علی محمد فضیلت فر

This paper focuses on the impact of an asynchronous online discussion forum on the development of students’ ability in and attitudes toward writing in English. Two groups of third-year students (N = 60) majoring in English were assigned to two treatment and control groups, each receiving different types of feedback. Students in the treatment group were required to participate in an online learning environment and exchange feedback with their peers, whereas students in the control group received the traditional face-to-face feedback provided by the teacher. The results of a pre-test, a post-test, and a survey revealed that students’ writing in the treatment group significantly improved, both semantically and syntactically, and they expressed more positive attitudes toward writing. The findings also indicated that as a result of engaging in the asynchronous online discussion forum and exchanging feedback with peers, students exhibited more control over their work, involved more effectively with the learning tasks, collaborated more with their classmates, and employed self-assessment strategies to independently revise or rewrite their work. The implications of the study offer guidelines to improve and facilitate writing skill in EFL contexts.

این پژوهش تاثیر تفاوت های فردی همچون مهارت زبانی، جنسیت و سن بر روی کاربردشناسی میان زبانی فراگیران(زبان آموزان) ایرانی زبان انگلیسی در گفتمان سازمانی مخصوصاً توانایی آنان در بازشناسی و ارزیابی اشکالات کاربردی و دستوری در وضعیت گفتاری «درخواست و عذرخواهی» را بررسی می کند. به این منظور، 187 دانشجوی EFL زبان انگلیسی در سه سطح دانشگاهی لیسانس، فوق لیسانس و دکتری در این پژوهش مشارکت کردند. گردآوری داده ها به صورت مقطعی برای تجزیه و تحلیل ارتباط بین متغیرها و گفتار که توسط زبان آموزان در سطوح مختلف مهارتی بازشناسی شده و مورد سنجش قرار گرفته اند، انجام شده است. سه روش تحلیل واریانس تفاوت های کمی را بین سه گروه براساس تفاوت های فردی نشان داد. علاوه براین، تحلیل عمیق آیتم های آزمون نشان داد که زبان آموزان در سه سطح مهارتی، اشکالات دستوری را به صورت جدی تر از اشکالات کاربردی تشخیص داده و ارزیابی کرده اند. نتایج، اطلاعات توسعه ای و کیفی در مورد ویژگی های شناختی و فردی را به تبع اطلاعات کاربردی آشکار کرد. یکی از الزامات قابل توجه آن است که در هر گونه توضیحی از توسعه توانش کاربردشناختی، تفاوت های فردی که بین مراحل شناخت و هدف همچون تولید، ایجاد شده باید مورد توجه قرار گیرد. علاوه براین، مهارت زبان شناختی نه تنها برای زبان آموزان ضرورت دارد، بلکه دستیابی به مهارت کاربردی نیز مهم است.

In the present study, an attempt is made to investigate the frequency and motives of using avoidance strategies by a group of Iranian intermediate language learners through their own journal writing. The effect of gender on the use of avoidance strategies is to be investigated as well. Thirty nine female and twenty three male learners enrolled in an English language spoken course in a private English institute served as the subjects. They were to write freely about their reactions, questions, and their feelings on their endeavor to speak English at the end of each session. One questionnaire was also included to survey the learners overall learning preferences and motivation. Examination and the analysis of the learners’ diaries revealed that using avoidance strategies was due, in turn, to the lack of knowledge, effect of fellow students, stress, lack of confidence, the effect of the teacher, score, and fatigue. Analysis also revealed that females used strategies more frequently than male supporting a number of research done previously on the same area.

If an adequate picture of reading comprehension deficits is to be obtained, the problem of structural knowledge needs to be explored. Once the words in a sentence are recognized, the structure of the sentence needs to be figured out. This understanding plays a crucial role in helping the readers to compute the appropriate relationship between the "people or objects" referred to in the sentences. Individual words within the sentences as well as their order influence the assignment of structural roles to a sentence. Mitchel, Cuetos and Zagar (1990) argue that two kinds of 8 computation are carried out by a reader: understanding the categories of word strings and managing the order in which they appear in sentences. The order of the items used in a sentence like "The dog chased the cat" and its reversal of the roles in the same sentence "The cat chased the dog" illustrate the significance of word ordering in sentence interpretation. Thus, for a reader, a grammatical sentence is not merely a haphazard collection of words, but an arrangement of words which must include identifiable relationships. In this regard, of course, there are formal signals which help readers to recognize sentence structures (Taha, 1983) among which two structures will be discussed later in this article. But we need to explore a little bit about structure understanding before we go to these structures.