درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Of paramount importance in the study of cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) is the absence of tests developed for small-scale diagnostic purposes. Currently, much of the research carried out has been mainly on large-scale tests, e.g., TOEFL, MELAB, IELTS, etc. Even so, formative language assessment with a focus on informing instruction and engaging in identification of student’s strengths and weaknesses to guide instruction has not been conducted in the Iranian English language learning context. In an attempt to respond to the call for developing diagnostic tests, this study explored developing a cognitive diagnostic reading comprehension test for CDA purposes. To achieve this, initially, a list of reading attributes was prepared based on the literature and then the attributes were used to construct 20 reading comprehension items. Then seven content raters were asked to identify the attributes of each item of the test. To obtain quantitative data for Q-matrix construction, the test battery was administered to 1986 students of a General English Language Course at the University of Tehran, Iran. In addition, 13 students were recruited to participate in think-aloud verbal protocols. On the basis of the overall agreement of the content raters’ judgements concerning the choices of attributes and results of think-aloud verbal protocol analysis, a Q-matrix that specified the relationships between test items and target attributes was developed. Finally, to examine the CDA of the test, the Fusion Model, a type of cognitive diagnostic model (CDM), was used for diagnosing the participants' strengths and weaknesses. Results suggest that nine major reading attributes are involved in these reading comprehension test items. The results obtained from such cognitive diagnostic analyses could be beneficial for both teachers and curriculum developers to prepare instructional materials that target specific weaknesses and inform them of the more problematic areas to focus on in class in order to plan for better instruction.

Taking the significance of teacher motivation in professional practice and pedagogical achievements of teachers, students and their educational goals, this study aimed to investigate EFL teachers’ motivation affected by the introduction of the Fundamental Reform Document of Education in Iran. For the quantitative phase of the study, a researcher-made questionnaire developed based on the four aspects of motivation by Dornyei and Ushioda (2011) was distributed among 98 Iranian EFL teachers. Afterwards, to capture the salient factors of teachers’ motivation, a set of semi-structured interviews with 7 volunteer teachers were conducted. The results revealed that this reform has had a positive effect on teachers’ motivation yet it has not been that much comprehensive to take into account all the motivation factors except for the contextual ones.

The present study investigated comparatively the impact of two types of input enhancement (i.e. textual vs. compound enhancement) on developing grammar ability in Iranian EFL setting. Sixty-five female secondary high school students were selected as a homogenous sample out of about a 100-member population based on Nelson language proficiency test. Then, their grammar ability was measured based on a researcher-made diagnostic test prior to the experiment. The sample was randomly divided into two equal groups; one group received text-enhancement-based instruction of grammar, while the other received compound-based enhancement. Finally, they received an achievement test of grammar as a posttest to measure their progress in light of two different types of input enhancement mechanisms. The pertinent statistical analyses of the results indicated that a) the effect of textual enhancement-based instruction of grammar is not significantly meaningful, while b) the compound enhancement-based instruction has significant effect on learning grammatical structures. Comparatively speaking, therefore, c) compound enhancement-based instruction of grammar is more significantly effective than that of textual in developing grammar ability. It can be safely concluded that grammar instruction and its resultant development are subject to intervention type, which, pedagogically, bears promising messages for both teachers and syllabus designers to incorporate parameters of input enhancement in both teaching and materials development, respectively.

The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of two cognitive factors, namely, personality traits and narrative writing intelligence (NWI) in L2 writing. The total of 416 English learners participated in this study in two different phases.<br /> For the purpose of this study, a narrative writing intelligence scale (NWIS) was designed and used to score the writings of the first group of participants which included 200 Iranian learners of English in an EFL institute. The first writing task, which was a film recounting, contributed to designing this scale. Randall’s (1999) definition of narrative intelligence was the guideline to design the primary draft of NWIS. All 200 written film recounting were scored by this scale. The scores were transferred to SPSS 18.0. and Exploratory Factor Analysis was run. NWIS’ construct validity and reliability were confirmed. Moreover, the underlying dimensions causing correlation among the observed variables were reduced in three factors which account for 57.47% of the variance of the scale. The factors were named as Unity of the plot, Identification (of characters, objects, and ideas), and Voice and Rhetoric. <br /> The second group, who were female university students of EFL, were given two tasks, namely, writing a memory and filling Big-Five Personality test. Their writings were evaluated twice; once by employing the NWIS and once by a tailor-made writing scoring guide taken from Weigle’s (2002) guideline. Transferring all scores to Amos. 20, a SEM model was proposed by the researchers. The result shows the proposed model has good fit indices.