درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Language classrooms are occasionally anxiety-breeding situations. Foreign language classroom anxiety which negatively affects foreign language learning is typically associated with productive activities mainly speaking skill. To cope with the issue and overcome language learning difficulties, the present study was conducted to explore the impact of mobile-assisted language learning on enhancing EFL students’ oral proficiency and relieving their speaking anxiety. 60 sophomore female students whose ages ranged from 18 to 24 were selected from Zand University in Shiraz, Iran and randomly divided into two groups. Traditional instruction was adopted to teach both groups for two hours in a week for four months. Out of class, however, they did various speaking activities. The participants in the control group followed their course book speaking activities. But, the experimental group experienced mobile-assisted language learning to do their out-of-class speaking activities via a mobile application (Voice Thread). The Preliminary English Test and the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale questionnaire were used to collect the required data. Paired samples t-test results indicated that Voice Thread experience significantly enhanced the participants’ oral proficiency and lowered their foreign language speaking anxiety.these findings provide experimental evidence that Voice Thread can be used as an educational tool to help EFL students to improve their oral proficiency and create their own individual less-threatening language learning environment.

Iran’s educational system has undergone new reforms during the last decades. To investigate the effectiveness of the new reform in English as the lingua franca of the world, the current study emphasizes the reading comprehension abilities of grade twelve Iranian female students in English as a foreign language. To this end, 167 students' responses per item of three tests of English reading comprehension were gathered from four different high schools of Malayer. Students' responses in three different item types (three literal, three reorganization, and three inferential comprehension items) from three different reading texts were analyzed altogether. A quantitative design was employed to descriptively analyze the students' responses. The results of the analysis revealed that grade 12 students in Malayer are stronger in literal comprehension compared to the other two comprehension levels: reorganizational and inferential items. This indicated the students' lack of skill in reading between the lines as well as the inability to synthesize and analyze different implicit information in the text that leads them to make meaning. The results can be beneficial for language institutes, English Teachers, and practitioners. Keywords: Inferential Comprehension, International Reading Comprehension Assessment,  Reorganizational Comprehension

The article is dedicated to the linguistic analysis of symbol of fire in the Russian symbolist poet, K. Balmont’s lyrics. The symbolic meanings of the element fire have been studied from linguistic and linguoculturological points of view. There defined mechanisms which allow expressing both traditional symbolism of fire and the one by the author; they are collaboration of mythologems and archetypes associated with the symbol explicated in the text with a proper word, in our case with the word “fire”. The subject of this study is one of a side of traditional symbolism of the element fire conditioned by Slavic, Greek mythology, Zoroastrianism, and the Biblical motives. Archetypes are represented with binary oppositions actualizing the semantics of vertical direction, ambivalence, animism, and anthropomorphism. The author’s symbolic meanings are expressed according to his rethinking of the myths and archetypes in the nearest surrounding of the symbol in the texts.

Since its introduction in 1980, the concept of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) has attracted much attention. Although many studies have been conducted in science and mathematics, there are insufficient studies to capture the PCK of EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers. Accordingly, the present study aimed to unearth EFL teachers' PCK through a grounded theory approach in the Iranian context. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 English teachers at senior high schools in three provinces of Ilam, Lorestan, and Kermanshah. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using coding procedures. The results yielded five main dimensions of EFL teachers' pedagogical content knowledge: English language proficiency knowledge, pedagogy knowledge, student knowledge, curriculum knowledge, and assessment knowledge. Data analysis also revealed the sources of EFL teachers' PCK construction and demonstrated that contextual and intervening conditions influence EFL teachers' PCK enactment. The findings may have theoretical and practical implications for high school EFL teachers, educators, and education programs.

Procrastination pervades the long and taxing process of foreign language learning and working against it is crucial. This study attempted to elicit and investigate the strategies and solutions from English teachers and learners which can help in dealing with procrastination over weekly assignments, term projects, and preparing for exams. To achieve this aim, suggestions were sought from 46 English teachers who had at least three years of teaching experience. Out of a total of 384 suggestions, higher-frequency ones were listed and solutions and strategies in related literature were sifted through to draw up a 21-item Likert-type questionnaire, which sought the reaction of English learners to the teacher-suggested strategies. A revised version was distributed among 97 English learners comprising 65 females and 32 males, whose ages ranged from 17 to 29 years. The English language teachers believed that to help students abandon their procrastination, they should encourage them with extra points for duly completed assignments, check the progress of projects, and give quizzes and exams during the term atop of other strategies. The most frequently endorsed strategies by the English learners included: adjusting the quantity of assignments to learner’s ability, selecting attractive and diverse assignments, teacher’s proper guidance and providing sample projects to reduce anxiety; and identifying the most important topics and disregarding unnecessary contents.

Teacher identity has turned out to be of great importance in teacher pedagogical practice. A number of factors are implicated in shaping and reshaping teachers' identity. Despite numerous studies on teacher identity, language teacher religious identity has remained under-researched. Therefore, the current study examined how Iranian religious English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers are identified. To do so, 30 religious teachers were selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected through employing semi-structured interviews, developed based on Simon’s (2004) six components of identity, namely personal features, physical characters, special abilities, behavioral qualities, ideological attributes, and group membership. The results demonstrated that religious teachers tend to manifest certain Islamic-based personal attributes like fairness and kindness and also adhere to some Islamic rules of physical features like head covering for females and dignified clothes for males. In addition, religious teachers' behaviors and performances were profoundly affected by their religious background, realized in their attempts to control their anger, to avoid insulting and backbiting, and to disregard or replacing the materials which seem to be against the Islamic thought. The findings can have practical implications for teachers, institute administrators, and other stakeholders whose cognizance of religious teachers' identity could help prevent possible identity tensions.

The relevance of metalinguistic knowledge in effective teaching of the four language skills is evident. As such, the present study sought to determine the degree of Iranian EFL teachers’ metalinguistic knowledge by focusing on the role of academic degree in English Language Teaching (ELT) and teaching experience. The study drew on a mixed-methods research design, and the data were collected through a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview, exploring teachers' perceptions and evaluations of metalinguistic knowledge. Additionally, in order to evaluate the declarative knowledge of teachers regarding their grammatical awareness, a test of English Grammar Knowledge was administered among 94 novice and experienced EFL teachers with and without an academic degree in ELT teaching in private language institutes. The results of the questionnaire and interview indicated that while the importance of having grammatical knowledge was evident for participants, experienced teachers displayed more positive views toward grammar awareness. Furthermore, the teachers' performance on the grammar test showed that while formal education helps teachers improve their knowledge, it is not the only determining factor for high levels of declarative knowledge of language. On the contrary, teachers' background knowledge was found to result in high levels of metalinguistic knowledge. Additionally, the results revealed that years of teaching experience does not determine the levels of teachers’ metalinguistic knowledge. The study provides implications for EFL teachers and teacher trainers.

This study examined academic articles and journalistic reports in 5 disciplinary areas to explore how similar contents might attitudinally be realized in two different genres. To this end, 25 research articles and 210 news reports were carefully selected and underwent detailed discourse semantic and grammatical analyses with the purpose of identifying the evaluative linguistic patterns. The findings showed that academic texts are attitudinally charged with appreciation rather than other categories of attitude. This suggests that markers of appreciation are responsible for detachment, impersonality, and objectivity. On the contrary, notwithstanding the frequent use of appreciation in journalistic texts, other categories of attitude (affect and judgment) are also effectively used. This suggests that affective and judgment markers account for the subjectivity of journalistic texts. One of the findings emerging from this study is that frequent instances of appreciation in the different parts of an RA might be attributed to the development of language use within an individual which does not lead to lowering the level of objectivity in academic texts but enhancing interpersonal communication.

The changing culture toward multimodality enforces acquiring visual literacy in every aspect of today’s modern life. One of the fields intermingled with using various modes in different variations is language teaching and learning, especially for and by young learners. Young language learners’ (5-12 years old) lack of world experience forces them to make the most use of non-verbal modes of communication to receive and send the intended message, enhanced in foreign language learning environment. As a result, the language teacher him/herself will be supposed to be armed with visual literacy of this new language and to have the ability to successfully transmit this knowledge to the students. The present study aims to investigate whether the three focused factors in educational semiotics; namely, Process of abduction, Principle of kinesics, and Proxemics- proposed by Sert (2006) exist in the curriculum of Iranian pre-service language teachers in one of the educational districts in Isfahan. By distributing two questionnaires among TTC course instructors and pre-service teachers, and obtaining the percentage of the analyzed data, the findings showed that the number of institutes which focus on the matter are rare. Also, it was revealed that the pre-service teachers, majoring in English Language, performed better in terms of realizing the meaning of body language units and comparing and contrasting them (principle of abduction). The results will be useful for future teachers and their educational curriculum in favor of enhancing the fifth language skill, foreign language visual literacy.