درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the impact of manipulating task performance conditions on listening task performance by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was designed to explore the effects of changing complexity dimensions on listening task performance and to achieve two aims: to see how listening comprehension task performance was affected and to investigate possible overlaps between EFL learners’ perceptions of task difficulty and hypothesized task complexity. A purposive sample of 54 first-year EFL learners randomly assigned to two parallel conversation classes in an English department of a major public university participated in the study and performed listening tasks in a language lab. The instruments used for data collection were seven tasks taken from a TOEFL Test Preparation Kit, each followed by listening comprehension questions and an item on the participants’ personal perception of the difficulty of the task. During counter-balanced administrations, the tasks were manipulated for one of the four dimensions of task difficulty (adequacy, immediacy, perspective, and prior knowledge). The resulting data included the participants’ perception of difficulty as well as their performance scores under less complex and more complex conditions. One-sample T-test and correlation analyses of the data revealed that for all of the four complexity dimensions, the hypothesized less complex task condition led to better learner performance. The correlation between learner-assigned difficulty score for the task at hand and theoretical task complexity level was significant only for the immediacy dimension (r=-0.67, p<.05). The results offer support for task complexity frameworks, raise doubts about learners’ perceptions of tasks, and imply possibilities for task manipulation in language learning contexts.

This study investigated the comparative effect of teaching idiomatic expressions through practicing them in conversation and paragraph writing on intermediate EFL learners’ idiom learning. The participants were sorted out of a population of 134 intermediate students in Zabansara Language School in Khorramabad based on their scores on a Preliminary English Test (PET) and an idiom test piloted in advance. The selected 84 participants were divided randomly into three groups: two experimental groups, namely, conversation and paragraph writing groups, and one control group. The two experimental groups received different treatments. In one class, idioms were taught and learners were asked to make a conversation practicing the new idioms, and in the other class, they were asked to write short paragraphs using the idioms. In the third class, the control group, the new idioms were presented and then practiced through different written exercises. At the end of the treatment period, the researchers administered an idiom posttest. The analysis of the collected data revealed that using new idioms in conversation and paragraph writing helped students learn idioms more efficiently than just practicing them through different written exercises. Moreover, the use of idioms in conversation proved to be more effective than using them in paragraph writing. The findings can have implications in preparing materials, teaching/learning foreign languages, and designing syllabus.

در آموزش و ارزشیابی زبان دوم، بکارگیری یافته های پژوهشی مبتنی بر رویکردی تلفیقی و روانشناختی زبان به منظور بررسی جنبه های پردازش-اطلاعات و مدیریت تولید گفتار در فصاحت کلام لازم می باشد. این پژوهش با تکیه بر مدل روانشناختی زبان و تولید گفتار لولت (1989، 1999) و با استفاده از یک پرسشنامه و مجموعه ای از مصاحبه های بازنگرانه به مطالعه راه کارهای حل ناکارآمدی سخنگویان فصیح و غیر فصیح زبان انگلیسی پرداخته است. پس از ارزیابی صداهای ضبط شده به کمک یک مقیاس سنجش تحلیلی فصاحت کلام، سخنگویان فصیح و غیر فصیح از میان 200 نفر انتخاب شدند. نتایج حاکی از این بود که شرکت کنندگان فصیح در جهت جبران ناکارآمدی ها در گستره ی مفهومی خود، پوشش مشکلات ارتباطی، و مذاکره در مورد منظورشان با مخاطب به استفاده موثرتری از راه کارهای شناختی، زبانی، و تعاملی مبادرت ورزیدند. آنها به طور مؤثری طرح پیش گفتاری را به شکل جدیدی ارائه می کردند، ماهرانه از راهکارهای پیوستگی گفتاری استفاده می کردند، و هوشیارانه بر گفتمان نظارت داشتند. اما، سخنگویان غیر فصیح زمانیکه در تولید گفتار با مشکل مواجه می شدند طرح اولیه صحبتشان را یا بطور کامل رها می کردند یا کاملا تغییر می دادند که منجر به از هم گسستگی گفتار شان می شد. با این وجود، گاهی تلاش می کردند گفتار خود را اصلاح کنند، اما به دلیل محدودیت در توانش زبانی و تعاملی ناموفق بودند. نتایج گویای این بود که پژوهش بیشتر پیرامون فرآیندهای شناختی، زبانی، و تعاملی موثر در استفاده ی سخنگویان فصیح و غیر فصیح از راهکارها، برای تشریح ناکارآمدی های گفتاری و تفاوت فصاحت کلام در سخنگویان زبان دوم سودمند می باشد.

The primary purpose of the present study was to explore whether there was any significant relationship between attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction of Iranian EFL teachers on the one hand, and their choice of teaching strategies. Strategies mostly used by participants of the study with low, mid, and high levels of self-efficacy comprised another purpose of the study. To this end, a questionnaire was developed, piloted, validated, and its reliability was estimated for collecting the required data. Subsequently, based on cluster sampling, 420 male and female teachers from three different educational districts of Tehran responded to the questionnaire. Three separate MANOVAs were run to investigate the effect of teachers’ attitudes on strategies they employed for teaching grammar, vocabulary, and reading. This was followed by the same approach to study the effect of teachers’ self-efficacy and job-satisfaction levels, as well. The results revealed a significant relationship between three factors (attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction) and teachers’ choice of teaching strategies. Moreover, based on the scores obtained from the answers to the questionnaire, participants were classified into three levels of low, mid, and high which corresponded with their degrees of attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction. Accordingly, it was shown that high level of attitude, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction strongly affected teachers’ use of vocabulary teaching strategies; mid to high level of attitude and efficacy affected use of reading and grammar strategies. Also, it appeared that strategies for teaching vocabulary are used more frequently among teachers than grammar and reading.

Articles in general and definite articles in particular can create problems even long after all other aspects of English have been mastered. The present article investigated the learnability problems related to the acquisition of count-mass distinction of English nominals by Persian L2 learners. The theoretical underpinning of the study is the interpretability hypothesis (Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) arguing that the features which are semantically interpretable can be acquired. To this end, 50 learners constituted the participants of the study and completed a forced-choice elicitation task requiring the use of articles. The results of the study substantiated the interpretability hypothesis. Nonetheless, the advanced L2ers showed a conservative behavior in the mass context. They significantly opted for a/an in wide scope indefinite non-referential de/re context. The findings reveal that article suppliance creates more learnability problems in the plural and indefinite mass contexts compared to the count singular ones.