درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This paper reports the study undertaken on types of defense mechanisms used by Iranian EFL teachers. Furthermore, the significant differences between male and female EFL teachers at different age groups in the use of defense mechanisms are also considered. In the first phase of the study, the focus was on identification of defense mechanisms teachers generally adopt in their daily activities, while the second phase was exclusive to the deployment of defense mechanisms inside EFL classes. Accordingly, Defense Style Questionnaire was distributed among 100 EFL teachers. Next, to capture in-class atmosphere, the researchers carried out 30 semi-structured interviews with Iranian EFL teachers. All the participants (15 males and 15 females) were teaching in public schools as well as private institutes at the time of the interview. The results of the questionnaire indicated that teachers used two mature defense mechanisms, namely, anticipation (M=13.8) and rationalization (M=13), in their daily lives more than the others. Nonetheless, the results of the interview denoted the dominance of pseudo- altruistic behaviors (N=30), as a neurotic mechanism, in EFL classes. Sublimation and humor (N=29), as two mature defense mechanisms, were also frequently used. On the other hand, splitting (N=2), passive aggression (N=2), and projection (N=3), all of which are considered to be immature mechanisms, were the least-frequently used mechanisms. Moreover, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests signified no significant differences in terms of gender and age in the use of defense mechanisms among Iranian EFL teachers.

This paper discusses the use of Persian in comparison with Dari, a dialect of Persian language used in Kerman, one of the cities of Kerman Province located in southeast Iran. It is based on a random selection of 47 subjects from different sex, age, and occupational groups of Zoroastrian people with different levels of education in seven domains, i.e. family, friendship, neighborhood, transaction, education, government, and employment. In this study, the subjects were asked to determine which language they use in different domains on Likert’s 4-point scale. After collecting the data by the use of a questionnaire with 30 situations in the seven domains and analyzing them, the researcher concluded that there is a Persian-Dari diglossia in Zoroastrian speech community in which Dari functions as the Low language whereas Persian is the High one. As a matter of fact, Dari has been restricted to family domain and the young generation has lost it to a large extent.

The present study was aimed at investigating intermediate Iranian EFL learners’ feedback preferences on their L2 writing and examining the possible differences between learners with entity and incremental language mindsets with respect to their feedback preferences. To this end, 150 EFL learners were recruited from several language institutes in Isfahan, Iran, and their language proficiency level was measured through a proficiency test. The learners were then given the Language Mindsets Questionnaire and the Feedback Preferences Scale to fill out. Frequency counts, mean scores, and chi-square for independence were employed to analyze the collected data. The results of the study indicated that teacher-student conferencing, self-correction, peer correction, and correction using prompts were the types of feedback that the learners preferred to receive, and the difference between entity and incremental mindset holders reached statistical significance for teacher correction with comments, self-correction, and teacher-student conferencing. Regarding the strategies the learners utilized to handle feedback, the two groups of learners were significantly different just in terms of asking for teacher explanation. Finally, thinking prompts received priority in the following order, L1/L2, word, and rule, while goal and fit were not favored by the learners; thinking prompt did not turn out to cause significantly different preferences in the EFL learners with entity or incremental mindsets. The significance of the obtained results are discussed and the implications of the study are then proffered

Within the realm of lexis, the area of collocation is of prime importance to producing natural-sounding language for anyone learning a foreign language. This study aimed at investigating the effects of two modes of sentence writing versus multiple-choice test practice manipulation on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ lexical collocation learning. For this purpose, to ensure the homogeneity of the participants, Preliminary English Test (PET) was administered to 87 students studying English at two English institutes of Ofoghhaye Nour and Nourmahdi in Roudsar, Guilan, through which 60 students were selected as the target participants. They were intermediate students with the age range between 17 and 23. They were then divided into two equal comparison groups: Sentence-writing Group (SRG) and Multiple-choice Group (MCG). A piloted pretest of lexical collocation was administered to both groups. Then both groups underwent a 7-session treatment. SRG was treated by the virtue of sentence-writing practice for the target collocations, and MCG was instructed through recognition practice, here multiple-choice practice. After the treatment period, the same version of lexical collocation test was administered to both groups as posttest to examine the effectiveness of the treatments. The results of paired-samples and independent samples t-tests indicated that both groups had collocation gains but the effectiveness of multiple-choice test manipulation on learners’ lexical collocation outweighed that of the sentence-writing mode of test practice manipulation. The implications and recommendations were also presented.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of psychological factors on teachers` attitudes regarding technology use. To this purpose, such factors as ‘perceived usefulness’, ‘perceived ease of use’, ‘trialability’, ‘subjective norms’, and ‘attitude’ were investigated. The participants of the study were high school English language teachers in Shiraz, who were selected through stratified sampling as a representative sample of the available population. In order to assess the extent of the effect of each factor, five questionnaires were administered. Then, the elicited data were analyzed by means of path analysis. The obtained results revealed that ‘perceived ease of use’ was affected by ‘subjective norms’, and ‘trialability’ influenced the attitude of teachers about using technology in their teachings. The results also showed that the most influential factor on attitude was ‘trialability’. Furthermore, the results displayed that ‘perceived usefulness’ had a significant effect and subjective norms had an indirect but meaningful effect on the teachers’ attitude. The findings of the study have implications for school administrators and teachers to use them in their planning and instruction and, as a result, boost the learning environment.

The current study was intended to investigate the impact of Dynamic Assessment (DA) on promoting reading comprehension ability of Iranian male and female EFL learners, focusing on Guthke's Lerntest approach. In this study, the researcher used DA which unifies instruction with assessment to provide learners with mediation to promote their hidden potential during assessment. In this action research project, Guthke's Lerntest approach was used to develop the reading comprehension skill classes that integrated mediation with assessment to support 60 Iranian EFL learners' reading skill. The Guthke's lerntest approach and the mediation design are presented in detail in this article. The participants' reading scores are presented to show the effect of Guthke's Lerntest approach on promoting Iranian EFL learners' reading performance. In addition, the participants' pre and post-test scores were compared to determine whether the participants revealed significant progress after receiving Guthke's Lerntest approach in reading comprehension setting. The findings showed that participants of experimental group significantly outperformed the one in the static way. In conclusion, the results of the study revealed that employing the Guthke's Lerntest approach can offer a new condition to enhance the EFL learners' reading comprehension ability and that doing research in this field can be beneficial for EFL learners, English instructors and other researchers in other fields. 

To better illuminate the link between scaffolding and visual aids, this quasi-experimental study attempted to scaffold an intact group of 14 intermediate-level Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners through providing graphs with the aim of enhancing their writing ability. Ensuring lack of familiarity with eight unknown words, they were scaffolded through visual images. The scaffolding process included three respective phases of contingency, fading, and transferring. As post-tests for checking the learners’ understanding of and opinion about the graph scaffolding process, a researcher-made questionnaire and a semi-structured interview followed the treatment phase. The results of the questionnaire showed that visual scaffolding aided the learners to better grasp the meaning of the target vocabularies and even some grammatical points in the materials. Moreover, the visual scaffolding helped them to produce the material in different modalities. The results also indicated all the three characteristics of scaffolding were met by the visual scaffolding. Finally, the interview results revealed the learners had favorable attitude toward visual scaffolding and considered the third phase of the scaffolding as the most challenging one. It can be concluded that the findings gave credence to the effectiveness of visual scaffolding in improving EFL students’ writing ability.

This study investigated the effects of prompts as corrective feedback strategy on teaching /θ/ and /ð/ sounds to Iranian EFL learners. To achieve this objective, after 30 students studying English at a language institute took a placement test, the intermediate-level students were selected based on their scores on this test. They were randomly assigned to one experimental group and one control group. The experimental group was instructed these two sounds giving prompts as corrective feedback, while the control group received no feedback. In this experimental study, two teacher-made tests on sounds /θ/ and /ð/ were administered to the participants before and after the treatment. After collecting the data and confirming normality of them; through employing two independent-samples t tests and two paired-samples t tests, the collected data were analyzed. The results indicated that language learners in the experimental group did not significantly outperform in the posttest; thus, it can be concluded that prompts were not an effective feedback in teaching these two sounds to Iranian intermediate EFL learners. Findings of the present study can help language teachers and teacher trainers in teaching these complex sounds to Iranian EFL learners