درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

In educational psychology, mindsets refer to a set of core beliefs about intelligence and its role in successful learning in a specific domain. This study investigated the extent to which, the EFL learners’ mindsets might predict their English achievement considering the mediating roles of engagement and self-regulation. The data were collected by means of three questionnaires: The Language Mindset Inventory (LMI), the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI), and the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), as well as the institutes’ reports on their English achievement. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the SPSS 20 and Amos 8 Software. The results revealed that there was a significant direct relationship between language mindsets and English achievement of the EFL learners. Besides, this relationship was significantly mediated by the learners’ engagement and self-regulation. Drawing on the findings of this research, the challenge for teachers is to cultivate in students the mindsets that emphasize growth and potentials rather than constraints and stagnation.

In the educational setting of Iran, language assessment literacy (LAL) is still an underexplored issue. This paper investigated the development of LAL among EFL students taking language assessment course at state universities in Iran. The three components of LAL (i.e., knowledge, skills, and principles) were the focus of the inquiry. To collect the required data, a questionnaire, encompassing 83 Likert items and a set of open-ended questions, was developed, and responses from 92 course instructors were collected. Teaching and assessment practices of two course instructors were also observed throughout an educational semester. SPSS (26) was used to analyze the data. Findings revealed that these courses mainly focused on knowledge and skills, overlooking the principles of assessment. Adherence to traditional assessment approaches, use of inappropriate teaching materials, and lack of practical works in assessment also characterized the investigated courses. The paper concludes with suggestions to better design language assessment courses to increase the assessment literacy of English graduates who will probably enter the teaching contexts after graduation.

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..

In an attempt to contribute to the ongoing debate about how output tasks affect noticing of linguistic forms, the present study set out to investigate the effect of pushed output tasks on grammatical accuracy in sentence writing of Iranian EFL learners. Fifty homogenous Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. Then, every group underwent ten different treatment sessions. The control group received writing instruction through conventional methods, while the experimental group received instruction through two pushed output tasks. In the case of the experimental group, in the first five treatment sessions, four grammatical structures were presented through picture cued tasks. The next five treatment sessions directed at other structures took place via reconstruction tasks. Two different versions of the writing section of the Preliminary English Test (PET) were used as pre/post-test. The results indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. Therefore, it might be argued that pushed output-based tasks had a positive effect on the Iranian EFL learner’s grammatical accuracy in sentence writing. These findings provide empirical support for the output hypothesis and have pedagogical implications for the choice of output-oriented grammar tasks.

The United States with its presidents stepping into power from either the Democratic or Republican parties influences global affairs in one way or another. These two main political parties have long been struggling for power and the significance of tapping into the ideological inclinations of the two parties underscores scholars’ accountability toward raising the critical language awareness of the public which could be an initial step toward a change for the better. The presidential inaugural speeches, due to their programmatic and strategic nature, are of significance to researchers. This study employed van Dijk’s (2006b) socio-cognitive framework where he defined two levels of analyses for a political discourse including the micro-level and macro-level text analyses. The former included 25 discursive devices such as polarization, generalization, hyperbole, etc. The latter drew on the dichotomy of ‘positive self-representation’ and ‘negative other-representation’. In the present study, the linguistic features in 16 inaugural speeches delivered by American Democratic and Republican presidents from 1961 to 2017 were examined at both levels. The overall data analysis revealed that Democrats employed ‘norm expression’ and ‘presupposition’ significantly more than Republicans, while Republicans made more use of ‘categorization’, ‘lexicalization’, and ‘populism’. The macro-level comparison of the two parties indicated that both Democrats and Republicans resorted to using ‘positive self-representation’ significantly more than ‘negative other-representation’ while the deployment of ‘negative other-representation’ by Republicans was significantly more than that by Democrats. The findings of this study have some implications for English for political purposes, political studies, as well as attempts in discourse studies.

پژوهش حاضر به بررسی خطاهای فارسی زبانانی که انگلیسی زبان خارجی آنها است در تولید عبارات موصولی زبان انگلیسی پرداخته است. باوجود آنکه در زبان انگلیسی، استفاده از ساخت پرسشی در اغلب عبارات موصولی بدون هسته مجاز نیست، فارسی زبانان به وفور از این ساختار در جملات انگلیسی خود استفاده میکنند. طی این پژوهش، ریشه های احتمالی این خطا شناسایی و تحلیل شدند و نهایتا فرضیه نشانداری تمایزبخش که قدرت بیشتری در توضیح این خطا داشت به عنوان چارچوب نظری این پژوهش انتخاب شد. پیکره شفاهی و کتبی این پژوهش طی دو سال از منابع متعدد و از 137 مشارک خانم و آقا به دست آمد. داده ها از گویه هایی که به طور طبیعی، نه با هدف این پژوهش، بیان شده بودند جمع آوری شد و شامل 126 عبارت موصولی خطادار بود که 85 عبارت (67.46%) بدون هسته معمولی، 25 عبارت (19.84%) هسته دار و 16 عبارت (12.69%) بدون هسته آزاد بودند. بررسی دقیق تر داده ها منجر به شناسایی تمایز نظام مند بین خطاها در دو نوع عبارت موصولی اصلی (بدون هسته در جایگاه فاعل یا مفعول) و دو نوع عبارت موصولی فرعی (بدون هسته در جایگاه فاعل و دارای فعل بودن ) گردید. این وسعت کارکرد عبارات موصولی در زبان انگلیسی نسبت به فارسی، می تواند موجب نشانداری این ساختار برای فارسی زبانان شود. به نظر می رسد این نوع نشانداری که ناظر بر گستره کاربرد جملات پرسشی و خبری در جایگاه عبارات موصولی بدون هسته است بیش از نشانداری از حیث تفاوت در تعداد واژگانی که در فارسی و انگلیسی برای یک کارکرد واحد وجود دارد، می تواند علت بروز این نوع خطا را توضیح دهد. پژوهش حاضر، بر ضرورت بررسی زبانشناسانه سایر ابعاد خطاهای نظام مند مشابه، همکاری متخصصان زبانشناسی و آموزش زبان دوم/خارجی در شناسایی و رفع مشکلات یادگیری، و پژوهش های بیشتر برای ارایه راه حل های آموزشی برای چنین مشکلاتی تاکید می نماید.

The current research examined the use of lexical bundles in the result sections of research papers by Iranian non-native writers in the field of applied linguistics. The WordSmith Software was applied to identify lexical bundles. In addition, the two analytical frameworks Biber et al. (2004) and Ruiying and Allison (2003) were used to categorize the bundles with regard to their structural features and their moves and steps. Moreover, with the aid of concordance, the identified clusters were analyzed and categorized according to their communicative functions. The results of the current research showed that Iranian writers relied heavily on the use of specific formulaic bundles to perform the communicative functions associated with the moves and steps. The findings also revealed that four moves out of six moves were mostly used by Iranian authors. Moreover, the researchers found that the extensive range of formulaic clusters used to demonstrate Move 2, Reporting results, the least bundles occurred in Move 4, Summarizing results, and also no clusters were used in Move 5, Evaluating the study along with Move 6, Deductions from the research by Iranian writers. The findings of this study boost the awareness of formulaic sequences usage for novice writers in particular discourse and communicative function.

The present study aimed to review the instruction of the L2 speech acts in English pragmatics in the Iranian context during the last two decades from 2000 to 2020. To this end, upon the completion of the study search, the retrieved articles were selected and analyzed based on the research domain.  The results of our synthesis from 54 studies carried out on the instruction of the speech act not only reveal that pragmatics is amenable to instruction but also unfold that the most frequently instructed speech act is the speech act of request which has been conducted in 29 studies, while the least instructed speech act is  invitation, used in only one study. Moreover, analyzing the data collection methods documented that Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT) is the most predominant method utilized in 36 papers during the last decades in English pragmatic instruction. With respect to the treatment types, it is illuminated that the most recurrent treatment type is explicit, implicit vs. control, followed by explicit vs. implicit, although other treatment types have been embarked on. As a final point, it is worth noting that 53 of the conducted studies utilized the quantitative method in their data analyses, whereas only one study implemented the qualitative method. The paper concludes with some avenues for further research.

The present empirical study investigated the relationship between Iranian undergraduate TEFL learners’ self-regulation and their self-efficacy. For this end, there have been a total number of 120 college students learning English as a foreign language who volunteered to complete the two quantitative questionnaires of self-regulation and self-efficacy respectively. The participants were informed of the anonymous nature of the data collection process in advance. They were also told that their responses would certainly be kept confidential and that they had the right to quit at any part of the survey. It took around 15–20 minutes for each respondent to complete the survey. In the meanwhile, some of the participants (around ten) also willingly answered the qualitative descriptive semi-structured questions of the interview, until that the interview responses were saturated. After the process of data collection, the findings were measured through correlation analysis, indicating that self-regulation and self-efficacy were jointly linked and had a directly positive relationship. Accordingly, it was revealed that the employment of these two highly associated psychological constructs could systematically guide and help learners to enhance their learning capabilities and lead them to ultimate desired learning goals. Ultimately, it was concluded from the findings of the current study that the delicate association between self-regulation and self-efficacy was really helpful for learners to lead them successfully to their academic goals.