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Among the linguistic resources for creating grammatical metaphor, nominalization rewords processes and properties metaphorically as nouns within the experiential metafunction of language. Following Halliday's (1998a) classification of grammatical metaphor, the current study investigated nominalization exploited in an English applied linguistics textbook and its corresponding Persian translation. Selection of these textbooks was motivated by consulting 10 ELT professors. Analysis started by identifying nominalization instances and recurrent patterns of nominalization in the books through adopting a mixed approach. The frequency of nominal expressions was counted, and eventually chi-square was run to find out the probable significance of nominalization use in English and Persian academic text samples. The quantitative differences in using nominalization turned out to be significant, and results revealed variations in the ranking patterns of nominalization in both texts. Qualities as entities tended to recur more in English than in Persian. However, the noun to noun modifier was frequently exploited in the Persian translation. The similarities in the employment of nominalization patterns might reflect the awareness of both the author and the translator of the role of metadiscourse markers in scientific texts. The main reason for the differences lies in the matter that knowledge is realized in different languages. The findings of this study have implications for textbook writers, English for Academic Purposes students, and translators.

Reading comprehension ability consists of multiple cognitive processes, and cloze tests have long been claimed to measure this ability as a whole. However, since the introduction of cloze test, different varieties of it have been proposed by the testers. Thus, the present study was an attempt to examine the relatedness of Cloze-Elide test, Multiple-choice (MC) cloze test, and C-test as three different types of cloze procedure used for measuring reading comprehension. To this end, one C-test consisting of four short texts, one fixed ratio (n=7) multiple-choice cloze test, and one cloze-elide test were prepared from reading passages with similar readability levels. The participants of the study were 30 (male &female) freshman university students majoring in English literature. The results of ANOVA test showed that there were not any statistically significant differences at the 0.05 level of significance among the performance of the students on the three tests measuring their reading comprehension. Therefore, it was concluded that against the advocates of each test who claim superiority of it over the other types, these three types of cloze tests in this study assessed the reading comprehension in a similar way. So, the testers can be confident to make use of these tests as reading comprehension tests interchangeably.

این تحقیق تلاشی در فعال کردن دانش لغوی غیرفعال از طریق توجه دهی و بررسی تأثیر جمله نویسی به عنوان فعالیت پس توجه دهنده بر تقویت تأثیر توجه دهی است. چهل و دو دانشجوی زبان انگلیسی سطح متوسط به بالای بزرگسال خانم، در دو گروه هم سطح از یک دانشگاه سراسری انتخاب شدند. آنها در تحقیقی شرکت کردند که در آن توجه به کلماتی که تولید آنها به آسانی فهمیدن آنها نبود، از طریق علامت زدن آن کلمات در یک متن خواندن انجام شد. سپس، شرکت کنندگان در یک فرآیند ٤ هفتگی جمله نویسی متراکم/ پراکنده شرکت کردند؛ شرکت کنندگان یک گروه هر هفته در طول ٤ روز پی در پی در هر روز، یک جمله با یکی از ١٦ لغت توجه شده نوشتند و گروه دیگر این فرآیند را یک بار در هفته تجربه کردند، به گونه ای که آنها بدون هیچ وقفه زمانی، ٤ جمله با ٤ کلمه توجه شده نوشتند. نتایج نشان داد که ارائه فعالیت پس توجه دهنده بر ارتقاء دانش لغوی تولیدی هر دو گروه به طور معناداری تأثیرگذار است. تعامل بین عامل زمان و روش های یادگیری معنادار بود. همچنین، نتایج عملکرد گروه پراکنده بهتر از گروه متراکم بود، ولی این تفوق معنادار نبود.

Teachers’ sense of efficacy belief has been introduced as a context-specific construct, but the related literature is not clear on this specificity. This study was an attempt to show how contextual factors influence efficacy beliefs among English language teachers. To this end, thirty Iranian EFL teachers working in both school and private institute contexts were chosen as the participants to respond to Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Beliefs questionnaire (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001) twice: once based on school context and once based on private institute context. Afterwards, the participants were invited to a brief interview designed to investigate further the reasons for which they had scored higher in either context. The interview findings and the results of a t-test revealed that context really made a difference. It is argued that the proper or improper functioning of efficacy building sources is the cause of the difference

پژوهش حاضر رابطه ی بین باورهای انگیزشی زبان آموزان انگلیسی و استفاده از راهبردهای یادگیری را بررسی می کند. سه جز انگیزه (جز انتظار، ارزش و عاطفه) در رابطه با راهبردهای شناختی، فراشناختی و مدیریت تلاش بررسی شدند. دویست و پنجاه و هفت زبان آموز انگلیسی از سطوح مختلف توانش زبانی پرسشنامه ی فارسی ر اهبردهای انگیزشی برای یادگیری را پاسخ گفتند. بررسی تاثیر سطح زبانی بر باورهای انگیزشی بیانگر تاثیر معنا دار سطح توانش زبانی بر اضطراب آزمون و رویکرد هدف بیرونی بود، بدین معنا که زبان آموزان با توانایی زبانی پایین تر در مقایسه با زبان آموزان سطوح بالاتر به طور معنا داری مضطرب تر بوده و رویکرد هدف بیرونی بیشتری داشتند. نتایج همچنین نشان داد که خودباوری، کنترل عقاید یادگیری، رویکرد هدف درونی، و ارزش تکلیف حدود ۷۰ درصد از واریانس راهبرهای خودتنظیمی را توضیح می دهد. این پژوهش با پیشنهادهایی برای تقویت عقاید انگیزشی و راهبردهای یادگیری زبان پایان می یابد.

Almost little is known about creative writing. In this research, creative writing has been introduced as an alternative to academic writing. The aims were to introduce creative writing as an alternative to academic writing to boost the participants’ attitude towards writing in general. The participants were 32 senior university students studying English Translation at Islamic Azad University, Tehran. The study includes two phases: quantitative and qualitative. For the quantitative phase, the participants were given a questionnaire so that the researchers could measure their attitudes about writing. Then, a creative writing pretest was administered, followed by a posttest to see to what extent the treatment could help the participants improve their writing skill. For the qualitative phase, a videotaped oral interview with the participants was closely examined to find out about the participants’ attitudes towards writing. The means of the pretest and posttest indicated a three-fold increase in the scores after the treatment was over. The oral interview, furthermore, showed that most participants had a negative attitude towards creative writing. It was finally concluded that creative writing might be considered as a useful asset in academic contexts, expected to alleviate the negative attitude of learners towards writing to feel more confident.

The importance of input has been a broadly documented concept in the field of second or foreign language acquisition. However, kinds of input and ways of its presentation are among the controversial issues in L2 classroom research. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the effects of three kinds of input-based instruction on intake and acquisition of the English causative structures by Iranian EFL learners. A total of 105 university students in four intact classes were randomly assigned to four different conditions: processing instruction (PI), textual input enhancement (TE), consciousness-raising (C-R), and control (CO). A pretest/posttest (immediate and delayed) design was used, where participants’ ability to interpret and produce the target structure was assessed through administering a multiple choice interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Moreover, a grammaticality judgment test was run to assess the amount of intake. Results revealed that learners in the PI group significantly outperformed learners in the other groups on both immediate/delayed production posttests. The findings also indicated that, C-R group could not retain the significant effect of instruction on delayed production posttest and TE tasks were not effective in improving the learners’ production of the target structure. Moreover, the PI group outperformed the other groups on grammaticality judgment test too. Based on these findings, we can conclude that PI which encompasses the most outstanding features of both focus on form and meaning instruction might be a more effective approach in helping EFL learners to acquire the target grammatical forms.

روند تدریس/ یادگیری مهارتهای شفاهی در زبان فرانسه، توسط عرب زبانان به معنای تصاحب یک سیستم لغوی، دستوری، آواشناختی کاملا متفاوت از زبان مادری می باشد . این تصاحب، وابسته به نقاط شباهت و تفاوت بین این دو زبان (بیگانه و مادری)، می تواند باعث تسهیل (انتقال مثبت) و یا باعث ایجاد مانع (ترکیب) شود. هدف از این مقاله بررسی تفاوتهای لغوی، دستوری، آواشناختی بین زبان فرانسه و زبان عربی و بویژه زبان فرانسه و گویش مصری است. برای این منظور، چند نمونه از اشتباهات ناشی از ترکیب زبانی این دو زبان در سطح شفاهی ارائه خواهیم داد. همچنین چند روش برای اصلاح این اشتباهات و تسهیل کار معلمان زبان فرانسه و چند روش برای انجام فرایند تدریس/ یادگیری زبان فرانسه به عرب زبانان بکار خواهیم برد.

There is a growing interest among the higher education principals and policy makers to improve teacher evaluation methods and more important than that to use the evaluation data. A number of research studies implied the ineffective instruction of ESP courses in Iran (Atai, 2002; Eslami, 2005; Hayati, 2008; Ahmadi, 2008; Sherkatolabbasi & Mahdavi, 2012; Boniadi, Ghojazadeh & Rahmatvand, 2013). The basic objective of research in field of ESP/EGP instruction and evaluation is to facilitate informed decisions for the betterment of English classes. The literature suggested that most of the teachers and students were dissatisfied with the students’ progress in specific English courses. Data was collected from the teachers by various ways including observation checklist and feedback form. To carry out the study, 12 ESP and EGP teachers were observed using Marshall’s rubrics (2011) and observation logs’ analysis. Then, 18 teachers offered feedback on different aspects of their own courses. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively using ANOVA statistical measurement. The findings firstly indicate that EGP teachers were more standard teachers in comparison to ESP teachers. Secondly, the feedback forms show discrepancy between the views of EGP teachers and ESP teachers in some areas including the material effectiveness and students’ interest. To reach a standard point in EGP/ESP instruction, more evaluation is to be applied by the faculty members, university principals and the teachers themselves. Politically correct attitudes towards teachers should not lead to ineffective English courses. Some practical implications are suggested to upgrade the current practice in ESP classes

The current study aimed at investigating the academic learning needs of Iranian undergraduate students of English Language and Literature from the perspective of 320 stakeholders including undergraduate students (n=252), graduates (n=51), English literature instructors (n=7), and language instructors (n=10). To this aim, atriangulation of the most important data collection instruments of needs analysis (i.e., questionnaires, class observations, and semistructured interviews) was adopted for data collection at eight different Iranian state universities. The results of data analysis revealed that the above-mentioned students are not adequately equipped with learning and communication strategies during their academic and preacademic studies. The results of the current study may promise implications for the provision of some extracurricular EFL courses at the tertiary and senior high school levels in order to enhance students’ sociocultural and strategic competence based on the shared decision-making process among different stakeholders in the course design community