درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The study compared the pedagogical effects of early versus delayed Form Focused Instruction (EFFI vs. DFFI), both subsumed under Isolated Form Focused Instruction (IFFI), on the achievement of three target structures with relative degrees of complexity by monolinguals and bilinguals. Six intact Gilaki-Persian learners of English as L3 and six groups of Persian learners of English as L2 participated in the study. They were all male beginning learners of English in Iranian public high schools who followed a pretest-treatment-posttest procedure. Four groups (grade 7) received instruction for the simple structure; four other groups (grade 8) were taught the moderately complex structure and four groups (grade 9) were exposed to the highly complex structure instruction. Within each grade, one group of Gilaki and one group of Persian natives received EFFI while their native counterparts benefited DFFI. The overall results revealed that when the method of instruction was the same, Gilaki natives outperformed Persian natives both in the post and delayed tests regardless of complexity. The groups that received the simple structure via EFFI did better than their native counterparts instructed via DFFI in both the post and delayed tests though a significant difference was only observed in the latter test. In contrast, DFFI groups outperformed their native counterparts taught via EFFI on the fairly and highly complex structures in the post and delayed posttests. Further analysis of the data demonstrated that DFFI contributes better to the durability of gain effects for more complex structures regardless of linguistic background of the learners.

The present study sought to cast light on differences in strategies of compliment responses used across Persian and American English. For this purpose, 110 participants, under three groups of Persian native speakers, American native speakers, and Persian learners of English, answered a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), followed by a semi-structured interview with the Persian learners of English to cross-check the findings of the DCTs. The collected responses from the DCTs were coded at macro and micro-levels. Moreover, a macro-level of Persian cultural schemas was used for the Persian groups. The chi-square test revealed the independent performance of the three groups. Judged by the written DCTs while performing in English, the learners’ responses displayed cases of utilizing the native Persian cultural schemas. More specifically, the English learner respondents employed different instances of ta’arof and shekaste-nafsi . Confirmed by the interview, such failures resulted from insufficient exposure to the American English culture and more importantly from their lack of instruction and awareness of cross-cultural pragmatic differences.

Stated key words after the abstract section in research articles are among those lines of inquiry which have received less attention in Applied Linguists (AL) studies. In this paper, the researcher explored the distribution of stated key terms and expressions as used by 73 researchers in AL domains in both local (NOORMAGZ) and global database publishers (SAGE, ELEVIRE, SINCENCE DIRECT) Those Scimago journal lists, which were abstracted in Thomson Reuters Web of Science [WoS] journals were precisely screened in terms of their compatibility with title vs. topic match index as well as their position in the research articles throughout the whole sampled research papers including Introduction, Review of Literature, Method, Results & Discussion (IRMRD) to explore authors’ tendencies towards art-based utilization of key word selection/assignment for research writing aims. The results over title-topic match indicated that at least one or two stated key words significantly appeared in the title of research paper within both local and global databases with the higher preference for keyword-title match among Iranian researchers. Regarding the most probable positions in the sampled research articles, gained data in this research could not significantly show any differences between local and global researchers. Possible implications were discussed in the light of critical, art-based approaches for key word elaboration/explanation in English Language Teaching (ELT) and AL research.   

The post methods era has witnessed a dramatic change inapproaches to and methods of teaching as well as testing. At the heart of such a change, collaborative learning has received top priority and testing domain has actually gone under scrutiny. This new mode of education has made stakeholders, especially in higher education; reflect on an interactive e-assessment based instruction. Such a cyber-based environment provides immersive and authentic learning, mixed with a type of e-assessment task, no longer functioning like a summative test but it has become learning and teaching tool. The present research study intends to shed some lights on the characteristics of an e-assessment-based App in a descriptive format on one hand, and its viability in an exploratory design on the other, with emphasis on e-assessment at its core for teaching ESAP- English Specially for Academic Purposes- while instruction and assessment of language skills and sub skills are included. The descriptive and exploratory design of the study highlights the mode of interactivity inherent in this App, which provides a chance for learners to explore, make errors and construct meaning/solutions to their problems via hyperlinks in the created App.    

Berzonsky (1990) conceptualized three social-cognitive components of the identity process: an informational or scientific style, normative or dogmatic style, and a diffuse or ad hoc style. Despite the importance of this concept, no previous studies have been conducted to develop and validate the IPS scale to measure this construct as it relates to the EFL settings. Accordingly, the present study aimed at developing and validating a measure that could assess IPS in the EFL context of Iran. To this end, a sequential mixed methods design was conducted in two phases. In the qualitative phase, the researchers reviewed related literature and conducted semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with EFL teachers in order to seek out the EFL teachers' perspectives regarding what shapes their identity processing styles. Next, the researchers used the principles of data analysis of the grounded theory to analyze data. Then, seven sub-components were initially identified that constitute the Iranian version of identity processing styles model, namely, informational style (analytical/rational thinking), normative style (personal norm thinking, social norm thinking, and religious thinking), and diffuse-avoidant style (pessimistic thinking and optimistic thinking). Finally, to measure the EFL teachers’ identity processing styles, 42 five-point Likert scale items were developed. Then, the newly-developed instrument was completed by 203 EFL teachers in higher education contexts. In the quantitative phase, the IPS scale was tested through different statistical procedures included confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha for reliability. Finally, statistical results were discussed and implications and applications of the study were explained.

Learning in every context is influenced by the social factors such as the people with whom the learners are communicating in that specific learning environment. As the role that social factors can potentially play in the process of education seems not to have been explored comprehensively in the field of English language teaching, in general, and in the Iranian educational context, in particular, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of both social goals and achievement goals on emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement, in an academic context. The participants of the study consisted of 302 undergraduate students (88 females, 206 males, 8 unspecified), majoring in English literature at two state universities and two private universities in Iran. The data were collected through one questionnaire consisting of items relating to different types of social goals and various types of engagement. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Regression Analysis were conducted to analyze the data. The results of CFA confirmed the validity of such goals in our context. Also, regression analysis showed that mastery goals, social status goals, and social concern goals predicted variance in different facets of engagement.

Language teacher immunity has recently attracted the attention of the scholars interested in teacher psychology. Following the previous line of research in teacher psychology, the present study explored the immunity types among 260 Iranian EFL teachers working in schools and language institutes. Drawing on Hiver’s (2017) categorization, this study found that the participants were classified into productively and maladaptively immunized teachers through cluster analysis. It was also found that gender played a significant role, and female participants were more productively immunized than men. Regarding the role of teaching experience, it was found that EFL teachers’ immunity fluctuated in the late stages of their practice to a more fossilized, negative one. Regarding age differences, the results also suggested different immunity types among the participants of different age groups. The results implied that teacher education programs should enhance EFL teachers’ understanding of language teacher immunity as an important factor in their effectiveness and well-being as well as students’ achievement.

Although discrete research on pragmatic and grammatical awareness is well-visited in second language acquisition, the exploration and assessment of these two variables in tandem in standardized language proficiency tests has not garnered thick literature. On this ground, this study attempted to examine the correlation of both pragmatic and grammatical awareness with IELTS speaking Part 3. To this end, 120 homogenized Uzbek IELTS-taken applicants were asked to fill out pragmatic and grammatical awareness questionnaire adopted from Albertson (2011) followed by IELTS speaking Part 3 administration in order to obtain a correlation between pragmatic awareness and IELTS speaking Part 3 as well as grammatical awareness and IELTS speaking Part 3, respectively. The results of data analyses via running Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that both pragmatic awareness and grammatical awareness were significantly correlated with IELTS speaking Part 3. The findings imply that building on these two types of awareness would probably help learners increase their performance on IELTS speaking Part 3. Additionally, the students’ awareness-raising on pragmatic aspect of language in IELTS speaking Part 3 upon which interaction is based could probably convince the examiners on IELTS speaking venues that they are fully aware of pragmatic items and their conveyed message would not be misunderstood.

This study explored the relationship between EFL learners’ vocabulary size, lexical coverage of the text and reading comprehension texts (narrative & argumentative genres). To this end, 120 male and female out of 180 students studying at Talesh Azad University were selected based on their performance on the Nelson Proficiency Test. A Nelson reading proficiency test was also administered in order to check the homogeneity of the learners in their reading proficiency. After that, the researcher administered reading comprehension tests with narrative and argumentative genres in order to find the lexical coverage and vocabulary size for such reading tests. Learners' Vocabulary size was measured by the Levels Test, while their lexical coverage was measured by the newest version of Vocabulary Profile. In order to probe any significant relationship between the variables of the study, Pearson Correlationwas run. Results of the study showed that there was a strong relationship among vocabulary size, text coverage, and reading comprehension test at different genres.

As Farhangian Universities play a crucial role in educating soon-to-be teachers, the program being developed for students of this university needs to be meticulously developed in order to fulfill the crucial role of teacher training centers. Researchers of this phenomenological study tried to evaluate curriculum specified for TEFL students in Farhangian Universities by the implementation of SWOT analysis. Seven professors of Farhangian University in Mazandaran participated in this study to speak for their perspectives regarding the curriculum’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. They took part in interview conducted by researchers and their comments were transcribed to be segmented and codified in later sections. The findings of this study clearly demonstrated that this program suffers more from weaknesses and there are opportunities which might act as compensation for weaknesses and threats. The significant weakness of this curriculum that was elaborated by participants was misplacement of courses without any observation of necessary content knowledge and pre-requisites. Specification of courses exclusively for teaching was mentioned as one of the important strengths of this university. Participants believed that the first opportunity to be made use of, is to maintain connection with other teacher training centers in Iran and around the world.