درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study explores the impact of corpus-based collocation instruction on intermediate Iranian EFL learners' writing ability. For this study, 84 Iranian learners, studying English as a foreign language in Bayan Institute, Iran, were selected and were randomly divided into two groups, experimental and control. Conventional methods of writing instruction were taught to the control group while the experimental group received corpus-based collocation instruction in writing essays for 15 sessions. The design of the research was based on pre- and posttest method. The tests were employed to measure the writing fluency of the two groups. Test results were scrutinized to answer a major question for correlation between the participants’ variety of corpus-based collocations and their writing. The results illustrated that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of control and experimental groups in writing elements (p<0.05). Actually, lexical collocation instruction expanded the writing elements of vocabulary and mechanics rather than grammar and fluency in writing essays. The study findings indicated that there is a significantly positive correlation between the participants’ use of various lexical collocations and their writing proficiency.

Density and distribution of Unfamiliar Lexical Items (ULIs) appear to influence learners’ Reading Comprehension Achievement (RCA). This study concerns the impact of these two variables on Iranian EFL learners’ RCA. For this, two groups of students timetabled for the experiments designed to assess learners’ RCA. To determine the participants’ levels of proficiency a Quick Proficiency Test was first given to the total population of 87 students and 60 selected as participants. They were then divided into four subgroups of 15, each of which took the pertaining text as the treatment. To do so, three short passages were administered, two for the density and one for distribution. Then, data were gathered from the questionnaires and answers analyzed by SPSS. The results revealed the participants in low density/distribution subgroups outperforming their counterparts in high density/distribution subgroups on tests devised to measure the learners’ inferencing of ULIs boldfaced in the texts. The selected method was a quasi-experimental, post-test only design and the procedures comprised short passages, multiple-choice tests, and statistics. To conclude, ULIs found detrimental to the learners’ successful RCA in the foregoing experimentation, where it can serve as a resource to the EFL development programs.

Research has provided conflicting findings regarding the benefits of paired and small-group peer scaffolding in EFL writing context. The present case study incorporated collective peer scaffolding technique in an EFL paragraph writing class and elicited learners’ reflections towards this activity. After some preliminary sessions which focused on writing process instruction and collective peer scaffolding training, the students were introduced to three writing genres. Each genre was discussed and practiced every other week and was followed by a collective peer scaffolding session. During collective scaffolding sessions, representative learners were asked to write their paragraphs on the board. Other students acted as collective, scaffolding solutions to the problems they noticed in the paragraphs written on the board. All of the students were also required to carefully listen to the scaffolds (comments) provided in class, use them to self-revise their first drafts (if applicable), and develop their second drafts. At the end of the term, eight volunteer students were invited to participate in a group interview and their reactions to this technique were elicited. In general, the experience was favored by the interviewees and the challenges reported in previous research regarding pair and small-group scaffolding/collaboration were not expressed by this cohort of EFL learners.

The use of task-based collaborative output activities in enhancing EFL students’ writing proficiency has been underrated in the Iranian context. To foster students’ writing ability, the present study, employing a mixed-methods design, aimed to evaluate the effect of innovative tools, dictogloss and debating, on the writing development of English-major university students in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). The study involved two experimental extracurricular classes and consisted of 11 sessions during the regular academic term. Having analyzed the writing tasks produced by the students’ performance on pre-test and post-test, the researcher found that the students of both groups significantly enhanced their writing performance, representing an increase in a number of indices of CAF measures following the intervention. More specifically, the results of a paired-samples t-test confirmed that the students in the dictogloss group showed significant improvement in six indices of CAF measure, and the students in the debate group displayed significant improvement in seven indices of CAF measures. Moreover, the results of ANCOVA confirmed that the debate group improved more than the dictogloss group in terms of CAF measures. The results of the interviews with the students regarding the role of task-based collaborative output activities in their written performance yielded several commonalities, which were coded into 11 codes for dictogloss and 16 codes for debating, taking inter-coder reliability and agreement into account. In the end, the study offers some practical implications for L2 learners and teachers.

Many factors may be involved in determining why some students are more and some are less proficient in language. This study tried to explore the factors affecting Iranian EFL learners’ proficiency. 221 students at second, third and fourth year of university, including 50 male and 171 female were selected randomly to participate in the study. A researcher-made questionnaire and a proficiency test comprised the data collection instruments. The researchers were able to identify three factors affecting language proficiency. They were classified as social factors, cultural factors and linguistic factors, Then a model was developed to represent the relationship among these factors and language proficiency. In line with Bourdieu’s (1986), the results of data analysis indicated that social factors are among the most dominant factors affecting the learners’ language proficincy.

This study investigates the effects of gender, teaching experience, and brain dominance on English teachers’ teaching styles. In doing so, 68 English teachers (males and females) were selected from several language institutes in Shiraz, Iran. Considering the degree of teaching experience, the participants were categorized into three groups, namely novices, the moderately experienced, and professionals. Two instruments, including Hemispheric Dominance Test and Teaching Style Questionnaire were used to collect data. Using statistical package for the social science (SPSS) 20, the collected data were analyzed. The results of independent samples t-test revealed that male and female teachers differed significantly in terms of teaching styles, as far as the sub-component “formality” was concerned. Furthermore, the results of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test indicated that teaching styles in the three groups of teachers significantly differed. However, the analysis of MANOVA regarding the difference between brain dominance and teaching styles did not reveal any significant difference. Some related issues were also discussed.

The present research aims to examine the effects of using culturally oriented texts in project-based classes on the views of EFL university students regarding their L1 culture. To this end, three experimental groups of intermediate EFL freshmen, assigned to classes A, B and C, participated in this study. Each of the classes were presented with reading passages focused on L1 culture, L2 culture, and a combination of both L1 and L2 culture, respectively. A written two-question structured interview was designed by the researchers to gain in depth detailed information about the studentschr('39') views regarding L1 culture in each class. The interviews were then examined using content analysis. Findings revealed the effectiveness of the combined approach (i.e. the use of reading materials focused on L1 and L2 culture) in establishing more positive views about L1 culture in students. The results can provide insightful recommendations and implications for EFL instructors, educational materials developers and educational policy makers.

This action research examines the concept of Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in a second language acquisition context. The researcher investigated the contributors of WTC in a foreign language classroom setting. Therefore, a multiple assignments method and sequence was applied. Participants of this study were students who matriculated in a United States (U.S.) undergraduate program, studying German at a public Midwest University. Findings of this study suggest applying various speaking activities and providing the opportunity to practice assessment-like activities prior to the evaluation, which enhanced second language WTC. In addition, the present study found three major factors that contributed to second language WTC: student preparedness, student feelings, and speaking capacity influences. Findings of this study can be implemented into any language classroom. The teaching methods and sequence of activities can be integrated into language curriculum. This study provides insight on a successful language teaching model that prepares students to engage in any oral communication with more confidence and less hesitation.

Intercultural communication is concerned with communication across cultures. Since cultures as well as languages differ from one another in significant ways, speakers conceptualize the world around them in different ways. These cultural conceptualizations form part of the collective cognition of a speech community or cultural group. This paper is an attempt to delineate some cultural schemas in Persian cultural conceptualization which are quite prevalent in Iranian culture and language which may crop up in everyday conversations. For this purpose, cultural schemas of 'maram', 'marefat', and 'gheyrat' are selected based on their frequent use in Persian language and Iranian culture. These schemas are elaborated and some implications for L2 learning are suggested.

The aim of this study was fourfold: (1) to investigate the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of Iranian Engineering students’ writing (2) to examine the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of their WhatsApp assisted writing (3) to determine whether their emotional intelligence (EI) increases through literature-based activities in a WhatsApp assisted setting and (4) to survey the effect of literature-based activities and the produced emotional intelligence on the complexity and lexical diversity of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing. In phase I, as students went through literature-based activities, no significant differences of accuracy were found; despite the fact that the mean difference and standard deviation scores were indicative of effective treatment, literature-based activities. In phase II, the results obtained from the analytic procedures of literature-based activities on the accuracy of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing showed that the experimental group showed higher accuracy of writing. In phase III, the result of emotional intelligence improvement was more remarkable in the WhatsApp assisted writing. Additionally, the WhatsApp assisted written productions were significantly more diverse in using lexis, t-units and clauses but not other parameters of complexity. The results have some implications for teachers and researchers in the ESP setting.