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AbstractThis study aims to highlight the key roles played by metacognitive strategies training in the development of listening comprehension skill and self-regulation strategies of EFL learners. The participants of this study (N = 60) were female Iranian students assigned to two groups of experimental and control in Kish English Language Institute. Learners in the experimental group received 6-week instruction on the listening metacognitive strategies, while those in the control group received no strategy instruction. Four instruments were used in this study: a pretest of listening comprehension, Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), and a posttest on listening comprehension. The analysis of the data revealed that metacognitive listening strategies training improved the listening performance of the learners in the experimental group compared to those in the control group. It also showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in the use of problem-solving, planning-evaluation, mental translation, and personal knowledge strategies. The results also showed that learning metacognitive strategies helped language learners to regulate their use of self-evaluation, organizing, goal-setting, seeking assistance, environmental structuring, and responsibility strategies. Additionally, regression analyses demonstrated that self-regulation strategies accounted for 37% of variance in the EFL learners’ listening comprehension, while metacognitive listening strategies accounted for 6 % of the variance. The findings of this study suggested that (a) listening metacognitive strategies training can have benefits on listening skill development, increase use of self-regulatory and metacognitive strategies, (b) learners who used more metacognitive strategies revealed a high level of self-regulation strategies use.

The present study assessed the construct validity and reliability of a researcher-constructed psycho-motor mechanism scale based on the communicative theory of translation proposed by PACTE (2003). In doing so, the necessary criteria for designing the scale were obtained by a thorough review of related literature on previously constructed scales in error analysis or holistic ones. Moreover, in the first part of the research, a qualitative data analysis according to the translation tasks done by eleven participants and their feedback through a semi-structured translation problems interview was done for finding the descriptors in designing the psycho-motor mechanism scale. Next, by designing the scale, two translation tasks were given to 90 M.A. students majoring in Translation Studies at four different branches of Islamic Azad University. Based on the rating done by two experienced raters, construct validity and reliability of the scale was revealed by the use of factor analysis and correlation statistics. The findings approved by the construct validity and reliability of the researcher-constructed scale could contribute to the field of Translation Studies since having a more objective scale for translation tasks in line with anchored theories of translation quality assessment like those of PACTE (2003) is a felt need.

In our modern life, the introduction of new technologies and subsequent boom in satellites, television, as well as the Internet has made the world a much smaller place allowing different nations, cultures, and languages to interact more frequently. One of the biggest concerns of audiovisual translators is cultural and ideological items which taboo terms are included. This study aims at investigating the strategies applied in the translation of taboo terms, from English into Persian, in five dubbed Hollywood movies broadcast by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The original movies were compared with their dubbed Persian versions based on Sharifi and Darchinian’s (2009) strategies. The “Censorship” strategy is the topmost used strategy in the rendition of the taboos with the highest frequency (56%). The second frequent strategy is “Taboo to Taboo” which involves 19%, the third frequent strategy is “Euphemism” with 13%, and the least frequent strategy for dealing with taboos is “Taboo to Non-Taboo” which is 12%. The results of the present study show that considering ideological and cultural aspects of the society, Iranian AV translators attempted to moderate and soften the original taboo terms, which would be considered as taboo by the cultural standards of the Iranian audiences.

This study investigated the effectiveness of colligational corpus-based instruction on enhancing the pragmalinguistic knowledge of speech act of request among Iranian intermediate EFL learners. The objective of the study was to find out whether or not providing students with corpora through using colligational instruction had any significant effects on enhancing their pragmalinguistic knowledge and, hence, speech act learning. Sixty participants from several institutes in Mazandaran Province, Iran, participated in the study. They were all intermediate- level students, and were divided into two homogeneous groups (30 each) of experimental and control groups based on the OPT results. A multiple discourse completion test was then administered to both groups as the pretest to measure their ability and knowledge in using the speech act of request. Subsequently, the treatment started where the experimental group received corpus-based instruction through colligational practices, while the control group practiced learning the same speech act through traditional or common methods of learning speech acts (i.e., using textbooks, audios, and videos). After 15 sessions of training, a posttest of multiple discourse completion test was administered. The data were analyzed using paired- and independent-samples t tests. In order to increase the validity of the results, the researchers observed and interviewed all the participants, too. The results that learning of the speech act of request improved significantly better through corpus-based instruction vis-à-vis traditional method of teaching colligations.

Formative assessment is deemed the collaborative processes in which teachers and learners are engaged for the purpose of understanding the learners' learning and diagnosing their strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, teachers' beliefs about formative assessment are paramount and might be influenced by a legion of variables such age, educational background, instructional experience, and gender. This study investigated the impacts of EFL teachers' age, educational background, instructional experience, and gender on their beliefs about formative assessment. To this aim, 100 male and 100 female EFL teachers from Ahvaz junior and senior high schools participated in the study. The participants were given the questionnaire of teachers' beliefs about formative assessment. The results regarding EFL teachers' age, educational background, and gender revealed no statistically significant influence on their beliefs about formative assessment. However, teachers' teaching experience had significant impacts on their beliefs about formative assessment. These findings can contribute to EFL authorities concerning assessment procedures in language learning and teaching.

The present study aimed firstly at investigating the impact of translators' style on figurative language translation from English into Persian. Secondly, it intended to find which strategies were most frequently adopted by Persian translators to translate figures of speech into Persian. Lastly, the study sought to check the extent of transference of figurative features of literary texts in English-Persian renderings. To achieve these purposes, the English novel, Little Women by Alcott (1880) and its three Persian translations by Raiszadeh (1997), Akhavan (1996), and Morvarid (2000) were used as the materials of the study. The original novel, along with its three selected translations, were first studied carefully by the researchers and about fifty percent of the novel was chosen to be analyzed in terms of figures of speech, which are part of stylistic features of any literary text. Then, the figures of speech in the stated sample, besides the Persian equivalents of each of them used by the three translators, were identified. Finally, a hybrid model incorporating 5 strategies retrieved from Newmrak's (1988) and Baker's (1992) models of translating figurative language was utilized to examine the identified tropes and determine the type and number of strategies employed by any individual translator. The obtained results revealed that figurative language devices were translated from the source into the target language through a variety of strategies, which can be indicative of the translator’s stylistic tendencies.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of two types of paragraph on EFL learners’ written production. It addressed the issue of how three aspects of language production (i.e. complexity, accuracy, and fluency) vary among two types of paragraphs (i.e. paragraphs of chronology and cause-effect) written by EFL learners. Thirty intermediate level learners of English participated in the study. Each learner wrote the two specified types of paragraphs in the final exam of their writing course. In the first phase of the study, separate paired t-tests were conducted on each dependent variable to see whether there were any statistically significant differences in measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency across the paragraph types. In the second phase of the study, to investigate if the raters detect the inconsistencies in the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of paragraphs written by a learner, four raters were asked to rate 12 paragraphs written by six learners whose paragraphs differed extremely in one of the three features. The findings revealed that EFL learners performed significantly better in paragraphs of chronology than the paragraphs of cause-effect in terms of fluency and accuracy. However, the analysis of complexity measures showed that there was no significant difference between the two types of paragraphs. In the qualitative analysis, it was found that raters did not consistently consider these three features in their examining the quality of the paragraphs. They paid attention to qualities such as coherence, cohesion and unity more consistently.

The present study aimed to examine the effect of three vocabulary techniques (dictionary use, etymological analysis, and glossing) on the Iranian ESP learners' vocabulary production. Forty-five university students majoring in architecture at Azad University, Anzali branch,  participated in this study. They were divided into three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one kind of treatment condition (dictionary use group, etymology group, and glossing group). The Michigan proficiency test was used to ensure the homogeneity of the  ESP learners. The three experimental groups received instruction for three weeks. ESP learners took a vocabulary production test (VPT). A one-way between groups ANOVA was conducted to analyse the data. The results showed that dictionary use improved ESP learners' vocabulary production, and dictioary use group outperformed the other two groups. The study concludes that dictionary use faciliates vocabulary production.

This study investigated learning style preferences among professional translators. The purposes of the study were to (a) find the prevailing learning style among the Iranian professional translators; (b) reveal any significant difference in the translators’ learning style preferences in terms of gender; and (c) find any significant difference between individual learning style and translation competence of the male and female translators. To this end, 110 professional translators from 35 translation centers in three Southern Provinces of Iran (Fars, Hormozgan, and Bushehr) were selected through non-probability sampling. The data pertaining to learning style were collected through an adaptation of Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, and translation competence was examined through a text that the participants translated. Findings revealed that the translators’ predominant learning style was Reflector, followed by Pragmatist, Activist, and Theorist, although those preferring the Theorist style showed better performance. Furthermore, the findings did not show any significant difference between translators’ gender and learning style preferences. Finally, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference across the groups in terms of learning style preferences and translators’ translation competence. Some pedagogical implications were also discussed.