درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study investigated the effects of eliciting tasks on listening comprehension among Iranian pre-intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To do the current study, 30 participants out of 40 were selected through administering an Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). After that, the participants were divided into two equal groups; one experimental and one control group. Then, a listening comprehension pre-test was administered to assess the participants’ listening comprehension at the beginning of the course. The experimental group received the treatment through eliciting tasks. Then, the control group received common instruction and was engaged in the ordinary program of the classroom. After twelve sessions of instruction, a post-test of listening comprehension was administered to gather the sufficient data. Data were analyzed through independent and paired samples t-tests and the results indicated that both experimental and control groups had better performance on their post-test compared to their pre-test. More importantly, the results showed that there was a significant difference between the post-tests of both groups. In fact, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the post-test thanks to eliciting tasks activities. The study has implications for language teachers and learners; e.g., Eliciting tasks help to develop a learner-centered classroom and a simulating environment while making learning memorable by linking new and old information.

This study explored the autonomy of advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in reading comprehension through scaffolding and jigsaw in computer-assisted and conventional contexts. After being homogenized through the reading section of DIALANG proficiency test, a total of 80 female advanced EFL learners with the age range of 21 to 45 were selected as the participants of the study. They were randomly assigned to four groups: experimental group A (scaffolding in a conventional context), experimental group B (scaffolding in a computer-assisted context), experimental group C (jigsaw in a conventional context), and experimental group D (jigsaw in a computer-assisted context). Next, the autonomy in RC questionnaire, which was designed and piloted by Ebadi and Shirzad (in press), was administered as the pretest. Then, the learners in each group took part in three months (16 sessions) autonomy in reading comprehension training courses. After the treatment, the same autonomy in RC questionnaire was administered as the posttest. One-way ANCOVA was used to analyze the quantitative data. The results revealed that although both jigsaw and scaffolding approaches were successful in both conventional and computer assisted contexts from pre-test to post-test, the scaffolding method proved more effective. Moreover, both the scaffolding and jigsaw approaches were more effective in computer-assisted environment compared to conventional contexts, with the scaffolding CA approach outperforming the jigsaw CA technique. The findings’ implications for learners, teachers, and syllabus designers are discussed in both contexts.

The present study aimed to study the relationship between teachers’ creativity, classroom management, age and gender. To achieve these goals, 70 Iranian EFL teachers participated in the study by filling out two questionnaires: Creativity Fostering Teacher Behavior Index developed by Soh (2000) ,and Behavior and Instructional Management Scale developed by Martin and Sass (2010). Analysis of the questionnaires revealed that there is a statistically positive significant relationship between teachers’ creativity and classroom management. In addition, the findings indicated that there is statistically significant difference across the three age groups regarding their attitudes towards creativity and classroom management. Likewise, it was revealed that there is significant difference between Iranian EFL male and female teachers concerning their attitudes towards creativity. However, the findings also indicated that there was not any statistically significant difference between Iranian EFL male and female teachers regarding their attitudes towards classroom management. The findings have implications for EFL teachers.

The present study was intended to investigate possible relationships of the development of EFL teachers’ possible selves with teacher efficacy and students’ achievement. Eighty seven teachers were selected through convenience sampling from different Language Institutes participated in this study and filled in EFL teachers’ Possible Selves Development Questionnaire as well as Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES). The participants were also requested to specify the mean scores of the achievement tests they administered to their students in the previous terms. The results of data analyses indicated significant relationships of teachers’ possible selves development with their self-efficacy and students’ achievement. To investigate which components of possible selves might have more predictive power in predicting teacher’s self-efficacy and students’ achievement, the researchers employed regression analysis. The four subscales of possible selves – ideal, ought-to, actual, and feared selves- were found to be good predictors of teacher self-efficacy and only three subscales of possible selves including ideal, ought-to, and actual selves were strongly correlated with students’ achievement. The researchers concluded by suggesting that a sense of self-efficacy as well as a concern for students’ achievement as two main senses of selves should be incorporated into the possible selves of EFL teachers through implementing specific pre-service as well as in-service teacher education programs.

In this study, challenges in the translation of Islamic Shi’a texts of practical laws were investigated. The English translations of the books of Islamic laws written according to three Iranian Twelver Shi’a mujtahids namely, Grand Ayatollah Wahid Khorasani, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi were examined. Next, the culture-bound terms concerning practical laws of religion in the three English translations were looked at to see what kinds of procedures have been used by different translators and which procedure(s) is/are the most frequent one(s). The results of this study indicated that the challenges found in the translation of Islamic law texts could be classified into two groups: lexical challenges and structural challenges. Moreover, it was found out that the main challenges include Islamic words, culture-specific items, units of measurement, common words with uncommon meanings, fixed expressions, and modal verbs. In addition, it was found that the translators of these texts have used six procedures more than others and those are transliteration, literal translation, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, descriptive equivalent and recognized translation. The analysis of examples in this research suggests that among all procedures, the translator, in most cases, has used transliteration and literal translation to cope with the lexical gap.

The main concern of this study was to identify Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ problems in cohesion and coherence of writing performance as well as the extent to which they utilized cohesion and coherence in their writing. It is important for EFL and ESL learners the ability to compose a piece of descriptive text. Despite its significance, there is a gap in the literature about how Iranian EFL learners write essays in this genre that this study intends to fill. The research design involved the utilization of mixed research method in addressing the research questions. The study addressed a corpus of 40 intermediate language learners’ descriptive essays, 10 experienced teachers that they were themselves at intermediate level as the questionnaire respondents and four interviewees’ answers from those volunteer experienced teachers. The results of the study revealed lack of cohesion and coherence in the participants’ essays and their writing performance in terms of these two variables was not acceptable. Therefore, the obtained findings, by implication, indicated that they had neither some aspects of cohesive and coherent writing, nor had enough support, practice and feedback on their written text in terms of cohesion and coherence. Some pedagogical implications of this study would be applicable to the language learners’ writing in terms of these two aforementioned variables as well as the results were expected to aid in setting the writing sections of classes for improvement of language learners’ written texts particularly in terms of cohesion and coherence.

The article is dedicated to the linguistic analysis of symbol of fire in the Russian symbolist poet, K. Balmont’s lyrics. The symbolic meanings of the element fire have been studied from linguistic and linguoculturological points of view. There defined mechanisms which allow expressing both traditional symbolism of fire and the one by the author; they are collaboration of mythologems and archetypes associated with the symbol explicated in the text with a proper word, in our case with the word “fire”. The subject of this study is one of a side of traditional symbolism of the element fire conditioned by Slavic, Greek mythology, Zoroastrianism, and the Biblical motives. Archetypes are represented with binary oppositions actualizing the semantics of vertical direction, ambivalence, animism, and anthropomorphism. The author’s symbolic meanings are expressed according to his rethinking of the myths and archetypes in the nearest surrounding of the symbol in the texts.

Errors are one of the enigmatic parts in the process of foreign language (L2) learning as they are extremely versatile at each and every stage of the language learning proficiency. The present study, therefore, was an attempt to reveal Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical errors in writing at two levels of proficiency, namely lower intermediate and advanced, and then to investigate whether there was a relationship between the levels of EFL learners’ proficiency and the types of grammatical errors they committed in their scripts. The study was carried out at a private language institute in Gorgan, Iran. To this end, 60 female EFL learners (30 lower intermediate and 30 advanced females) whose age ranged between 13 and 17 participated in this study and wrote 150 word writing samples on a predetermined descriptive subject. The descriptive analyses of the data based on the scoring framework of the study demonstrated the types of grammatical errors at each level of proficiency. A Chi Square test was then run in SPSS Ver. 25 on the 16 common frequent error categories between both levels of proficiency, which verified the existence of a relationship between EFL learners’ levels of proficiency and the types of written grammatical errors they committed in their writing. The findings of the study might be of interest to EFL learners, EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers.