درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The future and how we envision and anticipate it has been the subject of scholarly attention for some time, especially from political theorists, scholars of human geography, and anthropologists. This article draws on some of this literature, but particularly the work of Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, the Italian Marxist theorist and activist, to explore the implications of two activist strategies that have recently received some attention from translation scholars: prefiguration and aspirational translation. It reflects on the different orientations to the future implied in these two strategies and suggests that their relative appeal is impacted by the rise of semiocapitalism in what Berardi refers to as ‘the century with no future’, and by varying experiences of activists located in different regions of the world. The work of translation and how translators orient themselves to the future, it is argued, can play an important role in arresting if not reversing the ongoing erosion of those possibilities still inscribed in the present despite semiocapitalism’s growing control over every area of human life.

The current study aimed to explore the nature of discursive strategies academics would use to share their specialist knowledge to both specialists and non-specialists. To this end, a corpus of 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles were randomly selected from the archive of four English international peer-reviewed journals and four English popular magazines and newspapers in the field of Nutrition. Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), a discourse framework to examine evaluative and/or persuasive language, was used to analyze the data. The results revealed significant areas of similarity and difference in terms of certain discursive elements leading to discernible degrees of persuasion. The findings imply that in order to develop a scientifically literate society, scientists should appeal to diverse discourse resources to provide the public with their findings in an informative and entertaining way. The results of the study carry some pedagogical implications for EAP courses held in EFL settings since being able to both comprehend and produce scientific texts of different professional levels at international scale seems to be a requirement for the future scientists.

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.

The present study aimed to examine and validate a rubric for translation quality assessment using Rasch analysis. To this end, the researchers interviewed 20 expert translation instructors to identify the factors they consider important for assessing the quality of students’ translation. Based on the specific commonalities found throughout the interviews, a 23-item assessment rubric was constructed on a four-point Likert scale. More specifically, this study used the Rasch rating scale model for polytomous data to investigate the psychometric properties of the rating scale in terms of dimensionality, reliability, use of response category, and sample appropriateness. Then, a translation exam was administered to 60 translation students at the BA level in Iranian universities. Following this, the rubric was employed to assess the quality of students’ translation. The results revealed that the Rasch model fits the data well. Thus, the findings of the study indicated that the rubric is potentially valid and useful, and can be used as a measure of translation quality assessment in the Iranian context.

Teachers need to know new applications for developing online materials and then they should become aware of different ways to present them to online audience. This study tries to help ELT teachers to overcome challenges and difficulties of vodcasting by recognizing their social and biological motives (Activity Theory), and using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). It can alter teachers’ negative attitudes towards online materials development via providing useful tools and techniques to become better producers of their knowledge to survive professionally. This QUAL-quan inquiry initiated with 10 University professors of Islamic Azad University-South Tehran Branch. All these participants answered ‘Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)’ questionnaire, ‘Personality Test and Job Satisfaction’, ‘Three-D Test’, and ‘Spatial Recognition Test’. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with those whose data were grounded and initiated from open coding, down to axial coding, and finalized with selective coding. Participants produced vodcasts as pre-test. Then, they received the treatments on an exclusively launched ‘MArt’ Telegram group in the form of the researcher-designed audios and videos and YouTube samples. As a post-test, each of the participants made another vodcast. Then, two experts who are ELT university lecturers evaluated the two sets of recorded data. Finally, all the interpretations and analyses were presented in different graphs and charts along with researcher’s interpretation based on theoretical frameworks. The results show that whether ELT teachers are capable of producing vodcasts or not. Besides, VTS help teachers to become much more visually literate and produce more successful vodcasts. Both treatments of the present study and the derived codes can be used in teacher education, and they can turn into a task-based digital or paper-based coursebooks benefiting M.A. TEFL students.

Cognitive appraisal of individuals directs to the creation of an emotional response, which is related to emotional intelligence. The present study shows the presence of induced emotions as an unrelated factor on the construct of a TOEFL iBT reading test which can interplay with emotional intelligence for regulating the induced emotions towards reading passages. The present participants were 393 Iranian EFL TOEFL iBT candidates. The present researchers detected induced emotions based on PANAS before and after reading the three selected passages of a TOEFL iBT reading section. Also, emotional intelligence was detected by Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test after reading the selected passages. Our results confirmed this hypothesis statistically by reporting that induced emotion from the passages of the selected TOEFL iBT test has a significant effect on emotional intelligence. This study found that if test developers provide a condition for test-takers to activate their emotional intelligence, they might control the induced emotion as the construct-irrelevant variable during reading.

Dans la présente recherche, notre objectif est de savoir comment l’emploi de la langue maternelle en cours de FLE, peut simplifier et influencer l’apprentissage du français chez les apprenants iraniens, dans les universités et dans les instituts de langue. Selon les observations qui ont été faites dans les instituts de langues étrangères, l’utilisation de la langue maternelle dans l’enseignement du français, est considérée comme sévèrement nuisible et à bannir, tandis que les professeurs d’universités se montrent en général plus tolérants. La nouveauté de cette étude consiste à étudier les besoins pédagogiques des apprenants iraniens du FLE, en ce qui concerne l’emploi de la langue maternelle en classe de langue. À cet égard, nous avons élaboré un questionnaire contenant quinze questions, en tenant compte des éléments différents comme le sexe, la situation maritale, l’âge et le niveau d’études des apprenants, qui a été soumis à 61 étudiants en français. Après avoir analysé les réponses, à partir du test de Kolmogorov-Smirnov et du test T, l’importance de la langue maternelle en classe de FLE, a été validée, autrement dit, l’emploi de la langue maternelle en classe de FLE, a été reconnu comme un élément accélérateur et simplifiant pour les apprenants iraniens..

The present study was primarily aimed at investigating how Processing instruction would affect the Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical knowledge and how the effectiveness of this method would be modulated by the learners’ individual differences in grammatical sensitivity. To this end, three senior intact high school classes were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group. Each of the experimental groups was treated with one operationalization of Processing instruction, namely, full PI (n=24), and Structured input (n=24) while the control group (n=20) received traditional output-based instruction (TI) on the English passive structure over three weekly sessions. The results illustrated that Processing instruction was more effective than TI since it improved learners’ both interpretation and production while TI only could improve learners’ production. Additionally, the results demonstrated that the positive impact of Processing instruction was not affected by the learners’ differences in grammatical sensitivity. All in all, this suggests that as long as a grammatical structure is affected by an underlying processing problem, Processing instruction is possibly a more effective pedagogical option compared to traditional output-based instruction. Furthermore, Processing instruction seems to work for all learners irrespective of their differences in terms of grammatical sensitivity.

The worldwide spread of English as the dominant language of globalization has accelerated the development and implementation of Foreign Language Education Policy (FLEP) in many countries. However, Iranian macro policymakers seem to be reluctant to develop an overt FLEP due to ideologized agendas. This study employs document analysis to explore FLEP in eight major national policy documents in Iran including, inter alia, National Vision 2025, Comprehensive Scientific Roadmap, and National Document of Education. This analysis was based on Kaplan and Baldauf’s (1997, 2003) framework for language-in-education planning, which covers Access, Curriculum, Methods and Materials, Evaluation, Personnel, and Resourcing policy as its major components. The data, coded through MAXQDA Software, revealed that the documents relatively deal with almost all components of FLEP excluding the Resourcing policy. Curriculum policy and Methods and materials policy receive the highest attention. Further, some contradictions, conflicts of interest, and gaps are observed in the documents regarding FLEP. Although these documents deemed English necessary for the development of the country, there are worries that it may lead to Westernization. The findings also show that FLEP in Iran is top-down and hardly reflects the needs and attitudes of the community. This has resulted in the failure of ELT in public schools and, in turn, its boom in the private sectors.