درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The current study aimed to develop a Formative Assessment of Writing (FAoW) instrument through operationalizing Black and Wiliam’s (2009) Formative Assessment (FA) and Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) feedback model. Following intuitive approach of scale construction (Hase & Goldberg, 1967), a comprehensive review of the literature was undertaken, and 30 Likert scale items were devised.  The items tapped students’ experiences of FA practices in writing classrooms and their attitudes towards the helpfulness of each practice.  In a focused group interview, the items were intuitively classified by three experts of writing and assessment based on the five components of FA (clarifying criteria, evidence on students’ learning, feedback to move learners forward, peer assessment and autonomy) and in three stages (“Where the learner is going/Pre-writing, “Where the learner is right now/Writing and “How to get there/ Post-writing”). The expert interviews resulted in revisions and 20 additional items. They also agreed that items in FAoW instrument corresponded with the theoretical frameworks of FA as well as the three stages of feedback.

The attitude one has towards language learning determines the success or failure of learning the language. To this effect, this study aimed to explore EFL learners’ attitudes towards communicative language learning and the relationship between learners’ attitudes and English language achievement. To address these objectives, the study adopted a survey research design. Two hundred seventeen grade 11 students were selected through simple random sampling technique. Attitude questionnaire, achievement test and interview were tools of data collection. In order to verify students’ attitudes towards communicative language learning, the mean score obtained from attitude scale and qualitative descriptions of the interview data were utilized. To address the relationship between students’ attitudes to communicative language learning and English language achievement, and to decide the predictive power of attitude on learners’ English language achievement, Pearson correlation and regression were applied respectively. In addition, t-test was used to investigate if gender caused attitude difference or not. The findings indicated positive attitude towards communicative language learning. In addition, it was found that attitude to communicative language learning significantly predicted achievement scores of the students. Furthermore, gender was not found to be a determining factor in the attitude towards communicative language learning.

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of input-enhancement and production of sentences, containing the target structures, on learning grammar by Iranian Intermediate EFL learners. Sixty male students in three input, output, and control groups participated in the study. After checking the homogeneity of the participants with a proficiency test, the researchers administered a pretest. Input-based group received input enhancement within reading texts in which the target structures were highlighted with different techniques such as bolding and underlying. The output-based group were required to produce some sentences including target structures based on reading texts. The control group received traditional grammar instruction. The results of ANCOVA revealed that both experimental groups learned the target structures better than the control group; however, the input-based group outperformed output-based group in learning target grammatical structures. The findings of the study suggest the widespread use of input-enhancement, as one of the techniques of focus on form, plays a significant role in enhancing grammatical accuracy.

Various individual differences, including ambiguity tolerance (AT), have gained momentum because of the influence they can exert on the process and product of learning, and thereby, on various aspects of the learner’s interlanguage system such as accuracy of oral speech. The present study was undertaken to examine the extent to which Iranian EFL learners’ AT was significantly correlated with the accuracy of their task-based speech. To serve the purpose, a random sample of 60 Iranian EFL learners studying English at New Pegah Institute in Tabriz were selected from a population of 150. The Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (Ely, 1995) was employed to quantify the participants’ AT while the accuracy of their speech, based on a picture description task, was measured based on the ratio of the grammatical errors to the total number of t-units produced. Correlational analyses of the research data revealed that the participants were highly inaccurate in their oral performance and that there was a significant moderate relationship between the two research variables. The findings underscore the need to determine and promote Iranian EFL learners’ AT and offer a number of pedagogical implications.  

This study aimed to examine the policies in the Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) education and the extent to which objectives match the policies and are materialized in practice. To this end, course descriptions in the syllabi for the EAP programs were evaluated through document analysis and triangulated with the experts’ perspectives through interviews to examine the current status of EAP policy-making and practice in Iran. Seven policy areas from Kaplan and Baldauf’s (2005) language-in-education planning were chosen as the framework of the study. Based on document analysis and interviews with the experts, the similarities and discrepancies in micro and macro levels were investigated. The results showed that EAP course descriptions do not include any comments on policy and there were discrepancies in policy and practice due to such factors as lack of communication channel between the EAP stakeholders and policy-makers. Finally, the study revealed that due to deficiencies in both policy and practice and in order to reach an acceptable status, EAP programs are in dire need for reconceptualizing policy-making and practice. The findings of this study have significant implications for EAP policies and practice in the academic system of Iran.

This study aims to examine the cross-cultural similarities and differences in the use of rapport management strategies (rapport enhancement, rapport maintenance, rapport neglect, and rapport challenge) in the complaints during service encounters based on Spencer Oatey’s (2008) model. To this end, 90 participants (30 Persian native speakers, 30 Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) learners, and 30 English speakers) were asked to complete a role-play Discourse Completion Task in four different situations. The study argues that: (1) the use of rapport management strategies is universal; all the groups used all kinds of rapport management strategies; (2) the use of rapport management strategies is culture-specific; the participants in each group differently used the intended strategies; and (3) the socio-pragmatic competence of EFL learners is sometimes different from that of the native speakers of English; it goes through developmental stages and is influenced by L1 norms. The study concludes that teachers should condition the communicative tasks used inside the class with factors such as the relationship among the interlocutors to help EFL learners develop a pragmatic competence comparable to that of the native speakers. Teachers can also resort to modern technologies to provide EFL learners with the opportunity to communicate with native speakers and receive feedback with regard to the cultural appropriacy of the forms produced.

The roles and effects of changes in syntax on comprehension and processing effort, and the relationships between these two, comprise a large and separate field of inquiry, with the general belief now in place that such changes and variations bring about varied psycholinguistic and discursive implications for comprehension, manifesting themselves differently in different genres.The current study is a brief attempt at bringing out the differences in the complexity of the noun groups in two novels, one of which is a 19th century novel, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and the other is a 21st century one, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. Each novel was analyzed for the ten longest nominal groups used in them, representative also of the complexity inherently evidenced by a long nominal group. It turned out that there is little difference between the size of noun groups in the two novels. Thus, the added complexity and challenge in processing and comprehending 19th century prose fiction can be explained by the generic tendency in such genre towards the deployment of a higher rate of rank-shifted embedded structures in the noun groups and more varied qualifiers that employ more non-finite clauses as post-nominal qualification. There is need to look into processing difficulty and interpretation challenge posed by different literary genres for different groups of learners, because, in line with a now common SLA understanding, full and conscious comprehension, parsing and interpretation of syntactic components play a marked role in rich and native-like writing for learners.

In recent years, the line of research on the socio-pragmatic aspects of language and language use has been increasing very rigorously. In this regard, taboos as well as euphemisms, due to their significant role in impacting on the interactions among interlocutors, have been the subject of research in various societies and cultures from a vast variety of aspects. That being so, the present study was an attempt to explore the perceptions of Iranian adult speakers of linguistic taboos and euphemisms in Iranian society. To achieve this aim, a convenient sample of 48 Iranian adult speakers, 24 males and 24 females, from Shiraz, Iran was recruited to participate in the study. The researcher interviewed them one by one and audio recorded their answers for further analysis and to determine their perceptions of linguistic taboos and euphemisms in Iranian society. The findings indicated that: a. Most of the participants believed that sex is the most offensive topic in Iranian society; b. All of the participants believed that people should use euphemisms in their speech and should take after of their speech especially in formal situations; c. Most of the Iranian adult speakers believed that the most important factor which leads to the use of taboo words is anger; and d. Most of the participants, both male and female, said they do not discuss taboo topics in mixed-sex groups.

The article is devoted to linguo-imagological analysis of the image of Persia of the 19th century in the Russian language consciousness of the 19th and 20th centuries. The material for the study was the novel of the historian writer Yu. N. Tynianov's “Death of Vazir Mukhtar”, dedicated to the last year of life and the tragic death of the poet-diplomat A. S. Griboyedov. The subject of the description in the article was two realities of Persian being, usually the first arising in the minds of people who are not carriers of culture of that time-the Shah's harem and eunuchs. The key characteristic of the harem is the army, the eunuchs are emptiness. These realities, like all the others, are presented as objectively as possible, with artistic instructions on the cause and effect of all events, that is, Yu. N. Tynianov appears as a historian scientist and a talented writer.

This article deals with general issues related to the impact of globalization processes on national languages. The work is founded on theoretical research methods based on the inductive method of Material Selection. The author sees the reasons for globalization in strengthening integration between countries and national cultures. The formation of cross-cultural ties, as the phenomena of intercultural communication and their manifestation in the vocabulary indicates both the positive impact of globalization on the Russian language and the need for a deeper study of this phenomenon in connection with the negative impact on the spiritual and moral state of the ethnic group. As a result, the author came to the conclusion that language is, first of all, a way of inheritance of social-practical and spiritual experiences of people, the environment of existence of both an individual and an entire ethnic group, as a carrier of national culture.

Washback refers to the effect of testing on teaching and learning. The university entrance exam for Iranian MA candidates of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (hereinafter TEFL MA UEE) is a nationwide high-stakes test administered every year, and significant decisions will be made based on the examinees’ performance on this exam; therefore, it is prone to bring about degrees of washback at the micro and macro levels. This study was an attempt to examine the washback effect of TEFL MA UEE on Iranian lecturers’ classroom activities. Therefore, a mixed-method approach was used to collect, analyze, and integrate both quantitative and qualitative data in order to obtain a better grasp of the research topic and to enhance validity and reliability of the information. Based on a sequential design, two phases of data collection were conducted with a two-week interval. In the first phase, a valid and reliable researcher-made questionnaire was administered to a sample of 16 Iranian university lecturers. In the second phase, five lecturers agreed to be interviewed. For this purpose, an interview protocol was developed and it was checked for the validity and reliability. The findings showed that TEFL MA UEE did not induce a high level of washback on the lecturers’ classroom activities and their teaching methodology. The findings could have practical implications for TEFL MA UEE constructors and policymakers in Iran and could also be of use to the researchers in the field of washback studies by providing some guidelines for this complicated phenomenon.

The present study was an attempt to determine a relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and reading strategy use among a group of EFL Iranian readers (no = 100) with low vs. high proficiency levels. To this end, FLRAS (Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale) developed by Saito, Horwitz, and Garza, (1999) was used in order to measure the participants’ level of anxiety in reading and SORS (The Survey of Reading Strategies) adapted from Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002), was utilized to gauge the participants’ strategy uses.  The students’ responses to reading strategies when faced with anxiety-provoking contexts were categorized into three strategy uses including ‘global’, ‘problem solving’ and ‘support’ and mapped on their total scores in reading anxiety.  The results from Multinomial Logit Regression (MLR) showed that the students with lower level reading anxiety indices would adopt problem solving strategies more compared with support and global strategies. Regarding the interaction of proficiency level in the process, the results showed that it was less probable for the students with lower reading anxiety levels to adopt problem solving strategies compared with more anxious students who would adopt global strategies. Some possible implications are discussed in the light of improving reading instructions provided for Iranian students. <strong><em> </em></strong>  

Through the implementation of the multiple intelligences, teachers and practitioners will see an increase in their students’ performance and ability to learn languages. The application of multiple intelligences theory is suggested as a structured way to address and understand the holistic nature of learners’ diversity. It is a favorable tool for teachers to increase the attractiveness of language learning tasks and, therefore, create motivational conditions. Intelligence is not just a single construct which traditionally was assumed to be constant throughout a person’s life; individual’s profiles of intelligence differ in terms of encouragement, training, and circumstances to enquire materials eliciting particular intelligences. The present study was an attempt to investigate types of intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal) as predictors of self-efficacy (generalized self-efficacy, academic self- efficacy, and self-regulatory efficacy). The participants were 148 male and female Iranian B.A. students majoring in TEFL and Translation at the Islamic Azad University in Malayer. The instruments included a 100-item Michigan test, Gardner’s MI questionnaire, a 12-item general self-efficacy scale, an 8-item academic self-efficacy, and an 11-item self-efficacy for self-regulated learning. Data were analyzed through multiple regression analyses. Results indicated that musical and linguistic intelligences were predictors of general self-efficacy and spatial /visual intelligence made a significant contribution to predicting self-efficacy for self-regulated learning while academic self- efficacy could not be predicted by any of the intelligence types.