درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study investigates the role structural priming plays in production of passive structures among Iranian EFL learners. In order to answer the research question, which asked whether structural priming effects result in an increase in the production of the target structure (i.e., passive structures), 60 Iranian EFL learners participated in the study. After taking the placement test, they were divided into four experimental and control groups, namely Experimental High-Proficiency, Experimental Mid-Proficiency, Control High-Proficiency, and Control Mid-Proficiency. Participants then took part in picture description sessions the results of which were subjected to a 2 x 2 analysis of variance. The results of the experiment showed that priming resulted in increased production of the target structure in question by experimental groups as compared with production by control groups. In addition, the results indicated that EFL level of proficiency made a significant difference in production of the target structures. It is believed that structural priming can be employed as an alternative technique for presenting certain grammatical structures

  This paper investigates the use of ‘lexical bundles’ in two broad corpora of journalistic writing. The aim of this study is to compare the use of lexical bundles in the two domains, one consisted of newspaper articles written in English and published in England and the other one comprised of newspaper articles written in Persian from Iranian publications. For this purpose, the frequency of occurrence and distribution of different functional taxonomies of lexical bundles across the subject matter were investigated. More than 2.5 million words of different English and Persian-produced online newspapers were collected and they were identified by the help of two computer programs, then their functionswere analyzed. Consistent with similar research on lexical bundles, the analysis indicates that most bundles perform a referential function in journalistic register. These findings may be particularly useful to translators and also EFL practitioners, as they seem to give new insights into the development of learner language.  

The study aims at focusing on the relationship between motivation, culture, and success in foreign language learning in globalizing world. Many studies have been done to examine the relationship between them. The studies showed that culture can play a motivating role in language learning success. Considering Gardner's instrumental and integrative motivation, a learner with a high degree of integrative motivation is likely to make more efforts to form bonds with people of the target culture. To conduct the survey 48 students of Ardestan Azad University were chosen. Some activities and techniques were taken to promote their multicultural competence. In the first session a brief explanation was given to the students along with some questionnaires regarding cultural issues to answer. During 16 weeks of the semester students were taught and monitored through class discussions, essay writings etc. The goal of the activities was to encourage and estimate their respect, tolerance and empathy to people of different cultures. In the last session a questionnaire designed by the researcher was used to collect data. It was composed of three sections: 1) 11 statements about cultural issues to be rated with a likert scale of agreement (based on the Bennett's intercultural communicative model). 2) 10 rating questions (considering Byram& Risager's multidimensional model of ICC).  3) 5 open questions about their belief and behavior to elaborate on. The results showed that respect for others, adaptation and integration with people of target culture were the highest rated among others. An unexpected result was that there was no significant relationship between students' lesson scores and their attitude toward foreign language culture. This can be justified by globalization process by which "people of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society". Therefore learners who belong to a global English-speaking culture are ready to suspend disbelief about others and adopt new cultural aspects while respecting and maintaining their own culture.

This study investigated the impact of using the technique of self-monitoring on non-academic EFL learners’ composition writing. Fifty female students studying English at Navid English Institute in Shiraz, Iran were chosen based on the results of a proficiency test. They were all 16-20 years old and were intermediate learners of English who were divided into two control and experimental groups and took a writing pre-test. The experimental group (EG) received a training program on the effective use of the technique of self-monitoring proposed by Charles (1990). That is, they learned to add annotations expressing doubts and queries on various parts of their five composition drafts. The students in CG wrote their drafts without annotations. At the end of the twenty-second session course, both groups took a writing posttest. The results indicated that the learners in EG performed significantly better and the global features of organization and content in their writing were enhanced. Surveying the students’ views on self-monitoring, through a questionnaire, revealed their interest in taking charge of their writing task. Findings point to the efficacy of the self-monitoring technique in promoting learners’ writing proficiency and autonomy in handling writing tasks.

The aim of the present paper is to study the status of the short vowels /i/ and /u/ in five selected Iranian Balochi dialects. These dialects are spoken in Sistan (SI), Saravan (SA), Khash (KH), Iranshahr (IR), and Chabahar (CH) regions located in province Sistan va Baluchestan in the southeast of Iran. This study investigates whether these two vowels have the same qualities as the short /i/ and /u/ do in the Common Balochi inventory (i, iː, u, uː, a, aː, eː, oː). The Common Balochi inventory is the vowel system represented generally for Balochi language, which is a North-Western Iranian language, a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian family. The data for this survey are gathered from villages, rural areas, and cities in these regions in the forms of free speech and verbal elicitation from more than 20 literate and non-literate male and female language consultants, 2 males and 2 females for each dialect. The investigation reveals that the short /i/ and /u/ show strong tendencies towards a lower position. This study suggests phonemic systems in which the short /i/ is modified to short /e/ in all dialects, but /u/ is modified to /o/ only in SI, SA, and CH; the lowering of the short /u/ to short /o/ in KH and IR may still be in the transition stage. It is possible that Persian, as the dominant language has had its influence on these dialects causing a lowering tendency in the two vowels under study.

This study was inspired by VanPatten and Uludag’s (2011) study on the transferability of training via processing instruction to output tasks and Mori’s (2002) work on the development of talk-in-interaction during a group task. An interview was devised as the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest to compare four intervention types for teaching the simple past passive: traditional intervention as the comparison group and three task-based groups were processing instruction, consciousness-raising, and input enhancement. The interviews and the interactions during the treatments were also analyzed qualitatively. Task-based instruction (TBI) proved significantly more effective than traditional intervention and processing instruction significantly outperformed all others on both posttests. Furthermore, processing instruction was the only task-based intervention to retain its improvement till the delayed posttest. Qualitatively, processing instruction led to true negotiation of meaning and deep-level learning, consciousness-raising led to massive negotiation over the function of the target structure and deep-level learning, input enhancement led to enormous unfocused interaction about meaning, and traditional intervention just led to interaction about the forms. It was concluded that a well-planned processing instruction is a promising intervention for focusing on language form; however, due to the strong points cited for the other two tasks, their roles should not be ignored.

بر طبق مدل اصلاح شده ی سلسله مراتبی که توسط کرال و استیوارت پیشنهاد شده است، در مراحل ابتدایی فراگیری زبان، رابط ها ی واژگانی بسیار قوی در نتیجه ی اتکا فراگیران به زبان اول برای دریافت معانی کلمات زبان خارجی ایجاد می شود؛ این رابط ها در مراحل بالاتر نیز باقی می مانند اگرچه ضعیف ترمی شوند. برای آزمایش این فرضیه، حافظه ی رویدادی دو گروه از فراگیران فارسی زبان انگلیسی سطح پایین و پیشرفته بر روی جفت های ترجمه ای غیرهم ریشه مورد آزمایش قرار گرفت. الگوی بدست آمده برای فراگیران سطح پایین با فرضیه ی مدل سازگار بود چرا که وجود رابط های واژگانی در سطوح پایین زبان آموزی ثابت شد. لیکن، نتایج بدست آمده برای فراگیران سطح پیشرفته نشان داد این رابط ها در سطوح بالا دیگر وجود ندارند و ازبین می روند.

تکرار فعالیت آموزشی عامل مهمی در پیچیدگی، دقت و روانی زبانی تولید سخن به شمار می رود. برای اینکه نقش تکرار فعالیت آموزشی منجر به ارائه تئوری گردد ضروری است که نقش متغیرهای بین افراد مدنظر قرار گیرد. بررسی اخیر به بررسی اینکه چگونه تکرار فعالیت آموزشی با سطح بسندگی زبانی رابطه دارد و اینکه چگونه تکرار فعالیت آموزشی بر جنبه های مختلف زبانی تاثیر می گذارد انجام گرفت.بدین منظور 50 زبان آموز با سطوح مختلف سطح بسندگی زبانی از دو مرکز آموزشی انتخاب گردیدند. از شرکت کنندگان خواسته شد که فعالیتی را با دو هفته فاصله بیان کنند. نتایج تحقیق بیانگر این موضوع بود که شرکت کنندگان با سطح بسندگی بالاتر، در مقایسه با شرکت کنندگان با سطح بسندگی پایین تر، تولید شفاهی آنها از پیچیدگی، روانی و دقت بیشتری در مرحله دوم تولید برخوردار بود.