درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This research sought to investigate IELTS test-takers' perceptions of obtaining scaffolded MOOC-based training. To accomplish this purpose, 50 IELTS candidates were chosen through convenient sampling and assigned to one of two groups: a MOOC-based teaching group (MG, n = 25) and a face-to-face instruction group (F2FG, n = 25). The MG test-takers were exposed to FutureLearn, while the F2FG test-takers were given identical materials in person. Scaffolding took the form of visual aids, pre-teaching the necessary terminology, drawing on the participants' past knowledge of a subject, modeling what they were requested to write, and providing them with the sentence patterns needed to complete the IELTS Writing Task 2. The writing pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups were examined using a one-way ANCOVA, which revealed that the MG learners outperformed their F2FG counterparts significantly. The perception questionnaire results revealed that MG students liked MOOC-based education for their writing courses. The implications and applications of the current study's results are provided at the end of the research

Alienation is a significant phenomenon that forms the subject of many psychological, sociological, literary, philosophical, and even physiological studies. Alienation is among the most critical justifications bringing about the internal and external pains and sufferings in life. Emerging as a result of war, persecution, famine, and ruin, alienation terminates unfortunately in suffering, isolation, and sometimes critical disasters. In literature, the alienated protagonist is usually a frequent figure in much of the ancient and contemporary fiction. The main issue of alienation refers to a destructive consequence of getting, or feeling of getting separated from people that one is living with them. It refers to become useless, or to feel becoming useless in the field of social relations and interactions. It is the outcome of becoming alienated, so that one thinks that no longer anyone needs him / her, and / or his / her services. Aiming to review the theme of alienation, and focusing on Melvin Seaman’s concepts of alienation in general, the present paper, in particular, will review the manifestation of the term alienation in “The Child in Time,” and “The Comfort of Strangers,” that are both the well-known novels written by Ian Russell McEwan, one of the greatest British novelists and screenwriters of the twentieth century. By describing the disastrous aftermath of the alienation, this article tries to alarm the man regarding the catastrophic and destructive consequences of the alienation in the life of the existing societies.

Attention has been drawn to recent, expanding studies on Second Language (L2) online programs and problems with people with learning difficulties, including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This group of learners suffers from feelings of detachment and low self-confidence due to their lack of Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in an online classroom. Thus, the current quasi-experimental study explored the impact of a supplementary intervention targeted at helping learners create, substantiate, and live up to their ideal L2 self-images on multivariate components of ADHD learners' WTC in online English classes. For this purpose, 29 Iranian ADHD learners selected through convenience sampling were divided into two equivalent groups based on their ADHD levels. The groups were then randomly assigned to an experimental (N = 15) and a control condition (N = 14). In the experimental group, the vision ignition intervention was integrated into a 10-week online English course, whereas the control group's learners received no vision-enhancement intervention throughout the course. The learners' WTC was measured through a standard psychometric survey at the outset and conclusion of the course. Multivariable Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted to determine whether a linear combination of the subcomponents resulted in significant differences between groups. Along with an overall significant between-group difference in WTC, the results revealed the intervention's significant impact on WTC's two subcomponents: communicative self-confidence and integrative orientation.

This study set out to examine how stereotypes as social psychological phenomena are enacted in everyday discourse. Besides discussing how ingroups and outgroups are formed in mundane talk, it is argued that stereotypes are ideological constructs that are jointly achieved in social contexts. Moreover, it is assumed that the ways in which stereotypes are constructed and discussed in discourse are informed by a number of underlying moral conceptualizations which might justify the potential face-threatening acts and the impoliteness inherent in prejudiced talk targeted to a third party. The study is an ethnographic case study informed by an eclectic approach to the analysis of data so as to shed light on how the expression of thoughts and feelings are constructed as talk in ordinary social interactions unfolds and what these expressions achieve. The analyses revealed that the construction of outgroup stereotypes is a mutual accomplishment and possibly a face-threatening act moderated by mitigating discourse features

This study applied multi-faceted Rasch measurement to investigate the halo effect in the performance-based assessment of writing across rubric criteria. Five raters who had received specialized training applied a four-criteria rating rubric to analytically rate writing scripts on two argumentative topics. Facets, a Rasch computer program, was utilized to pinpoint the halo effect by analyzing rater and rubric criteria interactions. After examining the appropriateness of the rubric in terms of functionality, the results showed that except for one rater, the raters did not exhibit any sign of the halo effect across rubric criteria. Generally, the severity hierarchies for raters and difficulty levels for rubric criteria suggested that raters’ training and their perceptions of the importance of criteria were associated with their manifestation of the halo effect. Pedagogically, through a detailed facet analysis of interactions between raters and rubric criteria, rater trainers may better realize how to design effective training programs to minimize raters’ variance including the halo effect and improve the overall objectivity of human rating.

Measurement disturbances refer to any conditions that affect the measurement of some psychological latent variables, which result in an inaccurate interpretation of item or person estimates derived from a measurement model. Measurement disturbances are mainly attributed to the characteristics of the person, the properties of the items, and the interaction between the characteristics of the person and the features of the items. Although numerous researchers have detected measurement disturbances in different contexts, too little attention has been devoted to exploring measurement disturbances within the context of language testing and assessment, especially using graphical displays. This study aimed to show the utility of graphical displays, which surpass numeric values of infit and outfit statistics given by the Rasch model, to explore measurement disturbances in a listening comprehension test. Results of the study showed two types of outcomes for examining graphical displays and their corresponding numeric fit values: congruent and incongruent associations. It turned out that graphical displays can provide diagnostic information about the performance of test items which might not be captured through numeric values.

The ICTs have invaded not only the fields of business, economics, and different sciences, but also the field of education and particularly language teaching and learning. This article addresses a crucial issue related to the use of ICTs at the university in Morocco and its impact on the academic performance of students. Many studies in the review of literature are presented and they mainly revolve around similar issues related to advantages and disadvantages of ICTs in general, however little attention has been devoted to the relationship between ICTs and academic performance. Thus, this article seeks to answer a set of research questions along with hypotheses which are tested and discussed following some statistical procedures. The researcher looks at the correlation between the use of ICTs in higher education and students’ academic performance. A questionnaire was designed and submitted to a sample of students composed of 108 students from four major universities in Morocco. Cronbach’s alpha was obtained to test the reliability of the instrument. The findings indicate that the implementation of ICTs in higher education is positively correlated with the academic performance of students. The implications of this study suggest that integrating ICTs into higher education can lead to improved academic performance of students. This has significant implications for educators and policymakers who can use this information to design and implement effective ICT-based teaching and learning strategies to enhance student learning outcomes. The study also highlights the importance of considering the relationship between ICT use and academic performance in educational research and policy-making. The results provide a foundation for further research on the use of ICTs in higher education and their impact on student success.

The researchers in the current study were pinpointing the factors contributing to teacher motivation. Among the myriad of variables which were deemed liable to influence teacher motivation, the researchers opted for teacher motivation, namely teacher burnout, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and teaching style as the main predictive variables for teacher motivation. To conduct the study, a total of 200 English language teachers were asked to fill the study questionnaires. The target group encompassed teachers from both public school and language school contexts. The teachers were from both genders and came from a variety of age groups, years of experience, and language backgrounds. The participants were recruited from 10 cities across West Azarbaijan. To facilitate the data collection process, the questionnaires were sent to participants via Google forms link. The obtained data were analyzed through SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) to find the exact interrelationships between the four variables considered as predictors and teacher motivation. The findings pointed toward the existence of significant paths from burnout, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence (EI), and teaching styles toward teaching motivation. Additionally, EI, self-efficacy, and teaching styles were depicted to be significant predictors for burnout. The path from EI to self-efficacy was also significant. Furthermore, teaching style was significantly predicted by EI and self-efficacy. Finally, the findings obtained via interview analysis demonstrated that teacher motivation can be influenced by a variety of factors including low income and lack of environmental/social support, which can, in turn, lead to increased levels of burnout and hence diminish teaching efficacy and hence motivation. The implications of the findings are discussed throughout the paper.

This article examines the impact of gender, age, and education on the attitudes of Kurdish speakers in Mahabad towards standard Persian and the Kurdish language. Since people’s emotions towards their own or others’ languages are related to their language attitudes, this important component plays a significant role in measuring success in language planning, learning speed, language selection and use, and predicting the extinction or sustainability of a language. The study’s statistical population consisted of 80 Kurdish-Persian bilinguals in Mahabad who were randomly selected. This study is situated within the theoretical framework of sociocognitive linguistics, and the research perspective was measured through an indirect method (matched-guise test). After distributing the questionnaire and conducting the matched-guise test, the collected data were analyzed. The results of the statistical analysis showed that the variables of gender, age, and education in Mahabad had no significant impact on the attitudes of bilingual Kurdish speakers towards standard Persian and the Kurdish language. The Kurdish speakers of Mahabad exhibited numerically positive attitude towards the standard Persian language compared to Kurdish language, but no significant difference in terms of any of the mentioned variables was observed between the two languages under study.

The current study investigates the feasibility of implementing EFL teachers' Individual Development Planning at Iranian public schools. It further explores the underlying reasons for the (imp) possibility of practicing this program and seeks the teachers' suggestions to improve the schools' condition. To this end, data were collected from 180 EFL teachers using a researcher-made questionnaire and a follow-up semi-structured interview. The results of one-sample t-tests revealed a slight possibility following the interviews which indicated 14 underlying reasons for the insufficient grounds at public schools. Participating teachers also argued that equipping a room with necessary technological tools, allocating monetary resources, assigning specific teachers time to practice IDP, taking advantage of head teachers, changing the school administration delegation, and performing advocating cultural acts can provide a ground for IDP implementation. The findings demonstrate the necessity of creating changes by policymakers, school principals, and EFL teachers so that they can all benefit from this program.

Pragmatic failure is an issue usually occurring in cross-cultural communication when L2 learners cannot express themselves appropriately. This study aimed to discern the factors leading to cross-cultural pragmatic failure (CCPF) and the challenges EFL learners face in trying to overcome miscommunication problems. Following a qualitative research design, in the first study phase, one of the researchers observed 10 EFL teachers’ classes for 90 minutes each, twice a week during the term to take the required field notes for further analysis. To obtain more in-depth information, in the second phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 EFL teachers and learners, and the data were collected. The EFL teachers were from private English language institutes, and the student participants were EFL learners studying either in state-run universities or private language centers. The results of the thematic analysis revealed that EFL classroom context, time and budget, assessing pragmatic knowledge, ELT textbook, and teacher education were perceived as the causes of CCPF by the interviewees. Moreover, the extracted themes associated with learners’ challenges included linguistic incompetency, investing insufficient time and effort, psychological factors, cultural and sociocultural differences, inappropriate teaching methodology, and teachers’ pragmatic competence.

Although processing instruction (PI) has been a very popular grammar teaching method over the last years, there are, however, very limited if any attempts to explore different proficiency learners’ achievements using this approach. This study was, therefore, an attempt to investigate the role of PI in possibly bringing about enhanced acquisition of three grammatical structures: regular past tense, causatives and relative clauses. In addition, it sought learner’s attitudes towards PI as it is believed that the success of an approach is highly dependent upon the viewpoints of its practitioners and the students being exposed to it. Three proficiency groups of elementary (n = 42), intermediate (n = 38) and advanced (n = 40) EFL learners were compared. The results of a set of independent samples t-tests revealed significant effects for the use of PI in all the groups except for a lack of improvement for elementary learners’ production of the regular past tense structure. The analysis of the attitude questionnaire and learners’ further ideas on the effectiveness of PI revealed their appreciation of the integration of this instructional practice in their target language courses. The results are discussed in relation to effective grammar and writing pedagogy.

Task complexity has recently attracted great attention in second language (L2) studies. However, its potential impacts on learning transitional devices have not been considered. The current study was an attempt to analyze the impacts of manipulating task complexity conditions on EFL learners’ grammatical enhancement in terms of learning transitional devices through doing writing tasks. For this purpose, 75 intermediate EFL learners learning English in three English language institutes in Iran were randomly selected. They were assigned to four experimental groups and one control group (each with 15 participants). Each of the experimental groups was presented with a pretest, writing tasks, an immediate posttest and a delayed posttest. The participants took part in 9 sessions and in each session some transitional devices were introduced to the experimental groups with which they were supposed to write a paragraph based on a special topic using all those transitional devices. The different experimental groups received writing tasks with different complexity levels which were determined through the manipulation of factors including ± few elements and ± planning time. The participants in the control group just participated in a regular English class for 9 sessions without doing such tasks. The performances of all groups were analyzed, and the findings revealed statistically significant differences among the five groups in both the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest, after controlling for the effect of the pretest. The findings of the current study have practical implications for curriculum development and EFL writing instruction.