پژوهش های آموزشی و کاربردی زبان انگلیسی (زبانشناسی کاربردی سابق)
Journal of Applied Linguistics, Vol.9, No.19, Fall & Winter 2016 (مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
مقالات
حوزه های تخصصی:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among Iranian EFL university lecturers’ professional and institutional identity, and their teaching efficacy. To this end, 100 EFL university lecturers from different branches of Islamic Azad Universities, including Kermanshah, Isfahan and Hamedan, took part in the study by completing the Professional Identity Questionnaire, the Institutional Identity Questionnaire, and the Teachers’ Efficacy Scale. The sampling strategy for selection of the participants of this study was convenience sampling. To answer the research questions, Pearson product-moment correlation and Multiple-regression analyses were run. The results showed that there exists a statistically significant positive relationship between EFL university lecturers' a) professional identity and teaching efficacy, and b) institutional identity and teaching efficacy.
The Effect of Self-regulated Strategy Instruction on Iranian EFL Learners' Writing Ability(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
This study explored the effect of teaching Self-Regulated Strategy on the writing accuracy and cohesion of Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, this study followed the SRS instruction model, using a transition word chart, examples, and a graphic organizer. To achieve the objectives, 50 intermediate Iranian EFL learners participated in this study. The design was experimental which used a proficiency, pretest-posttest and random sampling. The analyses of writing tests in the control and experimental groups revealed that SRS instruction had a positive impact on the participants’ writing ability. The effect of SRS instruction was significant on the participants’ writing accuracy and cohesion. The findings draw language instructors’ attention to the meta-cognitive dimension of writing and importance of teaching self-regulatory strategies as a way for achieving autonomy in writing.
Using Critical Discourse Analysis Based Instruction to Improve EFL Learners’ Writing Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
The literature of ELT is perhaps overwhelmed by attempts to enhance learners’ writing through the application of different methodologies. One such methodology is critical discourse analysis which is founded upon stressing not only the decoding of the propositional meaning of a text but also its ideological assumptions. Accordingly, this study was an attempt to investigate the impact of critical discourse analysis-based (CDA) instruction on EFL learners’ writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 female intermediate EFL learners were selected from among a total number of 100 through their performance on a piloted sample PET. Based on the results, the students were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group with 30 participants in each. Both groups underwent the same amount of teaching time during 17 sessions which included a treatment of CDA instruction for the experimental group. A writing posttest was administered at the end of the instruction to both groups and their mean scores on the test were compared through a MANOVA. The results led to the rejection of the three null hypotheses, thereby demonstrating that the learners in the experimental group benefited significantly more than those in the control group in terms of improving their writing CAF. To this end, it is recommended that CDA instruction be incorporated more frequently in writing classes following of course adequate syllabus design and materials development.
Investigating the Possibilities of Reading Literary Texts in Light of a Sociolinguistic Perspective: Applications on the Case of Alice Walker’s Selected Short Stories(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
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The present research tries to show how race, class, and gender and intersectionality in general, have their decisive impact on the black- American women; and how Alice Walker as a womanist, in her selected short stories, tries to show that black women in the U.S. suffer two-fold acts of oppression and discrimination, i.e. male violence affects all women in social life, irrespective of age or social standing, and at the same time being black has exacerbated the black American women’s situation. In the present study, the mentioned socio-political, socio-cultural and institutionalized intersectionality have been analyzed from the perspective of Alice Walker’s selected short stories. Full analysis have been carried out, from applied linguistic point of view, in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and “Roselily” while Alice Walker’s other short stories have been consulted for further analysis and discussion. The method used to analyze the data is descriptive research method.
The Comparative Effect of Direct and Indirect Corrective Feedback in Process-Based Vs. Product-Based Writing Instruction on EFL Learners` Writing Performance(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
This study attempted to systematically inspect the impact of direct and indirect corrective feedbacks on the writing ability of EFL learners when using product/process based instructions. To do so, 110 female EFL learners, between the ages of 15 and 18, were randomly assigned into four experimental groups to receive four different kinds of treatments, namely product-based instruction with direct feedback, product-based instruction with indirect feedback, process-based instruction with direct feedback, and process-based instruction with indirect feedback. The treatment took 10 sessions. Analyzing the results of the two writing tests (pretest and posttest) showed that direct feedback had significant effects on EFL learners' writing in process-based instruction and product-based instruction but indirect feedback failed to show any significant effect on EFL learners' writing in both process-based instruction and product-based instruction. The results also indicated that direct feedback had significantly better impact on EFL learners writing in the process-based instruction than product-based one.
The Comparison of Typed and Handwritten Essays of Iranian EFL Students in terms of Length, Spelling, and Grammar(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
This study attempted to compare typed and handwritten essays of Iranian EFL students in terms of length, spelling, and grammar. To administer the study, the researchers utilized Alice Touch Typing Tutor software to select 15 upper intermediate students with higher ability to write two essays: one typed and the other handwritten. The students were both males and females between the ages of 22 to 35. The analyses of the students’ scores in the three mentioned criteria through three paired samples t-tests indicate that typed essays are significantly better than handwritten ones in terms of length of texts and grammatical mistakes, but not significantly different in spelling mistakes. Positive effects of typing can provide a logical reason for students, especially TOEFL applicants, to spend more time on acquiring typing skill and also for teachers to encourage their students with higher typing ability to choose typed format in their essays.
The Impact of Three Feedback Types on Postgraduate TEFL Student Teachers’ Writing Accuracy and Organization(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
One skill that student teachers need to develop during their academic studies is the capacity to produce accurate and well-organized texts. This study reports on the comparative impact of metalinguistic feedback (MLF), teacher interactive feedback (TIF(, and the peer-feedback (PF) on the accuracy and organization of postgraduate ELT student teachers’ writing. The participants were 57 postgraduate students who were recruited from a population of 70 postgraduate students, in three classes, that were randomly assigned as the MLF group, the TIF group, and the PF group based on the focus of the presentation and the feedback type they would receive during the 14 session treatment. A hybrid process-oriented and genre-based methodology was employed to teach the identical teaching materials to all the groups with a focus on grammatical features and relevant grammatical exercises in the MLF group, on reflective and interactive negotiation of form and meaning in the TIF group, and on individual peer-assessment of the peer’s writing in the PF group. The results revealed significantly higher levels of accuracy among the MLF group with no significant difference in the organization of the groups’ writing. The findings underscore the role of MLF in enhancing accuracy.
Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Merry Shelly’s Frankenstein and its Cinematic Adaptation(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
Within Systemic Functional Linguistics, Grammatical Metaphor (GM) is a meaning-making resource lying at the experiential level that extends the meaning potential through cross-stratal re-mappings between the grammar and the semantics, boiling down, in one of its manifestations to expressing something that should have been a process (verb) in terms of a thing (noun). This study is an attempt at seeing how the frequency of GM used in the novel ‘Frankenstein’ written by Mary Shelly plays out in its cinematic adaptation. It is an attempt at investigating possible differences in the use of GM in the novel as a type of literary prose fiction and in one of its cinematic adaptations, the respective frequencies, along with what implications these differences carry in terms of generic features and functions of GM. In the 4200-word corpus analyzed for the movie adaptation, there were 70 instances of GM emerging upon analysis. In the 4200-word purposively sampled excerpt of the novel, there were above 330 instances of GM emerging. So the frequency of instances of GM in the written version was much more than that in the cinematic adaptation. This significant difference carries many possible cognitive, semantic, discursive, generic and textual implications. A number of pedagogical implications accrue to this research, such as increasing the knowledge of teachers and English language instructors with regard to the role of GM in making metaphorical forms in different texts, increasing knowledge of how to approach the teaching of the skill of reading and writing in upper-intermediate and intermediate classes, deeper critical reading abilities for learners, etc.
The Effect of Multimedia-Based Instruction on Improving Iranian EFL Learners’ Grammar Knowledge and their Attitudes(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
Applying technologies has recently caused language education to undertake influential modifications. Hence, this study tried to investigate the impact of using technology in form of multimedia on improving grammar knowledge of Iranian high school students and also examined their attitudes toward multimedia-based mode of instruction. To do so, three intact classes of lower intermediate students were randomly divided into three groups: multimedia, multimedia + textbook, and control group. After homogenizing the groups regarding their proficiency level, the pre-test was run and results indicated no significant difference. Treatment lasted for 8 sessions, during which the first experimental group was taught through using multimedia elements like cartoons, texts, and Power Point Presentation. The second group had their textbook besides multimedia, while the control group was instructed traditionally by means of the textbook. Comparing the groups’ scores on the post-test revealed the superiority of multimedia + textbook group over the other groups in their grammar test performance. The questionnaire outcomes also showed more positive tendency of the students in this group in comparison to the multimedia only group toward application of multimedia programs. Findings of this study might open a novel way to assist EFL learners to increase their grammar knowledge more successfully.
Investigating Lexico-grammaticality in Academic Abstracts and Their Full Research Papers from a Diachronic Perspective(مقاله پژوهشی دانشگاه آزاد)
حوزه های تخصصی:
Development of science and academic knowledge has led to changes in academic language and transfer of information and knowledge. In this regard, the present study is an attempt to investigate lexico-grammaticality in academic abstracts and their full research papers in Linguistics, Chemistry and Electrical engineering papers published during 1991-2015 in academic journals from a diachronic perspective through quantitative research design. The focus of this paper is on transitivity, mood and theme analysis in the corpus according to Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics model. So, all the attempts are to find the changes in abstracts and research papers of these disciplines and how they are to be positioned in different linguistic contexts over time. The results revealed that research papers employ the spectrum of possible lexical realization quite differently as compared to general English, especially concerning the use of specific lexical items. Also, the results of chi-squares of each discipline showed that there are significant differences between papers over time at .05 level of significance (.000< .05) with regard to the transitivity, mood, and theme.