درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

از دیدگاه معرفت شناسی، با توجه به ظهور نظریه سیستم های پیچیده و دینامیک و این حقیقت که فراگیری زبان در یک اکوسیستم دارای اجزای مرتبط و درهم تنیده صورت می گیرد، مفهوم و فرایند تحقیق در فراگیری زبان دوم نیازمند بازنگری اساسی است. تحقیق حاضر به بررسی ویژگی ها و مشخصات بنیادین نظریه سیستم های پیچیده و کاربرد آن در تحقیقات فراگیری زبان دوم می پردازد. با توجه به مشخصات نظریه مزبور، استدلال می کنیم که روش های متداول و مسلط تحقیق در فراگیری زبان بسیار ساده انگارانه هستند و قادر به بررسی ماهیت واقعی فراگیری زبان نیستند. ما بر این عقیده ایم که دیدگاه نیوتنی نسبت به تحقیق در فراگیری زبان برای مطالعه بیچیدگی های تحقیق در فراگیری زبان کافی نیست. با در نظر گرفتن فرضیه سیستم های پیچیده، تحقیق به عنوان سیستمی پیچیده، دینامیک، غیرخطی، باز و تطبیقی جهت یافتن راه حل های احتمالی سوالات باز تعریف می شود.

The application of critical pedagogy in educational contexts has received adequate research attention over the last decades. The main focus of this strand of research has, however, been on raising awareness of the educators. Nevertheless, little is known about the consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy principles from EFL teacher trainers’ perspectives. To begin to address this gap in research, a qualitative (phenomenological) study was carried out to explore the main consequences of violating critical pedagogy in the higher education system of Iran. The participants were 15 faculty members of TEFL and English Literature at 10 Iranian state universities. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews and analyzed according to Radnor’s (2001) model. The results indicated that the main consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy were educational (related to teaching, learning, and testing), psychological, social, and ideological. Therefore, it was concluded that educators must follow the principles of CP in order to avoid the negative consequences and foster the learning and teaching processes more effectively.

Test method facet is one of the factors which can have an influence on the test takers’ performance. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of two different response types, multiple-choice cloze and multiple-choice test, on the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ reading comprehension performance. To this end, 40 pre-intermediate and intermediate learners participated in the study. To counterbalance the practice effect, the participants of the study at both pre-intermediate and intermediate levels were randomly assigned into two groups. For each level, there were two types of tests and two test administrations. Within each level, the two groups took these two tests in a different order. For all participants of the study there were two scores based on multiple- choice cloze and multiple-choice tests. Two Paired sample t tests were separately run to compare the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ performance on multiple-choice cloze and multiple-choice tests. Two independent samples t tests were run to compare the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers on these two tests. There was no significant difference between the pre-intermediate test takers’ performance on these two types of tests. There was a significant difference between intermediate test takers’ performance on the tests. There was no significant difference between the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ performance on the multiple-choice cloze tests. The intermediate test takers outperformed the pre-intermediate test takers only on the multiple-choice tests. Based on these results it can be concluded that test methods can have an influence on the test takers’ performance, especially at higher proficiency levels and learners may need to have reached a certain level of proficiency to be able to understand the text.

This study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between teachers' personality type (feeling vs. thinking) and speaking skill of pre- intermediate EFL students in Iranian context. Twelve teachers and forty eight students from a local language institute participated in the study. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an instrument based on Jung’s personality theory, was taken from teachers and students were administered Preliminary English Test (PET) interview. SPSS was used to calculate the required analyses. The results showed a statistically significant positive relationship between teacher’s’ personality type and learners’ speaking skill. It was also indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between speaking skill of learners taught by feeling teachers vs. thinking teachers. In fact students in the feeling group had higher speaking scores than their counterparts in the thinking group.

The efficacy of genre-based approach to teaching writing has been regarded as an influential practice in L2 writing pedagogy (Hyland, 2007). However, there is still gap between actual structures found in reading materials recommended as textbooks and discourse patterns recommended for L2 writing in EFL contexts, the gap which would highlight the problems of genre and rhetorical patterns for teaching. The current study, therefore, is an attempt to explore the level of consistency between the rhetorical patterns found in reading textbooks and discourse pattern recommended for writing. For this purpose, a number of 22 essays selected from textbooks were analyzed to identify (1) the overall rhetorical structures, and (2) the location of main idea and opinion of writers. The results show that while some texts did not follow the three-part structure of introduction-body-conclusion, main idea was presented in the introductory parts of essays, illustrating a deductive rhetorical pattern recommended for English writing. Further research was suggested as well.

نظر به نقش کلیدی یادگیری واژگان در زبان آموزی دوم، این تحقیق به بررسی تاثیر هدف خواندن بر یادگیری و ماندگاری ضمنی واژگان می پردازد. بدین منظور 75 زبان آموز (سطح مبتدی) به سه گروه 1. خواندن آزاد و بدون هدف خاص (گروه کنترل)، 2. خواندن به منظور درک مفاهیم و مطالب (گروه آزمایشی اول)، و 3. خواندن با هدف خلاصه برداری کردن از مطالب ضروری و عمده (گروه آزمایشی دوم) تقسیم شدند. لغات مشکل متن انتخاب شده برجسته و معانی فارسی آنها نیز در حاشیه متن گنجانده شد. به منظور سنجش میزان یادگیری و ماندگاری لغات جدید شرکت کنندگان در این تحقیق دو بار مورد ارزیابی قرار گرفتند (بلافاصله بعد از خواندن متن و با فاصله زمانی دو هفته). نتایج هر دو آزمون حاکی از وجود تفاوت معنادار درمیزان واژگان فرا گرفته بین دو گروه آزمایشی در مقایسه با گروه کنترل بود، ولی بین عملکرد دو گروه خواندن به منظور درک مطلب و خلاصه نویسی تفاوت معنا داری مشاهده نشد. با این وجود، افکت سایز 21/0 برای آزمون اولیه و 68/0 برای آزمون تاخیری بیانگر این موضوع بود که قسمت عمده ای از تفاوت عملکرد سه گروه ناشی از تاثیر هدف خواندن بر یادگیری و ماندگاری ضمنی لغات می باشد. نتایج حاصله از تحقیق همچنین حاکی از آن بود که گروه خلاصه نویسی توانایی بیشتری در خلق جملات واستفاده از کلمات جدید درون جملات ذکر شده داشتند، در حالیکه دو گروه دیگر بیشتر به شناسایی و ذکر معنی لغات بسنده کرده بودند. به علاوه، در بسیاری از اشتباهات مرتکب شده توسط زبان آموزان اثر مستقیمی از تاثیر زبان اول (زبان فارسی) دیده نشد.

Although investigating the factors that influence test scores is important, a majority of stakeholders show a paucity of attention towards individual learner differences due to having large classes of L2 learners. This study sought to explore the possible effect of working memory and cognitive style on L2 learners’ metaphorical test performance. The study was conducted in 2 phases. The first phase was quantitative, and the second consisted of a series of case studies using “think-aloud protocol” and “retrospection.” In the statistical phase, aimed at shedding light on the effect of the cognitive style of field (in)dependence (FI/FD) on metaphorical test performance, 80 senior undergraduates majoring in English Translation were selected through a truncated test of TOEFL adopted from Barron (2004). Metaphorical test performance was analyzed through recognition, text-based true-false, and scripturally implicit questions, refined by conducting factor analysis. Moreover, the participants’ cognitive style of FI/FD was identified via GEFT. In the qualitative part, after analyzing the verbal reports of 8 informants, the participants’ strategy preferences were examined. Results revealed the impact of the cognitive style of FI/FD and working memory on the participants’ strategy preferences. Due to the advent of learner-centered approaches, this study has some implications for L2 pedagogy discussed in the paper.

During the last decades various researchers noticed that the traditional approaches to teaching had failed to teach learners to their utmost actual ability, therefore they put great efforts into developing post-modernist approaches and techniques such as critical thinking (CT) and cooperative learning (CL) for improving learning.The present study was an attempt to investigate the comparative effect of practicing CL and CT skills on EFL learners’ writing in a process-based approach to writing on EFL learners’ writing. Sixty Iranian female EFL learners at the intermediate level of English proficiency at Kish Language School were selected among a total number of 90 based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET) and randomly assigned into two groups of CL and CT. Then the researchers administered an argumentative paragraph writing test to ensure the homogeneity of the two groups regarding argumentative writing before the treatment. Both groups were taught the same content through process-based approach throughout the 20-session treatment. Finally, the participants took a paragraph writing posttest including three writing prompts in argumentative genre. The mean scores of the two groups on the posttest were compared through an independent samples t-test. The results led to the rejection of the null hypothesis with the conclusion that CT instruction was significantly more effective than CL in improving EFL learners’ argumentative paragraph writing.