درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study intended to compare the complaint responses used by President Rouhani and President Obama in the Iranian and US news interview contexts. For this purpose, Boxer’s (1993) six types of indirect complaint responses were adopted: ‘ignorance’, ‘questions’, ‘topic switch’, ‘contradiction’, ‘joke/teasing’, ‘advice/lecture’ and ‘agreement/commiseration’. The transcripts of the live news interviews were selected from Tehran Times in Iran and ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Atlantic Daily’, and ‘National Public Radio’ all carried out in 2015. The results of quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed both universal and culture-specific responses. Whereas both nations made nearly equal use of ‘question’ response in order to make solidarity, ‘contradiction’ was used most frequently in the US interviews and ‘topic-switch’ and ‘commiseration’ were more frequent in Iranian transcripts. The findings are discussed with respect to the culture-specificity and universality and the way that news interviews deal with the political information including Iran’s nuclear negotiations.

Task-based language teaching is considered an effective way to achieve a harmony between grammar and communication. The present study investigates two different ways of teaching modal verbs: task-based versus traditional approaches. To this purpose, an Oxford Placement Test was administered to select 40 homogeneous participants out of a larger population who took this test. The selected participants were randomly divided into experimental and control groups of 20 students each. Those in the experimental group attended an English class six days a week, practicing grammar through tasked-based approach, while the control group did not receive any task-based work. The OPT was administered at the end of the semester again to see which group could do modal verbs better. A final test of modal verb tasks was also administered at the end of the study to see if all the learners have improved in using modal verbs in the same way/at the same amount through task-based language teaching. The results of this study indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group, meaning that teaching modal verbs through task-based approaches has been more effective than teaching them in traditional ways. It was also revealed that the modal verb can was improved much more, while have to and must were improved less. The results of the study may have a significant implication for teaching modal verbs in particular and language learning in general.

: This study investigated the impact of audio-visual input enhancement teaching techniques on improving English as Foreign Language (EFL) learnersˈ collocation learning as well as their accuracy concerning collocation use in narrative writing. In addition, it compared the impact and efficiency of audio-visual input enhancement in two learning contexts, namely traditional and mobile learning contexts. First, 120 homogenous intermediate EFL learners were randomly divided into four groups, two experimental and two comparison groups. Next, two pre-tests, a collocation and a paragraph writing test, were administered. The experimental groups received enhanced target collocations through input enhancement teaching techniques while in the comparison groups the “unenhanced” collocations were taught through conventional simple vocabulary teaching method. After the treatment sessions, the researcher administered two post-tests including a collocation and a paragraph writing. As the data analysis suggested, with regards to the first research purpose, audio-visual input enhancement positively affected EFL learners' collocation learning and enhanced their accuracy concerning collocation use in narrative writing. Regarding the second purpose of the study, the results revealed that, in comparison to traditional learning context, audio-visual input enhancement teaching techniques were significantly effective in mobile learning context in terms of collocation learning. The efficiency of audio-visual input enhancement teaching techniques was not significantly different between the experimental groups in the two learning contexts in terms of enhancing EFL learners’ accuracy concerning collocation use. The findings of this study can create awareness for second language teachers and learners about the critical and beneficial role of input enhancement and mobile assisted language learning in successful language acquisition and learning.

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) Approach claims that there are some universalities in all languages. Speech acts seem to be present in all languages, but considering this approach, research has not indicated whether request speech act differs from one language to another. Thus, this study intended to investigate whether request strategies are used differently in English and Persian romantic novels and whether Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach can be considered in English and Persian requests. To reach these objectives, the corpus consisting of two English and Persian romantic novels were used. It was analyzed using Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984)’s classification. Results indicated that mood derivable was the most frequent request strategy in both novels. Moreover, a statistically significant difference was not observed between request strategies in English and Persian romantic novels and thus the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach can be considered in English and Persian requests. The conclusion drawn is that considering the applicability of this approach, both American and Iranian native speakers can presumably use imperative structures, with the politeness marker please or without it, as a request strategy, when the interlocutors are close friends or members of the same family.

Being expert in establishing cohesion and coherence in writing is not an easy task. The EFL learners are to pass through very long, uneven paths such as précis exercise to achieve this skill. The present study was launched to explore the effect of précis writing on the creation of a compact text. To this end, a true-experimental method of research with the pretest-posttest control design was employed. Via double-stage sampling, 40 female students were selected at Fatemeh-al-Zahra High School in Kabutarahang, Hamedan, Iran. The control group was taught some grammatical structures such as active and passive voices, reduced adjective clauses, and different tenses in English during twelve sessions; while the experimental group received a lesson plan consisting of twelve sessions of précis writing. To analyze the data collected via pretest and posttest, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was run. The findings of the study indicated that the participants in the experimental group performed better in producing cohesive and qualified texts than those in the control group. The conclusion drawn was that teaching précis, as a basic skill, can improve the writing ability and provide the students with more opportunities to utilize the cohesive devices and consequently produce more cohesive pieces of text.