درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Research findings reported to date indicate that carefully planning speech while performing a task increases second language (L2) learners’ attention to formal aspects of their discourse. The evidence, however, is mostly based on performance analysis with respect to the linguistic measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To enhance the psycholinguistic validity of current findings, the present research adopted a process-product approach to analyze L2 learners’ performance and attention shift as indicated by the occurrence of pauses in their speech. The study involved thirty Iranian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who were divided into two groups of fifteen. Whereas participants in the first group were given unlimited time to carefully plan while performing a narrative task, their counterparts in the other group completed the same task under time constraint. Following participants’ performance, both performance analysis and retrospective interviews were conducted to collect their protocol data. The results revealed that carefully planned speech is characterized by increased complexity and accuracy and reduced fluency stemming from attention being primarily focused on syntactic encoding, lexical choice, and phonology instead of conceptualizing the message. The outcomes are discussed in light of their theoretical and pedagogical implications.

This study investigates how L1 Chinese scholars in hard science disciplines use metadiscourse in their English academic writing, by comparing the deployment of metadiscoursal resources written by L1 Chinese and L1 English scholars. Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse was adopted for the analysis. We found that L1 Chinese scholars used less metadiscoursal resources than L1 English scholars on the whole. In the two dimensions of interaction, L1 Chinese scholars made more use of interactive devices, while L1 English scholars used more interactional items. This reflects that L1 Chinese scholars made greater efforts to guide the readers through their papers, and L1 English scholars are more concerned with creating author identity and engaging their readers. The t-tests confirmed that L1 Chinese scholars used significantly more code glosses in interactive metadiscourse and less self-mentions in interactional metadiscourse. An in-depth analysis reveals two functions of code glosses and five functions of self-mentions in RA abstracts.

The present paper analyzes the issue of poverty in the Qur’an adopting Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis method. Using this approach, it is tried to highlight the importance of the subject in the Qur’an, aiming to initiate serious discussions among Muslims and the followers of other religions on solving the poverty crisis. The Qur’anic discourse has two articulations on poverty alleviation and lack of poverty alleviation: a discouraging-encouraging strategic expression and rational approach. In this way, it divides the social space into the two poles of poverty eliminating identity (i.e., the positive identity or polarity) and poverty disregarding identity (i.e., the negative identity or polarity). The discourse’s strategies for poverty alleviation include eliminating the concentration of wealth in society by paying Zakat and Enfagh by individuals and allocating a portion of the community’s income to poverty alleviation. This portion is Fay and the spoils of war back then. Also, this discourse is about linking religious life and rituals including Hajj, sacrifice, Fidya, mosque preservation, and peace concerning poverty alleviation. This discourse achieves hegemony and prevails in 7th-century Saudi Arabia, where no attention is paid to poverty alleviation; however, it died out slowly after the Prophet’s death for some reason.

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.

Learning-oriented assessment (LOA) seeks to support instruction by providing information about students ’ current learning conditions and their ultimate performance. This study scrutinizes the application of LOA in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes within Iranian language institutes. In addition, the current study examined the participants’ writing traits using the researchers-developed writing traits questionnaire during the implementation of LOA. Sixty upper-intermediate students (male & female) in two intact classes at a language institute in Tabriz, Iran, were taken as the participants. One of these classes was randomly picked as the control and the other one as the experimental group. During the treatment, learners of the experimental group carried out the relevant writing tasks based on the principles of LOA. On the other hand, the control group adopted the teacher-centered approach. 120 IELTS writing task 2 samples were collected and scored by using a scoring rubric (Wang & Liao, 2008) before and after the LOA treatment. To realize the differences in the mean scores of students in the control group and the experimental group, an independent sample t-test was used. The findings showed that the students of the experimental group benefited vastly from multiple drafting, self, and peer-evaluation, sharing learning goals with teachers and each other, and using feedforward techniques instead of feedback. The results might provide both theory and pedagogy implications for syllabus designers and language teachers with valuable guidelines on improving writing assessment in IELTS writing courses.

Educators often employ various training techniques to reduce raters’ subjectivity. Negotiation is a technique which can assist novice raters to co-construct a shared understanding of the writing assessment when rating collaboratively. There is little research, however, on rating behaviors of novice raters while employing negotiation techniques and the effect of negotiation on their understanding of writing and rubric features. This study uses a qualitative method to keep track of 11 novice raters’ scoring behaviors and examine their textual foci during three phases of scoring through an analytic rubric: pre-negotiation, negotiation, and post-negotiation. To ensure triangulation, multiple sources of data including raters’ verbal protocols of independent scoring during the initial and final phases, audio-recorded interactions in the negotiation phase, and semi-structured interviews were gathered and analyzed. Results indicated that in their initial independent rating, raters mostly scored based on their understanding of the writing skill and the writing features that were important to them, but negotiation sessions aided them to refine their judgments and attend to a wider array of textual features more consistently and in line with the rubric, thereby expanding their understanding of the rubric categories. Post-negotiation ratings were also more similar to negotiation than prenegotiation ratings, meaning that the raters attended to more features of the rubric for scoring. The findings may have implications for rater training. In the absence of expert raters to train novice raters, negotiation can be considered a useful technique to improve raters’ understanding of the rubric features.

Teaching and learning of French as a foreign language in any Anglophone country such as Ghana is an extremely difficult task to undertake both on the part of the teacher and the student. This is evidenced in the general low performance of students in the subject at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) level in both public and private schools over the years. This case study paper follows, examines, and documents evidence (in a day) of an exemplary French teacher, Pangloss who, by dint of hard work, has brought tremendous success to his students. This article critically analyzes the difference and excellence he brings unto the teaching and learning of French even as a part-time teacher in a public Junior High School (JHS) in the Muzumba community within the Cape Zone Metropolis. The paper’s preoccupation is to typically observe the characteristics of this individual foreign language teacher with a view to probing deeply and analyzing intensively the multifarious phenomena that constitute his professional demeanor, the processes he employs in teaching, and the opportunities he creates for student learning purposely to establish some insights on how teaching and learning of French could be made better to the wider French teacher population in Ghana.

It is by now well established that materials may have an impact beyond simply learning a language they present. Hence, in this study attempts have been made to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of a textbook Summit 2B which is currently being widely used in Iranian EFL classes. The textbook has been evaluated based on criteria provided by McDonough and Shaw (1993) on the basis of two stages: an external and an internal evaluation. Efforts have been made to critically evaluate the textbook in terms of the layout, grading and sequencing of assignments, design, content, different activities, sort of texts utilized, and the skills emphasized in the book. The findings showed that albeit there appears to be some shortcomings, Summit 2B seems to be more efficient to meet the requirements of EFL learners as compared with the other textbooks which have hitherto been used at different language classes. Accordingly, investigating and evaluating the book proved to be very lucrative and valuable in terms of pedagogy as well as the efficient attributes that suits the context of the present study. Finally, the implications as regards the efficiency of this particular course book as the consequence of evaluating it have been put forward and the strengths and weaknesses related to it have been argued.