درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The advent of Web 2 tools and their features have allowed Internet users not only to seek information but also to generate and edit on-line information. However, excessive reliance of students, particularly EFL students, on the Internet has raised the issue of information credibility or quality of the information found online. This study sought to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL university students’ credibility judgment and their learning styles and critical thinking. It also intended to examine the extent to which the learners employ credibility judgment strategies to verify web-based information. To this end, 212 Iranian EFL students, 165 female(s) and 47 male(s) (or add) students, received three questionnaires: Honey’s (2004) Critical Thinking questionnaire, Kolb's (1984) Learning Style inventory, and the adapted version of Credibility Judgment questionnaire originally developed by Metzger, Flanagin, and Zwarun (2003). The results of descriptive as well as bivariate and multivariate correlation analysis revealed that, first, Iranian EFL students employ credibility judgment strategies at a moderate level, and second, critical thinking is a better predictor for credibility judgment behavior of EFL students than learning style. Moreover, three learning styles were significantly related to the currency sub-scale of credibility judgment. The findings can assist curriculum planners, policymakers, and instructors to develop plans for empowering EFL students with the skills they need to evaluate on-line information for accuracy, objectivity, authority, and currency.

Writing as one of the important skills needed for communication has always been the topic of research in English teaching contexts. To improve the writing of English students, teachers employ different methods. This study was designed to investigate the impact of the inquiry learning method on the grammatical accuracy of Iranian EFL learners’ writing. To do so, 90 intermediate EFL learners from Abadan Medical University were selected through the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and participated in a quasi-experimental study, and then they were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (EG & CG). Their ages ranged between 20 to 30. A pretest was administered to compare the results of their performance at the beginning of the study. The inquiry learning method was taught to the EG as the treatment, while the conventional method was employed for the CG. In the experimental class, the teacher did not teach everything directly, and the learners were expected to discover the knowledge and generate rules, but the presentation of materials in the CG was conventional without any discussion, and the students in the CG were mainly passive. After the instruction, a posttest was given to both groups to observe the impact of the inquiry learning method on the grammatical accuracy of their writings. The analysis of the data was accomplished through the application of a dependent sample t -test and an independent-samples t- test to compare the mean scores, and the results indicated that the inquiry learning method improved the EGs̕ writing, and they outperformed the CG. The findings of this study could have implications for the EFL learners, teachers, and material designers that may help them in EFL language learning and teaching.

The notion of teacher professional identity has become a regular fixture in numerous theoretical and empirical studies in both mainstream and L2 teacher education. Consequently, a number of scales have been designed and developed to quantify this construct. To be sure, the extant instruments are general with regard to both context and subject matter, and this line of inquiry has not addressed the quantification of the concept in the ELT profession. The present study was, therefore, an attempt to provide a (re)conceptualization of L2 teachers’ professional identity through exploring its underlying components. To this end, an initial 61-item, self-assessment questionnaire was developed using a comprehensive review of the related literature and experts’ opinion. The trial scale was then administered to a sample of 676 ELT teachers. Results of exploratory factor analysis reduced the instrument to 42 items, leading to a six-factor model which indicated that L2 teacher identity includes: researching and developing one’s own practice; language awareness; institutional and collective practice; engaging learners as whole persons; appraising one’s teacher self; and sociocultural and critical practice. Confirmatory factor analysis substantiated the resultant six-factor model as a robust and valid tool for measuring ELT teachers’ professional identity.

Although global English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebooks have been subject to numerous (critical) analyses, the changes occurring to their contents over different editions have received scarce attention. In this study, the researchers examined the transformations over different editions of Interchange series (level 2) regarding some selected aspects of their textual contents. Seeking experienced English teachers’ views of the global coursebooks’ transformations over the past decade was another aim of the study. The analysis and comparison of the included topics and titles, characters, sites and contexts in Interchange series as well as interviews with 12 English teachers revealed that the content-based changes of different editions of this coursebook are superficial and cosmetic-like and despite the claims for globality, fallacies such as real-life-ness, representation and globality are still evident. We hope the findings of the study would aid curriculum and policy makers, institute managers, and language teachers to reconsider the functioning and value of current global ELT coursebooks.

Some universities in Iran have recently witnessed a shift in admission criteria from university admission test performance towards high school records. This sudden change seems to be unwarranted since the predictive power of high school records has not been explored. To fill in this gap, this study aims at showcasing the predictive validity of high school records for undergraduate students of English language and literature. To this end, a random sample of undergraduate students studying at Shahrood University of Technology were selected as the participants, the predictor variables were operationally defined as the participants’ grade point average (GPA) in three school subjects including English, Persian and Arabic languages along with their overall high school GPA, and the explained variable was operationalized as the participants’ overall GPA for the first academic year. The results of Pearson correlation revealed a significant but very low correlation between the variables of interest. Moreover, the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that none of the predictor variables well predicts academic success in English language and literature. Although the results of this study are case-specific, they have clear implications for policy makers and interested researchers nationwide.

What is “the best method” of language teaching? It has been one of the oldest questions of language teaching and learning during the last century. However, no comprehensive quantitative study has tackled the issue. In order to answer this question, the researchers meta-analyzed 56 studies with 7960 participants from many contexts. A coding scheme of 46 variables, in the form of four major moderator sets, including design characteristics, language characteristics, participant characteristics, and teaching characteristics, was developed. The overall effect size (g= 1.00) was found to be positive, strong, and significant for all language teaching methods. The findings showed that all language teaching methods, irrespective of various contexts, were positively effective. The results of moderator analysis showed that most of the moderators, excluding language skills and place of the study, had no significant effect on language teaching methods. Implications for current theory and practice, for both method and postmethod, are discussed.

This study investigated rhetorical functions and their associated linguistic realizations in English review article abstracts. The analysis was based on a corpus of 100 English review article abstracts from linguistics and applied linguistics disciplines and followed a corpus-driven discourse analytic top-down approach. MAXQDA and WordSmith were used to code the moves and analyze their associated sub-corpora, respectively. The results of calculating range and frequency distributions showed that English conceptual review article abstracts use a rhetorical structure, different from that of research paper abstracts. This rhetorical organization is realized through a different set of moves, namely 1) establishing the territory or area of study, 2) identifying the problem, 3) introducing the present research, 4) organizing the paper, and 5) concluding or reflecting. Moreover, each move was realized through a distinct set of sub-moves. In terms of range, the moves dealing with purpose and structure were the most widely present moves; in terms of frequency distribution, the move dealing with structure was the most frequent. Furthermore, the highly frequent use of plural self-mentions indicates that in review article abstracts the emphasis is on research as a group activity inclusive of the researcher(s) and objects of study. In addition, the presence of ‘establishing the territory’, together with ‘identifying the problem’ can be seen as an attempt to sell the research. Finally, the prevalent use of the five moves showed that most review article abstracts are indicative-informative in function