درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Despite the voluminous body of research investigating linguistic, disciplinary, and cultural variations in citation practices in research articles, these practices have not been examined in light of the interplay between disciplinary conventions and research methodological underpinnings in the field of linguistics. Adopting a multi-faceted design, this study analyzed 180 research article introductions from two close-knit disciplines (Theoretical Linguistics and Applied Linguistics) to look into the contextualized citation functions and authorial evaluative stance toward citations. The corpus was purposively selected to sample three research methodologies. Comparisons were carried out at disciplinary, research methodological, and combinatory levels. The findings of the study show clear variations in the citation functions and evaluative stances taken toward citations. These variations are thought to be the result of the disciplinary conventions which authors must abide by as well as the paradigmatic underpinnings of the research methodologies which the articles are built upon, though the latter have greater impacts. As a partial contribution to the field of second language writing, a practical taxonomy is also proposed to account for the contextualized citation functions in the two disciplines. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications

The rapid development of technology and its impact on the creation of images have made it essential to provide students with digital visual literacy (DVL) practices to help them explore and understand the images. More importantly, images have valuable connections to language learning and hold the potential for teaching English effectively. Accordingly, the present study investigated the impact of the DVL-integrated instructions in an English-speaking course on EFL learners' speaking proficiency. The Digital Image Guide (DIG) method was conducted for the DVL instructions. A total of 18 female Iranian EFL learners aged 18-27 from a national university participated in the study, undergoing ten instructional sessions. Various components, such as visual elements in several images, flyers, brochures, memes, and book covers, were introduced to the learners throughout the treatment phase. Using mixed-methods research, quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The quantitative phase employed a pretest-posttest one-group design, and data was collected through the speaking section of the Cambridge English Qualification Test. The qualitative phase collected data on the learners' attitudes toward the course. The data were analyzed using SPSS and content analysis. The findings of a paired-sample t-test examining oral proficiency test data revealed the effectiveness of the course on the speaking proficiency of the learners. The analysis of the interview data revealed that the students held positive attitudes toward the course and the instructions. The findings of this study demonstrated that teaching digital visual literacy through the Digital Visual Literacy (DVL) approach and Digital Image Guide (DIG) Method could help learners with their speaking proficiency.

There is substantial debate over the mental representation of regular past tense forms in both first language (L1) and second language (L2) processing. Specifically, the controversy revolves around the nature of morphologically complex forms such as the past tense –ed in English and how morphological structures of such forms are represented in the mental lexicon. This study focuses on the results of a speeded acceptability judgment task testing English regular past tense forms of high- and low frequencies. In this task, participants judged the acceptability of sentences as quickly and accurately as possible. Thirty-two intermediate-to-advanced L1 Persian and L1 Arabic speakers (L2ers) and twenty-two Native speakers (NSs) of English made acceptability judgments for regular past tense forms of high- and low-frequency verbs in sentential contexts. Considering participants’ reaction times (RTs) and accuracy rates as the dependent variables, the main results are as follows. Despite NSs’ faster RTs and higher accuracy scores, both groups demonstrated the same pattern of accuracy rates and RTs. Specifically, for accuracy data, regular verbs yielded a reverse frequency effect or anti-frequency effect in both groups (i.e., lower accuracy rates for high- than low-frequency regular forms in NSs as well as L2ers). For RT data, while the NSs exhibited a marginally anti-frequency effect, the L2ers displayed a nonsignificant trend for the anti-frequency effect. These results support the dual-mechanism models suggesting that the mental mechanisms and representations of inflectional morphology are the same in NSs and intermediate-to-advanced L2ers.

The current study aims to investigate how Iranian EFL students make use of compliments in Persian and English. To that end, 50 students majoring in English as a foreign language from Isfahan and Tehran, and Sheikhbahaee universities were asked to respond to a Discourse Completion Test consisting of six situations in both English and Persian. They were asked to put themselves in those situations and respond to the compliments made on them. The results of the study showed that in addition to pre-existing categories of compliment responses, Iranians made use of other strategies not included in the pre-existing categories of compliments. Furthermore, in both English and Persian languages, students made use of compliments in the same order: accept, evade and reject strategies. The results of this study could add to crosscultural findings, differences or similarities regarding compliments as a beneficial way of studying speech acts.

The present study aimed to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ pragmatic performance of making suggestions improve after receiving discourse completion task (DCT) and role-play with discussion. One Hundred twenty intermediate Iranian EFL learners whose scores ranged between 41 and 59 at the Oxford Proficiency test were selected for participation in the study from several Iranian language schools through convenience sampling. They were assigned to the control group receiving no treatment and discourse completion group, and role plays with the discussion group. Before the treatments, the experimental groups received instruction on the exemplar forms, conversational practice, and performance of suggested activities in the book "Function." After the familiarity of the participants with various suggestion forms and their appropriate use, the first experimental group was provided with a discourse completion task and the second one received role play with discussion. The learners were provided with an explicit explanation of formality, and status as socio-pragmatic factors influencing the selection of appropriate suggestion forms. Then, they were supposed to act out the scenarios and discussed and evaluated the appropriateness of the responses. After the two treatments, the participants took a post-test with 4 sample conversations. The findings were indicative of the effectiveness of the two treatments. The conclusion drawn from the results was that EFL learners could benefit from pragmatic instruction via pragmatic awareness-raising tasks in their pragmatic performance.  

The current study aimed to evaluate the content of the English textbooks taught in Iranian senior high schools. To this purpose, the study relied upon a descriptive survey design. Through a stratified random sampling, a total of 12 senior high schools were selected from the high schools located in Isfahan. To select the teacher participants, a convenience sampling method was employed. Then, a structured questionnaire was administered to the selected teachers and students. The obtained data were statistically analyzed and item analysis revealed that the accessibility and affordability of the textbooks were the most-favored features. However, most of the students wondered whether the textbooks were equipped with supplementary (online and offline) materials. The post-hoc analysis results revealed the significant overall teacher-student disagreement towards the textbooks. Generally, the results showed that there is a need to adapt the teaching materials to the target situation of use. As a practical implication, the findings may urge the developers of the textbooks to launch a modification project in order to get more conscious in developing future textbooks. Moreover, the findings are of use for the teachers of the textbooks as well as the pedagogical policy makers. 

Nowadays, English language plays an important role in the job of engineers and it is necessary to become familiar with engineers’ objectives, attitudes, and expectations in order to have an appropriate course design. The purpose of this study was to explore the needs analysis of English learning of engineers in Esfahan Steel Company (ESCO). This study aimed at investigating the required level of language skills in performing their jobs effectively, the employees’ attitude towards their English professional courses, their professional needs, their language skills and tasks, and the difficulties they face while studying a language. A questionnaire consisting of 25 items was distributed among the engineers working at ten sections of ESCO. In addition, interviews and observations were done in order to increase the reliability of the research. Time, financial resources, and worker expectations ask for more reliable methods to provide a better situation in the workplace. Based on the findings obtained from this study, it can be concluded that receptive skills were perceived as a bit more important than the productive skills to perform the job effectively and the revision of the current professional training programs seems to be necessary to offer appropriate ESP course curriculum.

This study endeavored to discuss certain aspects of Emotional Intelligence (EI) that are related to foreign language (FL) teaching and learning in two different contexts (Iraq and the Czech Republic). It outlined the areas that could be important for FL teachers and may be useful in FL learning. The countries of Iraq and the Czech Republic are culturally different, but in both of them, English is considered as the foreign language. This cross-cultural study attempted to unravel the current status and extent of the presence of EI in English as foreign language university classes of these two countries. Two samples, each including 20 EFL university teachers, were chosen as the participants. The participants responded to a close-ended questionnaire and participated in an interview. Textual data were content analyzed manually, and frequency and percentage were also reported. The findings revealed that there were dissimilarities in how EI was applied in the two geographical contexts. While the majority of Iraqi teachers considered EI an important element of online teaching and class management, the majority of Czech teachers did not regard it as important and necessary for effective learning and teaching. In addition, both samples agreed that teachers and students face more challenges in online EFL classes compared to traditional face-to-face classes. Moreover, many teachers from both groups, notably from the Iraqi sample, reported to be using a variety of EI tactics in their classes, whether intentionally or unintentionally.