درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Although images are abundant and play significant aesthetic and pedagogical roles in today’s EFL course books, they are still one of the less explored areas of research. The present study is an attempt to examine the role and function of images in Iranian high school EFL course books; it also aims to cast a critical eye over their suitability and efficiency. To this end, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) model of visual grammar was adopted. The findings revealed that although the informative and/or illustrative functions of the images make them important resources in Iranian high school EFL course books, their full potential for language learning does not seem to be adequately exploited. This relates to flaws at the representational mode of meaning making, such as outdated portrayal of objects, gender stereotyping, and overdramatizing national identity as well as shortcomings at the interactive mode, such as poor modality due to grayscale printing and plain graphics with no contextualization or pictorial detail. These flaws make the images seem out of today’s world and hardly credible for high school students who are already adept at new technology. Since these shortcomings may sacrifice pedagogical objectives, the study calls for changes in both technical quality and underlying messages of images in the course books.

The importance of input has been a broadly documented concept in the field of second or foreign language acquisition. However, kinds of input and ways of its presentation are among the controversial issues in L2 classroom research. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the effects of three kinds of input-based instruction on intake and acquisition of the English causative structures by Iranian EFL learners. A total of 105 university students in four intact classes were randomly assigned to four different conditions: processing instruction (PI), textual input enhancement (TE), consciousness-raising (C-R), and control (CO). A pretest/posttest (immediate and delayed) design was used, where participants’ ability to interpret and produce the target structure was assessed through administering a multiple choice interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Moreover, a grammaticality judgment test was run to assess the amount of intake. Results revealed that learners in the PI group significantly outperformed learners in the other groups on both immediate/delayed production posttests. The findings also indicated that, C-R group could not retain the significant effect of instruction on delayed production posttest and TE tasks were not effective in improving the learners’ production of the target structure. Moreover, the PI group outperformed the other groups on grammaticality judgment test too. Based on these findings, we can conclude that PI which encompasses the most outstanding features of both focus on form and meaning instruction might be a more effective approach in helping EFL learners to acquire the target grammatical forms.

Raven Progressive Matrices (RPMs) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WSIC-R) are two common general intelligence measuring scales used in Iranian high schools. In this paper the relationships between g factor scales and students’ reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary was examined by correlation and regression analysis. Standard tests of grammar and vocabulary and Cambridge Key English Test (KET) were used to elicit the overall language proficiency of Iranian high school students. The results of the study revealed that verbal intelligence and vocabulary and non-verbal intelligence measured by RPMs not WSIC-R were determining factors in reading comprehension. Verbal intelligence was found to have an important role in vocabulary knowledge. Only grammar, in spite of a weak correlation with reading and a section of WSIC-R, didn’t show any remarkable correlation with intelligence or language knowledge measuring scales.

تحقیق حاضر تکرار طرح پژوهشی دیگری است برای پیدا کردن عوامل زیر بنایی خصوصیات موثر معلمان زبان انگلیسی (CEELT) بعد از انتخاب نمونه آماری همگونتر و نماینده تر. به این منظور پرسشنامه CEELT تالیف شده توسط معافیان و پیش قدم (2008) به 1469 زبان آموز ایرانی که انگلیسی را به عنوان زبان خارجی در مدارس دولتی و موسسات خصوصی مختلف در مشهد تحصیل می کردند داده شد تا سه فرضیه مرتبط با استحکام روابط بین خصوصیات، تعداد عوامل استخراج شده و خصوصیاتی که روی بیش از یک عامل لود می کنند مورد بررسی قرار گیرند. وقتی که از روش تحلیل عاملی برای استخراج عامل سازه ای استفاده شد چهل و هفت خصوصیت مورد مطالعه به دلیل داشتن همبستگی درونی زیاد با یکدیگر تنها روی پنج عامل برقراری ارتباط صمیمی، عادل بودن، صلاحیت شغلی، تسهیل و برگزاری امتحان لود کردند. نتایج حاضر بیانگر چندین التزام پژوهشی است. اول اینکه همبستگی بین متغیرها و آمار KMO که مبین کافی بودن نمونه گیری است بایدگزارش شوند. دوما نمونه آماری می بایستی شامل حداقل یک هزار شرکت کننده و ترجیحا دارای نسبت سی نفر برای هر خصوصیت مطرح شده باشد و بالاخره تمام خصوصیاتی که روی بیش از یک عامل لود می کنند می بایستی گزارش شوند. لودهای چند عاملی بیانگر ضرورت اتخاد نگرشی چند بعدی نسبت به آموزش زبان و برقراری ارتباط معنادار بین خصوصیات معلمان و توانایی هایی از قبیل پیشرفت تحصیلی و بسندگی هستند.