین شیوه برای ساخت اسم و صفت، استفاده از پسوند است. در این مقاله ابتدا پرکاربردترین پسوندهای زایا و غیرزایا فارسی استفاده شده در کتاب ذخیره خوارزمشاهی و سپس معادل آن ها در زبان روسی مشخص شده و شباهت های معنایی آن ها بیان گردیده است. همچنین به این نکته اشاره شده که تلفظ بعضی از پسوندهای فارسی در گذر زمان از روزگار پیشین تا دوره معاصر تغییر یافته است. بعضی از پسوندها به عنوان کلمات جداگانه دارای معنا بوده اند، اما در حال حاضر آن معنا را از دست داده و به پسوند اشتقاقی تبدیل شده اند.

The current study attempts to explore the characteristics of author-assigned keywords in research articles as important constituents of targeted search in academic communities. To this end, the keywords of 200 research papers in the field of applied linguistics, in terms of domain, degree of specificity, and relation to the titles, were analyzed. To supplement the findings, the keyword choice strategy of a number of researchers with publishing experience in the field was also investigated. The analysis revealed a considerable rate of title-keywords match, especially with respect to field-specific keywords. This finding points to the importance of users’ field-specific background knowledge in locating relevant information on the web. The examination of authors’ viewpoints and strategies, on the other hand, helped to bring to light the complex and non-clichéd nature of keyword selection. The significance of authors’ diverging and converging attitudes and their implications for enhancing the success rate of keyword search are discussed.