درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study investigated teachers’ views toward computer technology in teaching English pronunciation. In order to select teachers for the semi-structured interview, the researcher used a questionnaire and distributed it to 25 teachers from two Islamic Azad Universities of Guilan, Iran. The researcher chose 15 of them based on their answers to the questionnaire. Then a qualitative method design was used. It consisted of semi-structured interview questions with a sample of 15 teachers chosen from two Azad Universities. Data were collected and analyzed. Qualitative data were analyzed according to the process of reducing data, constructing theme, and drawing conclusions from the data. The findings showed teachers’ interest in using computer technology because it provided them with enjoyable and interactive environment, helped them obtain accurate pronunciation, and improved the quality of their pronunciation instruction. The findings also revealed that using computer technology raised teachers’ confidence and motivation toward it because it had a high potential that changed their instruction. Moreover, the findings indicated that teachers had enough knowledge of computer technology that helped them teach pronunciation effectively. In addition, the findings represented that using computer technology was not a threat to the traditional methods but it brought about better results than these methods.

Private speech utilization is accepted to have a critical role in the continuum of language acquisition. As a valuable device in studying learners’ talk during interaction, a language related episode (LRE) is any part of a dialogue where a student speaks about a language problem s/he comes across while completing a task. The present study investigated the role of private speech produced by Intermediate Iranian EFL learners while they were involved in completing a dictogloss. For this purpose, 12 female EFL learners were chosen and they were required to speak about a lexical item cooperatively while they were completing a dictogloss task. These interactions were recorded and their lexical language related episodes were transcribed. In order to investigate the private speech used in the interactions, data was coded for different forms and contents of private speech and their functions were identified. The results indicate that private speech is mostly used for self-regulation and gaining control over the task. The study has implications for teachers and researchers by giving insights on how L2 is used in interactions.

Web-quests are internet-based technology applications in which groups of students follow a specific set of steps toward the completion of a final project on a specific subject or a multi-disciplinary subject. The present study aimed to investigate the impacts of using web-quests on learning vocabulary by Iranian pre-university students. The sample of the study consisted of 72 students assigned into two groups. One of the groups represented the control group, and included 23 students; the other group represented the experimental group and comprised 49 students. The two groups were chosen from a population of pre-university students in Chadegan, Isfahan, Iran. The web-quest strategy was used in teaching the experimental group, while the traditional method was used with the control group in the second term of the school year 2015-2016. An Oxford Placement Test (OPT), a vocabulary pretest, a vocabulary posttest, and an attitude questionnaire were the data elicitation tools employed in this study. The collected data were analyzed using independent-samples t test, which was used to determine the existence of possible significant differences between the groups both before and after the instruction. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences between both groups in favor of the experimental group. The conclusion, thus, could be that the students in the experimental group, who used the web-quest resources for learning vocabulary, performed significantly better than the students in the control group, who learnt vocabulary through traditional method of learning vocabulary. Finally, questionnaire data analyzed via one-sample t test indicated that the experimental group learners had a positive attitude towards the treatment they experienced in the experiment.

The present study is an attempt to compare the use of different forms of greeting speech acts presented in Iranian junior high school textbooks, i.e. Prospect series (I, II, III) and Four Corners series (1, 2, 3 and 4) which are quite popular in Iranian high schools and institutions. To this end, greeting forms in the language function and conversation sections of these two series were analyzed to see how they were presented on the basis of a modified version of Searle’s (1967) greeting speech act classification introduced by Hang (2010). The obtained results indicated that ‘greeting by using questions’ was the most frequent form of all greeting forms in both series. In addition, the results of chi-square revealed that there was no significant difference between the occurrence frequencies of greeting forms of speech act in the two series. The findings of the study have some implications for textbook designers in terms of incorporation of speech acts in upcoming textbooks.

Learning styles are considered among the significant factors that aid instructors in deciding how well their students learn a second or foreign language (Oxford, 2003). Although this issue has been accepted broadly in educational psychology,further research is required to examine the relationship between learning styles and language learning skills. Thus, the present study was carried out to investigate the relationship between the perceptual learning style preferences and the participants’ writing achievement after receiving instruction based on computer-assisted language learning within the activity theory framework. For this purpose, 67 students majoring in English translation at a university in Iran were selected as the participants of the study based on their performance on a version of The Oxford Placement Test. A correlational research design was employed using a writing pretest and posttest and a style preference questionnaire. The writing instruction was based on an e-learning platform designed according to the activity theory framework. The results indicated lack of significant relationship between the participants’learning style preferences and theirwriting achievement. It was also found that there was no significant difference in the writing achievement of the participants across different learning style preferences.