درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study investigated the university practitioners’ attitudes towards using computer assisted language learning (CALL) in teaching English language at Islamic Azad universities of Khuzestan Province. This study was also to examine the English as foreign language (EFL) MA and PhD teachers’ computer literacy and its effects on using CALL facilities in English classrooms. The participants of this study were 135 university teachers at the Islamic Azad Universities (i.e., 12 Branches). The research instrument was a questionnaire extracted from Shin and Son (2007) in 5-point Likert scale. Findings showed that that there was lack of technological equipment for using CALL. 

This study compares metadiscourse markers in result and discussion sections of literature and engineering research papers. To this end, 40 research articles (20 literature and 20 engineering) are selected from two major international journals. Based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse, the articles are codified in terms of frequency, percentage, and density of interactive and interactional markers found. The two corpora are compared to see to what extent the genre of lectures are different. Data are analyzed through Chi-square and the results of the quantitative analysis reveal significant cross-linguistic differences for overall frequency of metadiscourse except for frame markers and boosters. 

This study aims at investigating the interface between emotion and intonation patterns (more specifically, duration and pitch amplitude of speech). To this end, the acoustic properties of spectral parameters related to speech prosody are investigated. The results of acoustic and Statistical analysis show that mean level and range of FO in the contours vary strongly as a function of the degree of activation of the portrayed emotions. The results also indicate that FO/pitch and other vocal aspects affected by emotion and/or emotional arousal in collected samples of speech in Persian.

The profession of second language teaching has experienced fundamental fluctuations in both theory and practice. With its own proponents and opponents, the postmethod was considered as the practical and reasonable solution to the limitations of the confining concept of the method. The purpose of this qualitative study was to elicit nonnative EFL teachers’ viewpoints and perceptions regarding postmethod pedagogy. In fact, the researchers were interested to know about nonnative EFL teachers’ perceptions of postmethod condition regarding their own context and needs. Selected based on purposive sampling procedure, the participants of this study were 10 nonnative EFL teachers categorized into three groups based on their teaching experience. The participants took part in semi-structured interviews and they were asked a series of questions to elicit their perceptions and interpretations of postmethod. The results of the study revealed some rays of hope in some cases, though not promising in a full manner. In other words, although nonnative EFL teachers could not mention the postmethod principles explicitly, they showed a logical understanding of postmethod pedagogy tenets and its applications in their teaching practices and procedures. The results of this study can help teacher educators design more effective teacher education courses and in-service programs to enhance nonnative EFL teachers’ viewpoints and perceptions regarding postmethod pedagogy and its implications in language teaching and learning processes.

Retrieval tasks provide learners with an opportunity to focus both on meaning and on form. There are four different retrieval directions. The present study aimed to identify the optimal direction of recall type retrievals during reading and to investigate the outcomes of each one. Forty-eight intermediate EFL learners took part in the study. One of the experimental groups was provided with the productive retrieval version of the reading text, and the other experimental group with the receptive retrieval version. A Posttest was conducted in both productive and receptive directions for all the groups. Delayed posttests were administered two weeks after the treatment without prior notice to evaluate the time effect on participants' performance in each group. The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference in participants' performance in immediate and delayed posttests based on the method of retrieval. Further explanation of the effect of each retrieval direction on immediate and delayed posttests has been presented.

The present study aimed firstly at investigating the impact of translators' style on figurative language translation from English into Persian. Secondly, it intended to find which strategies were most frequently adopted by Persian translators to translate figures of speech into Persian. Lastly, the study sought to check the extent of transference of figurative features of literary texts in English-Persian renderings. To achieve these purposes, the English novel, Little Women by Alcott (1880) and its three Persian translations by Raiszadeh (1997), Akhavan (1996), and Morvarid (2000) were used as the materials of the study. The original novel, along with its three selected translations, were first studied carefully by the researchers and about fifty percent of the novel was chosen to be analyzed in terms of figures of speech, which are part of stylistic features of any literary text. Then, the figures of speech in the stated sample, besides the Persian equivalents of each of them used by the three translators, were identified. Finally, a hybrid model incorporating 5 strategies retrieved from Newmrak's (1988) and Baker's (1992) models of translating figurative language was utilized to examine the identified tropes and determine the type and number of strategies employed by any individual translator. The obtained results revealed that figurative language devices were translated from the source into the target language through a variety of strategies, which can be indicative of the translator’s stylistic tendencies.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of using smart board technology on the EFL learners' achievement motivation and willingness to communicate (WTC). The participants were 65 second grade female students from Shahid Nazari girls’ high school in Andimeshk, Iran, who were selected randomly. An OPT was administrated to the the participants to homogenize them. Other instruments were Hermans’ achievement motivation questionnaire and McCroskey & Baer’s WTC questionnaire to estimate the participants’ achievement motivation and willingness to communicate, respectively. For data analysis, Levenetest, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, independent samples T test, paired sample T test, MANCOVA and ANCOVA were used. The findings indicated the experimental group outperformed the control group. Overall, the findings provided empirical support for the significant effect of using smart board technology on the EFL learners’ achievement motivation and WTC. 

This study investigated learning style preferences among professional translators. The purposes of the study were to (a) find the prevailing learning style among the Iranian professional translators; (b) reveal any significant difference in the translators’ learning style preferences in terms of gender; and (c) find any significant difference between individual learning style and translation competence of the male and female translators. To this end, 110 professional translators from 35 translation centers in three Southern Provinces of Iran (Fars, Hormozgan, and Bushehr) were selected through non-probability sampling. The data pertaining to learning style were collected through an adaptation of Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, and translation competence was examined through a text that the participants translated. Findings revealed that the translators’ predominant learning style was Reflector, followed by Pragmatist, Activist, and Theorist, although those preferring the Theorist style showed better performance. Furthermore, the findings did not show any significant difference between translators’ gender and learning style preferences. Finally, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference across the groups in terms of learning style preferences and translators’ translation competence. Some pedagogical implications were also discussed.

This study aimed to compare the underlying measures of male and female high- school students’ social capital in terms of regional variations and gender and investigate the relationship between those measures and the students' foreign language (FL) achievement. To this end, a number of 904 third-grader high school students (278 male and 626 female) from two educational districts (privileged district (PD) and less-privileged district (LD)) participated in the study. They filled out the Student Social Capital Questionnaire and took an English language achievement test. The results showed that the students in the PD outperformed their counterparts in the LD. Furthermore, group statistics and t-test results suggested variations among the groups of students in terms of such factors as mothers’ involvement, institutional trust, intergenerational closure, and parents’ educational aspiration. Pearson product-moment correlation indicated that there was a significant negative correlation between male and female students' participation in social networks and religious activities on the one hand, and their foreign language achievement on the other hand. However, there was a significant positive correlation between intergenerational closure and parents’ educational aspiration and female students' English scores on the S-test. The findings have implications for families and school members to provide students with hopeful and positive aspirations and intimate family environments and learning environments, which can enhance their FL achievement.