سید آیت الله رزمجو

This study aims at evaluating the coursebooks taught at the intermediate level of adult and young adult departments of the Iran Language Institute in terms of multiple intelligence types introduced by Gardner (1983) to see to what extent such coursebooks represent the Multiple Intelligence Theory. To fulfill the objectives, a checklist developed by Botelho (2003) and localized by the researchers on the basis of this theory was used. The coursebooks were analyzed according to this checklist and the frequencies and percentages of occurrence of each type of intelligence were calculated. The results of the study showed that verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical and visual/spatial types of intelligence were the most dominant intelligence types in the analyzed coursebooks. Naturalistic and bodily/kinesthetic types of intelligence were the least common types represented in the coursebooks. A comparison was also made between the coursebooks taught to adults and young adults at the Iran Language Institute and the results presented a significant difference between the percentage of occurrence of logical/mathematical, bodily/kinesthetic, visual/spatial, intrapersonal and musical types of intelligence between the two sets of coursebooks. On the other hand, the difference between the percentage of occurrence of verbal/linguistic, interpersonal and naturalistic types of intelligence was not significant.

The present study takes Engeström human activity system model (1987, 1999) as a theoretical framework to investigate the CLT-based English curriculum reform in Iran which was initiated in 2013 by the Ministry of Education in public schools. With the premise that human activity is artifact-mediated and goal-directed, activity theory makes it possible to demonstrate the complex and dynamic relationship between various institutional, social, and individual factors by revealing different contradictions that language teachers would experience as they attempt to implement CLT in their classroom contexts. In addition to 23 language teachers who consisted the main participants of this study, three other groups including 17 teacher directors, 23 students, and 20 parents took part. Document analysis, semi-structured interview, and classroom observation comprised the data collection instruments. The results indicated that despite their optimism about and keen interest in CLT-based reform, Iranian language teachers could not successfully implement CLT due to their inability to successfully resolve the contradictions that emerged in their activity system. These contradictions in turn stemmed from a number of difficulties that emanate from various sources including teachers themselves, students, their parents, school staff, educational system, and the new package. Based on the findings, a number of implications and suggestions are provided for the Iranian curriculum developers, language teachers, parents, and teacher directors

Among the four important factors in the educational contexts, namely, teachers, learners, textbooks and contexts, textbooks play an important role in English Language Teaching (ELT), particularly in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom where it provides the primary source of linguistic input. The wealth of published material for English language teaching (ELT) available in the market makes selecting the right coursebook a challenging task. As such, it necessitates developing a textbook evaluation scheme so that the stakeholders benefit from the proposed model as a dependable criterion with regard to selecting the most appropriate textbook among the wealth of published textbooks. Taking these points into consideration, this study aimed at investigating and evaluating the available textbook evaluation schemes and checklists and seeking the experts’ viewpoints with the objective of developing and designing a textbook evaluation scheme pertinent and beneficial to the expanding circle. As such, the existing textbooks evaluation schemes were reviewed critically and the experts’ viewpoints were sought. Accordingly, a textbook evaluation scheme consisting of 6 main factors containing 41 items has been developed and proposed

تحقیق حاضر به بررسی اثرات دو نوع از انواع حاشیه نویسی تعاریف واژگان بر درک مطلب خواندن در میان دانشجویانی که در سطح متوسطی از مهارت زبانی هستند پرداخته است.بدین منظور، دو گروه آزمایشی مورد مطالعه به خواندن 10 متن آکادمیک تحت شرایط مختلف مبادرت ورزیدند. یکی از گروه ها، هنگام خواندن متن چندرسانه ای کامپیوتری، از تعاریف متنی که با اشاره گر ماوس بر صفحه نمایش ظاهر می شد استفاده کرد. گروه دیگر، هنگام خواندن متون، از تعاریف ترکیبی(متن و تصویر) که به آشکارسازی معانی کلید واژگان کمک می کرد بهره جست. گروه کنترل، در مقابل،از هیچ نوع حاشیه نویسی استفاده نکرد و تنها بر متد حدس زدن تکیه کرد. نتایج تحقیق نشان داد که گروه آزمایشی که از حاشیه نویسی ترکیبی استفاده کرده بود میانگین بالاتری را نسبت به دو گروه دیگر در آزمون درک مطلب کسب نمود. در عین حال، گروهی که از تعاریف متنی استفاده کرده بود نسبت به گروه کنترل میانگین بالاتری اخذ کرد. یک توجیه آن است که به احتمال زیاد حاشیه نویسی ترکیبی تعاریف واژگان در آشکارسازی بهتر و مؤثرتر واژگان کلیدی متن خواندن کمک بیشتری می کند که در نتیجه آن درک مطلب به نحو عمیق تری صورت می گیرد.

Using a mixed methods design, the present study attempted to identify the factors influencing Iranian untrained EFL raters in rating group oral discussion tasks. To fulfil this aim, 16 language learners of varying proficiency levels were selected and randomly assigned to groups of four and performed a group discussion task. Thirty two untrained raters were also selected based on their volunteer participations. They listened to the audio files of the group discussions and assigned a score of one to six to each language learners based on their own judgments. They also provided comments on each language learners’ performance pointing to why they assigned such scores. The researchers had an interview with the raters after the rating session as well. The quantitative phase investigated whether linguistic features of accuracy, fluency, complexity and amount of talk were attended to by the raters in terms of having any relationship to the scores the raters assigned. Speech rate as an index of fluency and amount of talk turned out to be significantly correlated with the scores. Of more importance was the qualitative phase with the aim of identifying other factors that may account for the scores. The comments provided by the raters on each score and the interviews were codified based on Content Analysis (CA) approach. It was found that the raters attend not only to the linguistic features in rating oral group discussions, but they are also sensitive to the interactional features like the roles the participants take in groups tasks and the overall interaction patterns of the groups. The findings of this study may shed light on group oral assessment in terms of training the raters rating group oral tests and developing rating scales specific for group oral assessment.

Flipped learning is an instructional approach that underlines the efficient use of classroom time by shifting the conventional activities of learners and educators in and out of the class. In flipped learning, students' roles as passive listeners change to active participants in classroom activities. The present study was designed to build a model of flipped classroom instruction (FCI) for the general IELTS writing. Additionally, this research intended to examine if there is a meaningful difference between the students’ general IELTS writing scores in the flipped class and those in the conventional class. An FCI model was carefully developed based on the thematic analysis of the previous flipped classroom studies about writing. Then it was operationally explained for a general IELTS writing class. The participants of the study consisted of 100 male and female Iranian EFL learners. Fifty learners were randomly selected to experience FCI and the other fifty learners received conventional classroom instruction. The findings revealed that the learners in the flipped classes, on average, acquired higher scores than the learners in conventional classes.