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This study investigated the cross-disciplinary variations in the generic structure of Introduction sections of 52 Applied Linguistics and 52 Chemistry research articles drawing upon Swales’ (2004) framework, taking into account the new insights proposed by Bhatia (2004), Shehzad (2008), and Lim (2012, 2014). To this end, in addition to collecting quantitative data and conducting frequency and Chi-square analyses, a number of semi-structured interviews were conducted with some Chemistry scholars and Applied Linguistics (ALs) experts for triangulation purposes. The results of the quantitative data analysis indicated that the two disciplines showed significant variations in the frequency with which they used some steps and sub-steps to realize the moves. The results of the qualitative content analysis of the interviews also helped understand why authors in each discipline might use a specific move/step more than the others and why a move/step was frequently used by the authors in one discipline, but completely absent in another. Finally, based on the results, some implications were presented to postgraduate students and novice researchers in Chemistry and Applied Linguistics to help them write effective research articles in their field. The findings of the study could also provide some practical implications for the EAP teachers to help their students become better writers. In addition, some suggestions were presented to genre analysts to help them obtain more dependable results when analyzing the generic structure of various sections of research articles.

With the current availability of state-of-the-art technology, particularly the Internet, people have expanded their channels of communication. This has similarly led to many people utilizing technology to learn second/foreign languages. Nevertheless, many current computer-assisted language learning (CALL) programs still appear to be lacking in interactivity and what is termed social presence, which is in turn an obstacle to the learners assuming active roles in their online experience of L2 learning. Consequently, the existing CALL programs do not seem to have updated themselves from the obsolete behavioristic and communicative genres to reach for the integrative one to yield optimum interactivity. The present study has attempted to cast light on the prospect of creating an online learning community that could optimize the patterns of interaction among the students and the teacher with the intention of creating online social presence. Using a qualitative research based on grounded theory, the researchers attempted to collect and analyze the data vis-à-vis the participants’ feedback on the research questions that were cyclically obtained from 42 English students of the first researcher’s weblog through 41 semi-structured interviews at the end of each virtual class on Skype and Discord over one year. The results suggested that content-based instruction (CBI) in which the students can opt for and create the content of the course through engaging in asynchronous activities and performing peer-assessment in the comment forms and discussion boards before practicing negotiation of meaning in each synchronous class could maximize the level of student-student interactivity and social presence among the L2 learners.

در مقاله حاضر رابطه بین ریسک پذیری، انگیزه ی یادگیری، اضطراب صحبت کردن به زبان انگلیسی و اعتماد به نفس زبانی با درستی، روانی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان آموزان زبان انگلیسی مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است. همچنین تاثیر تکرار فعالیت برروی متغیرهای فوق و همچنین بر روی درستی، روانی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان آموزان مورد مطالعه قرار گرفته است. جهت انجام تحقیق، پرسشنامه ای که به این منظور طراحی شده به 142 نفر زبان آموزان زبان انگلیسی داده شد. سپس، آنها به طور تصادفی به دو گروه آزمایش و کنترل تقسیم شدند. شرکت کنندگان در گروه آزمایش فعالیت مربوطه را در پنج نوبت که هر کدام یک هفته باهم فاصله داشتند تکرار نمودند. شرکت کنندگان در گروه کنترل فعالیت مربوطه را فقط در دو نوبت به فاصله سه هفته از یک دیگر تکرار نمودند. پرسشنامه مربوطه مجددا در پایان تحقیق به کلیه شرکت کنندگان داده شد. نتایج نشان داد که ریسک پذیری، انگیزه یادگیری، اضطراب صحبت کردن به زبان انگلیسی و اعتماد به نفس زبانی بر روی درستی، روانی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان آموزان تاثیرگذار می باشد. علاوه بر این، تکرار فعالیت به آنها کمک می کند تا درستی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان انگلیسی خود را بهبود ببخشند.

Iran's National curriculum standards represent the guiding blueprints which provide direction for instruction and assessment nationwide. Iran's official university curriculum standards were designed by Iran's Ministry of Sciences, Research and Technologyto provide a frame of reference and guidance for the instructional materials used and decisions made by university instructors. Using a widely accepted measure of describing cognitive processes, that is,Bloom's revised taxonomy of educational objectives, thispaper aims at comparatively investigatingIran's B.A. official curriculum standards of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and ET (English translation). Thestandardspertaining to TEFL and ET fieldswerecontent analyzed in terms of Bloom's revised taxonomyby using a detailed checklist developedbased on the respective classification of cognitive objectives.The findings showed slight differences between both fields in terms of critical thinking skills and that lower-order cognitive skills were more prevalent than higher-order ones. Furthermore, the English translation standards pertained to critical cognitive skills in general and evaluation and creation in particular to a larger extent. Results of this study have implications for policy makers, curriculum designers, materials developers and instructors involved in language education.

The studies on the merits of processing instruction (PI) and output-based instruction (OI) have mostly treated the two approaches as mutually exclusive. To address the potentials of combining interpretation and production activities, this research compared the two isolated approaches of PI and OI with two combined approaches in which processing and output tasks were used in two opposite orders suggested by the researcher, i.e. processing-output-based instruction (POI) and output-processing-based instruction (OPI). The target structure was English passives. Participants included 185 Iranian EFL students from five intact classes, with four assigned to each treatment and one comprising a control group. Results on sentence-level interpretation and production tests administered before, immediately after, and one month following instruction indicated similar improvement for the treatment groups on the first interpretation posttest, and the superiority of POI over OPI and PI over the delayed posttest. On the first production test, POI, OPI, and OI performed equally well and better than PI, while more accurate uses of the target form were observed by POI and OPI on the delayed posttest. It was concluded that the combined approaches, particularly POI, could produce more persistent outcomes by giving learners the opportunity to both process a form and produce it.

This study investigated the effect of story-based technique, L₁ translation, and Whatsapp emoticon puzzle solving on EFL learners’ learning proverbs. From among 90 female intermediate level learners at two language institutes in Qom, Iran, 60 homogeneous students were chosen following the administration of a sample of Nelson proficiency test and a pre-test. The 60 participants were then assigned to three experimental groups, equal in number. The experimental group 1 was instructed using story-based technique; the experimental group 2 was taught through L₁ translation; and the experimental group 3 was exposed to Whatsapp emoticon puzzle solving. Subsequently, all three groups took part in a proverb post-test similar to the pre-test. The data were analyzed by ANOVA. The results showed that Whatsapp emoticon puzzle solving was significantly the most effective, and that the students’ level of learning proverbs was influenced by story-based technique more than L₁ translation technique. The findings of this study can contribute to technology- enhanced language teaching.