درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The current study was an attempt to investigate whether the Unit-of-Translation has any effect on Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners’ achievement in Bizarre News translation. In addition, it investigated whether there was any difference across gender regarding the effect of Unit-of-Translation on Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners’ achievement in Bizarre News translation. To this end, 45 out of 88 EFL learners from three upper-intermediate language learners at two Language Institutes in Boumehen, Iran were selected based on Oxford Placement Test. Then, they were divided randomly into three groups; one control group (N=15) and two experimental groups (N=30). The first experimental group was male. The second experimental was female, and the third group was administered as the control group. The experimental groups received the instruction for unit of translation. The instruction was given in five sequential sessions about 50 minutes. In contrast, the control group received no special instruction. At the end of the course, a post-test was administered. To analyze the data, one-way ANOVA and independent samples t-test were run. The findings revealed that the Unit-of-Translation had a positively significant effect on Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners’ achievement in Bizarre News translation. The results also indicated that concerning the effect of Unit-of-Translation on Iranian male upper-intermediate EFL learners had a better achievement in Bizarre News translation compared to their counterparts in the female group.

Television can be considered a rich, helpful, and valuable source to expose L2 learners to huge amounts of comprehensible input so that they can improve their L2 knowledge and, in particular, their L2 vocabulary knowledge. This study aimed to discover how effective sustainable and extensive TV viewing can be in L2 vocabulary learning, considering the language of the on-screen text (L1 or L2) and instruction type (preteaching L2 items or not). Eighty L2 learners (58 female and 22 male), who had an intermediate English proficiency and were divided into four groups, participated in the intervention over an academic term in a language institute. Participants viewed 14 episodes of a TV series under four experimental conditions: (1) captions and preteaching, (2) captions without preteaching, (3) subtitles and preteaching, and (4) subtitles without preteaching. A pre/posttest design to examine the gains regarding both L2 vocabulary meaning and form was adopted. Results suggested that extensive exposure to TV series positively affected the participants’ L2 vocabulary learning, both in terms of meaning and form. Participants exposed to L2 captions outperformed those who had received L1 subtitles, concerning both L2 vocabulary meaning and form. Finally, the analyses showed that, overall, the groups that had undergone preteaching performed better, regardless of the language of the on-screen texts.

This study investigated the creativity-supportive behaviors of Iranian EFL teachers. A mixed-methods data collection approach was adopted: quantitative data were obtained from randomly selected 94 teachers and 216 students through the Persian version of the Creativity Fostering Teaching (CFT) index (Soh, 2000), and qualitative data were collected via students' reports on twelve classroom aspects. To analyze the quantitative data, an independent samples t-test and for the qualitative data, thematic analysis coding were used. There was a significant difference between the teachers' and the students' views on creativity-supportive behaviors of Iranian EFL teachers. Additionally, environment and interaction were extracted as two main themes from the analysis of the qualitative data. These two themes were discussed as the central factors influencing the creativity-supportive behaviors of the teachers. Although most Iranian EFL teachers want and try to adopt strategies and activities to develop or support creativity in their classrooms, the results showed that Iranian EFL students do not experience the classrooms as a locus of supporting creativity. Generally, creativity is not implemented and supported in Iranian EFL classrooms. The findings illustrate that teacher-training programs should equip Iranian EFL teachers with the knowledge and strategies of creativity- fostering instruction.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has brought about many changes and challenges in our lives, interactions, relationships, and modes of learning and teaching and helped us learn how to adapt ourselves to unanticipated conditions to survive. It stimulated universities, schools, and institutions of higher education to rethink and restructure their policies to find solutions to the problems as well as researchers all around the world to help educational systems get out of the mess. This study aimed to contribute to the body of literature and investigated the impacts of COVID-19 on English language teacher education. Convenience sampling was employed to recruit thirty student teachers as the participants of the study. To do the study, the author used semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews (n = 20), student teachers' reflective journals (n = 10), and his own reflective journals to collect the data. Grounded theory was used for data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that there was a shift from anomaly to congruity, student teachers saw the pandemic as an opportunity, they felt the need for technology inclusion, development, and promotion in their educational contexts, there was an urgent need to train teachers and learners to use technology in their contexts to keep the education running, and teachers had to reconstruct their identities and turn to formative assessment. The findings can contribute to the body of literature and prompt English language teacher education programs, teacher educators, administrators, teachers, and policymakers to consider the findings while they are designing, upgrading, reforming, and running their syllabi, curriculums, and programs.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between listening assessment task types, time on task, and the use of listening strategy by Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose, a group of 44 Iranian EFL students (Males and Females; 14 to 25 years old) selected through convenience sampling from an English language institute in Sanandaj participated in this study. Then, they were randomly assigned into four experimental groups. In one group, note-taking was considered the listening assessment task, while in the second group oral reproduction was specified as the assessment task for assessing listening comprehension. After that, each group was further subdivided randomly into a shorter time-on-task group (20 minutes) and a longer time-on-task group (40 minutes). Next, all groups completed Vandergrift, Goh, Mareschal, and Tafaghodtari’s (2006) Meta-cognitive Awareness Listening Strategy Questionnaire. A two-way ANOVA was run to examine the effects of both listening assessment task type and time on task on listening strategy use among the four groups. The results revealed that the students in the oral reproduction task with high time on task group significantly showed higher preferences for choosing Planning-Evaluation, Mental Translation, and Problem-Solving strategies and those in the note-taking with low time on task group preferred the Directed-Attention strategy, while those in the note-taking with high time on task group preferred Person-Knowledge strategy.

In recent years, audiovisual translation (AVT) has become omnipresent in different parts of the world; however, dubbing humor restrictions may hamper the translation in that maintaining the humor in the target language (TL) requires a high level of knowledge. Although several studies have attempted to describe the distribution of translation strategies, few systematic attempts are made to analyze the employed AVT strategies in humor series. The present study analyzed the Persian humor expressions’ appropriacy and their translated versions in English through a qualitative study. To this aim, the dominant strategies used to render humor in the translated versions of 3 dubbed Iranian series (i.e., Shamsolemareh, Chimney, and Medical Building ) were analyzed. Furthermore, the typologies of the employed audiovisual humor in the series were analyzed. Data analysis illustrated that clumsiness and parody were the most frequent humor typologies used in the series. The 3 strategies of omission, word-for-word translation, and free translation were the most frequent ones. In conclusion, the results indicated the failure to accommodate the Iranian series’ humorous level, preventing the target audience from appreciating humor. Findings can contribute to the improvement of the quality of humor translation.

One prominent criterion to achieve efficient learning and instruction in an educational setting is the appropriate material(s) specifically developed for that particular group of learners, particularly in an English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) context. This study aimed at developing new EOP materials for pre-service cabin crew in an aviation school. To do so, initially the researchers performed the evaluation of the current EOP textbook through a checklist and interviews with 20 English teachers who did not express much satisfaction about it. Consequently, having been convinced about the unsatisfactory results, the researchers developed new materials for this group of learners. The new materials was later implemented on 30 learners as the experimental group as opposed to another 30 as the control group being instructed by the current material. The findings demonstrated significant differences in the experimental group achievement of language proficiency at the end of the course compared to their language proficiency at the beginning of the course. Moreover, the results expressed significant differences between the achievement of control and experimental groups at the end of EOP courses, in favor of the experimental group. The newly developed EOP materials for flight attendants could be widely instructed in the airlines and aviation schools based on the obtained findings.

The present study was an evaluation attempt to investigate the practicality of interpretation procedures proposed by Fairclough (1989) in the critical analysis of Persian texts. The evaluation was implemented on the basis of a goodness criterion, analytical induction (AI) framework developed by Silverman (1993). In so doing, we went about the interpretation of the inaugural speech made by the president of Iran, Dr. Rohani to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2013. The interpretation was done according to the Fairclough’s interpretation model in light of AI theoretical framework. The outcome of the study supported the practicality of the overall interpretation model in the Iranian context. However, considering Iranian special sociolinguistic context, the study also put forward some suggestions with respect to the interpretation of local coherence and text structure in the lower section of the model as well as situational context and intertextual context in upper section.  

Abstract Addressing the limitations and criticisms of cloze tests, Klein-Braley and Raatz suggested a modified version of the cloze test called the C-test where the ‘C’ stands for cloze. They introduced the C-test as a better representation of the reduced-redundancy principle. In C-tests, several shorter texts involving a larger number of items completed within a shorter amount of time while cloze tests usually consist of one or two longer texts with less items. This study reports on the results of a research program carried out to validate the C-test amongst Afghan EFL learners. One hundred advanced English majors were administered two different language tests namely a language proficiency test (composed of listening, reading, and writing) and a C-test composed of four different texts to measure the overall language ability of the participants. Various analyses were to measure the validity and reliability of the C-test. The results of the study confirmed that the C-test is a reliable and valid test which can be used as a general English language proficiency test among Afghan students of English as a foreign language.

Practicum as a component of the English language teacher education program has been welcomed by pre-service teacher education institutes. Despite the great emphasis laid on practicum by Farhangian University, it has not been evaluated comprehensively by the student teachers and graduated student teachers up to now.  The main objective of the study was to explore the benefits and problems of the practicum program. To do so, a qualitative case study was employed. 25 informants were recruited using a purposive sampling procedure. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with student teachers and graduated student teachers. The interpretational and reflective analysis techniques were employed to analyze the data. The findings were content analyzed in terms of benefits/advantages and challenges of the practicum. They indicate that practicum courses make the student teachers ready for real teaching, help them learn about the realities of real teaching and overcome the negative attitudes and feelings about the teaching profession. It has been also found that the practicum program needs revision in terms of evaluation, quality of placement schools, and cooperation between mentors, university educators and student teachers. Findings can be used by teacher training institutes, practicum educators, school mentors, and EFL student teachers.

Culture is an integral facet of teaching and learning English as a foreign language. This qualitative study examined EFL teachers’ perceptions toward fostering their students’ cultural awareness in Iranian language schools. Based on a researcher-developed protocol, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve EFL teachers from Tehran, Karaj, and Urmia, Iran, whose teaching experiences ranged from 6 to 19 years, with the purpose of identifying their perceptions, experiences, and challenges regarding fostering students’ cultural awareness. The interviews drew upon emergent methodology to categorize the interviewees’ value-laden comments into six major attitudinal themes of meaning of culture, the role of English culture and social norms in EFL teaching and learning, the materials and activities teachers employ to foster their students’ cultural awareness, benefits of teaching English culture in Iranian language schools, EFL teachers’ challenges regarding teaching English culture, and teachers’ suggestions or recommendations regarding teaching culture in the Iranian EFL context. The findings illustrated that despite the fact that Iranian EFL teachers preferred to include cultural content in their courses, they faced a variety of challenges regarding teaching English culture and social norms. Further, Iranian policymakers, stakeholders, and educators are expected to provide professional training opportunities for EFL teachers in teaching English culture. Thus, teaching culture should be underscored in EFL classes and instructors are required to explore and apply various effective strategies and authentic materials to enhance their language learners’ cultural knowledge. The implications are presented and discussed in more detail in the paper.

The relationship between identity and language learning has attracted the scholars` attention in the fields of second language acquisition (SLA) with considerable focus on social and cultural dimensions of language learning. However, relatively little research has been devoted to examining the identity construction of language learners in virtual communities of practice despite the global trend of foreign language instruction. Consequently, the current mixed methods classroom-based study investigated whether the implementation of intercultural movie clips in virtual communities of practice could contribute to social and cultural identity improvement of participants in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context. To achieve this goal, two intact classes in an institute were assigned to experimental and control group, each containing thirty EFL learners. This study was implemented on the pre-test post-test equivalent-group design. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis, using two questionnaires, and a semi-structured interview, the results indicated that positive changes took place in social and cultural identity of the participants. Moreover, by getting access to new social, cultural and linguistic resources and as a result the adoption of new identities, some special features such as fewer psychological barriers to understanding others, increasing courage to accept new norms, and feelings of unity and equity were obtained by the learners.