درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate the interrelationship of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA)، Reading Proficiency (RP) and Text Feature Awareness (TFA). The aim was to focus on how foreign language reading anxiety and text feature awareness are related and how، in turn، they affect students reading proficiency. That is، it south to determine how these three constructs correlate with each other. This study surveyed and analyzed 74 students from Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. The results indicated that there is no significant relationship between RP and RA، positive significant relationship between RP and TFA and negative significant relationship between TFA and RA. Also results revealed that there is no significant difference between foreign language reading anxiety، reading proficiency and text feature awareness scores of male and female students، as a result; there is no relationship between gender and these three constructs

Generally speaking، lexical items that enter our minds through reading a text commonly leave us with pictures، sounds، echoes، and feelings in the mind. While the ability to produce images in the mind in the process of reading appears to be vital for greater comprehension and recall of texts، research has indicated that many poor readers seemingly do not visualize as they read. On the contrary، those readers who do typically visualize achieve greater comprehension and recall (see Tomlinson، 1997). In this study، in line with Wittrock’s ‘generative learning theory’ (e.g.، 1992)، two fairly homogeneous groups of EFL undergraduates (N=50)، after taking a reading comprehension test to ensure that their reading comprehension differences are not significant، were randomly assigned to attend a short-story course in two different sections—one serving as the experimental and the other as the control group، both studying the same short stories، and both being taught by the researcher as their instructor of the course. The experimental group was instructed how to form pictures in the mind—i.e.، how to visualize—before reading، while reading، and after reading a short story، for example، by being requested to draw pictures of the characters، scenes، or settings in the story as they perceived them. The control group، however، did not receive any training with respect to imagery production and was not told to practice visualization before، while، or after reading the same texts as the experimental group did. The results of a reading comprehension test on the short stories that had been discussed in both indicated that the “visualizers” significantly outperformed the “non-visualizers”، i.e.، the control group، on both tests.

This paper aims at shedding light on the concept of postmodernism، and its implications in the TESOL. Postmodern philosophy as a prevalent concept and a hot buzzword in philosophy، science، and art is believed to have influenced the TESOL theoretically in some ways. The elements of postmodernism including: constructivism، subjectivism، relativism، localism، and pragmatism are found to have been applied in the TESOL to the concept of the demise of the methods، more focus on styles، strategies، and multiple intelligences، chaos/complexity theory and critical theories. But in practice، in developing countries the TESOL still lives in the modern era.

"با ترویج روش های برقراری ارتباط گرایش به ""واقعیت"" در آموزش زبان ابعاد گسترده تری یافته است. روش های یاد شده نه تنها تاکید بر استفاده از منابع واقعی زبان در کنار منابع آموزشی دارند بلکه استفاده ای واقعی و طبیعی از این منابع و همچنین استفاده از زبان در موقعیت طبیعی و غیرتصنعی را نیز مد نظر دارند. منابع واقعی زبان با وجود امتیازات فراوان (تنوع شکلی، اطلاعات غنی) نیاز مبرم به برنامه ریزی آموزشی و درسی با در نظر گرفتن مخاطبین زبان آموز دارند. این منابع از همان ابتدای آموزش و در سطوح مبتدی می توانند با طرح تمرینات و فعالیت های مناسب مورد استفاده قرار گرفته و زبان آموز را برای روبرویی با واقعیت زبان آماده سازد. گروهی بودن این تمرینات و فعالیت ها احساس امنیت خاطر به تک تک اعضای گروه داده، نتیجه کار را بهبود می بخشد و موقعیت طبیعی برای کاربرد زبان مورد آموزش را در تبادلات گروهی ایجاد می کند. بدین ترتیب بکارگیری زبان به گونه ای واقعی و طبیعی جایگزین مکالمات مصنوعی در موقعیت های تخیلی که توسط متدهای سمعی و بصری رایج شده و کم و بیش در آموزش ما با روش های برقراری ارتباط باقی مانده است خواهد شد.

The significance of error analysis for the learner، the teacher and the researcher is now widely recognized. Earlier studies of error analysis concentrated on intersystematic comparison of the “native language” and the “target language” and drew the required data largely from intuitions and impressionistic observations. This study was conducted on the basis of the following observations: (1) to restrict to the study of one area viz articles. (2) to avoid comparison in terms of the systems of native and target language. In this study the major areas of difficulties that students face in the target language، i.e. the occurrence of articles in different syntactic features was examined and an attempt was made to establish a hierarchy of difficulties 40 undergraduates faced in the use of articles. For testing the correct retrieval، a slightly modified version of Leacok’s essay ‘My Financial Career’ was prepared. It included sufficient examples of almost all the important uses of articles. The test was given to the subjects in the form of a running text. The responses of the subjects were analysed in terms of noun or noun phrases preceded by articles، noun or noun-phrases preceded by no article، and grammatical categories other than noun or noun-phrases proceeded by no article. The findings revealed that most of the errors the students committed were due to the nature as well as the grammatical complexity of the articles in English، i.e. L1 independent which cannot be explained in terms of transfer from the native language. It was also found that students’ competence using anaphoric reference is far greater than using cataphoric reference. The findings are interpreted to have pedagogical implications for syllabus designers and EFL teachers.

Among factors that might manipulate translators’ mind while producing a text is the notion of ideology transmission through text or talk. Adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with particular emphasis on the framework of Van Dijk (1999)، the present investigation is an attempt to shed light on the relationship between language and ideology involved in translation in general، and more specifically، to uncover the underlying ideological assumptions invisible in the texts، both source text (ST) and target text (TT)، and consequently ascertain whether or not translators’ ideologies are imposed in their translations. The corpus consists of the full text of two different Persian translations of the book Media Control by Noam Chomsky، written in English. In a qualitative phase، a detailed contrastive/comparative study at the micro-level in terms of fore/back-grounding mechanisms including explanation of lexical items and dominant grammatical metaphors (passive vs. active، nominalization vs. denominalization، addition vs. omission، and modalization) was conducted to examine، describe and subsequently interpret the patterns in the English source text and its Persian translated versions. In order to make the research data interpretations as objective as possible، having computed frequencies of ideologically significant instances، and percentages، Chi-square formula was applied to find out any difference between proportions of information extracted from the target text concerning their fore/back-grounding and their positions against the source text as well as to test the research null hypothesis، which was consequently rejected. The findings reveal that there are significant changes made by the two translators، either intentionally or unintentionally، in their selection of lexical items and syntactic structures in comparison to those in the source text. The findings of the study also show that many distortions or transformations between the original and the two translated versions were not only arbitrary، but also ideologically encoded in the texts، with specific purposes and functions