درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study explores how professional and student writers manifest their authorial identities and project their gender voices in their academic texts. To this end, 38 male-authored and 38 female-authored articles published in seven leading international journals were selected. Moreover, 38 articles written by male students and 38 articles authored by female students were collected from two universities in Iran. Taking an academic writing course, these students handed in their papers as term projects. These academic writings were analyzed based on Hyland’s metadiscourse framework comprising two major resources: interactional and interactive metadiscourse resources. The findings indicated the male authors mainly attended to discourse organization using more interactive resources while the female authors mostly solicited solidarity by employing more interactional resources. The professional authors engaged in a more critical stance using self-mentions and attitude markers and the students focused on discourse organization. Attitude markers and self-mentions, as markers of stance-taking, were absent in the students’ writing. The professional authors made use of their gender identity to promote their authorial identity instead of suppressing it. These results suggest that EAP programs should inform students how to employ both metadiscourse resources and their gender-based discourse choices to express their authorial identity more effectively.

This cross-cultural study aims to examine how Iranian and American motivational speakers employ metadiscourse devices as a convincing tool to interact with their audience. To this end, eight motivational speeches in English and Persian were randomly selected from 2015 to 2021, and analyzed for the use of stance (i.e., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions) and engagement (i.e., reader-pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge, and personal asides) expressions. The findings showed that self-mention and attitude markers were the most frequently used stance markers in English and Persian corpus, respectively. Moreover, hedges found to be the least frequently used stance markers in the two corpora. With regard to the use of engagement markers, results showed that reader pronoun is the most frequently used engagement markers, and shared knowledge and personal asides were the least frequently used engagement markers in both languages. Finally, the results of chi-square test showed statistically significant differences in the use of stance and engagement expressions in the two languages, confirming cultural septicity nature of metadiscourse markers, and that speakers of different languages employ interactional devices according to their context.

The main goals of the study were to decipher the English language needs of dental students and to evaluate the effectiveness of the recent official English for specific purposes (ESP) book published for Iranian dental students by SAMT Publication. Accordingly, the study sought to determine whether this book has the potential to meet the specific needs of dental students. Needs analysis data were gathered by interviewing 34 ESP stakeholders from two universities of medical sciences in Iran. The interviews attempted to examine the students' language needs, lacks, and preferences. Following the needs analysis, six evaluators evaluated the coursebook based on a book evaluation form. The results obtained from the needs analysis highlighted the significance of practicing 4 language skills in addition to medical terminology.      In terms of students' language skill lacks, it was found that the majority of the students had problems in listening, speaking, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The participants also reported the learners' preferences and some drawbacks of current ESP courses with respect to learning styles and methodology. Following the book evaluation process, it was concluded that even though the book did not gain a fully satisfactory score, among a few ESP books published for Iranian dental students, this book was the most appropriate one to be used in ESP courses. However, considering some points can surely improve our future ESP books and give the material developers a better understanding of ESP materials.  

In today’s innovative world, it is not right to consider learners as passive receivers of information since they are more possibly qualified to advance. They are certainly more actively involved, interested, self-directed, and autonomous. Likewise, a flipped classroom helps students to be more active participants in an interactive learning environment. Thus, the current study aimed to describe the benefits of implementing online flipped classrooms on EFL female students’ grammar achievement. The study was conducted as a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research design at one of the Iranian high schools. Fifty EFL female students who were studying humanistic in grade 12th were requested to take part in this study. After analyzing the data using an independent-samples t-test, the findings indicated that the experimental group had better performance than the control group. Additionally, the results of the open-ended question showed that the majority of students had a positive perception of implementing online flipped classrooms. The implications of the study for EFL students and teachers are discussed.

The current study aimed to explore the effectiveness of a process based reflective teacher training course that utilized situational role plays, video analysis, and scenario evidence as guided reflective and caring practices for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher candidates. To this end, 45 teacher candidates at a teacher education university in Iran participated in a semi-structured interview (pre-intervention and post-intervention interview) and created process-oriented narrative journals documenting their reflective and caring practices. The findings of the study indicated that all the three groups of participants (role play group, scenario-based evidence group, and video evidence group) benefitted from the course and demonstrated improvement in various ways. The emerged themes from each group (role play group: 23 categories, video group: 17 categories, and scenario-based evidence group: 16 categories) illustrated how these strategies supported teacher candidates in developing their caring and reflective practices.

Since 2010, deep learning has been further developed, and the concept of multi-modality has penetrated into all walks of life. However, it has not been fully researched and applied in college English teaching, so this study modeled and practiced the multimodal teaching method of college English under the deep learning mode and its application. The definitions of modality and medium are first introduced, and then the definition of multimodality in this study is clarified. Then the classification of multimodal transport is expounded. The random forest algorithm is chosen as the main algorithm of this research, and a dynamic multimodal model is established. After that, there was a collaboration with a university and sophomore students were selected for practice. After processing and analyzing the collected data, it was found that in the data sample of 268 students, the number of students who did not study independently accounted for 24%, which indicates that most college students lack interest in learning English. Preliminary tests were also conducted on students' English proficiency throughout the year, and the results showed that the students' English proficiency was at a pass level and the overall English proficiency was weak. Reassessment of students' English proficiency showed that the actual teaching effect of each English proficiency was greater than 85%, and the effectiveness of English teaching in the selected universities was significantly improved. The average score improved by 8 points, indicating that multimodal teaching is scientifically effective After a semester of multimodal teaching, the English teaching effectiveness of the university selected in this article has significantly improved. The research results indicate that the development of deep computer learning has introduced multimodal concepts into the teaching field, which is very suitable for assisting language learning based on its own advantages. After a semester of multimodal teaching, the English teaching effectiveness of the university selected in this article has significantly improved. The research results indicate that the development of deep computer learning has introduced multimodal concepts into the teaching field, which is very suitable for assisting language learning based on its own advantages.

Language testing and assessment has grown in popularity and gained significance in the last few decades, and there is a rising need for assessment literate stakeholders in the field of language education. As teachers play a major role in assessing students, there is a need to make sure they have the right level of assessment knowledge and skills to accomplish their duties as assessors. The present study sought to develop and validate an assessment literacy test. To this end, a thirty-five scenario-based Language Assessment Literacy Test (LALT) was developed based on the seven standards covered by the Standards for Teacher Competence in Educational Assessment of Students (1990). Construct validity of the test was investigated by collecting data from 168 Iranian EFL teachers. To investigate the validity of the measure, tests of reliability, item difficulty, and item discrimination were carried out. The test was then subjected to EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis whose results showed a seven-factor solution for the test items. The implications of the study for EFL teachers, language testers, teacher trainers, and curriculum developers are discussed.