درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The growing popularity of language-learning apps among language learners has highlighted the need for rigorous evaluation of their efficacy in second language acquisition (SLA). This study combined quantitative measures to comprehensively understand the effectiveness of the Busuu app in improving the productive vocabulary of Iranian intermediate EFL learners with qualitative data from in-depth interviews to explore their perceptions and experiences while using the app. Forty-three learners (17 males and 26 females with a mean age of 27.53) were selected to assess the effectiveness of the Busuu app on learners’ productive vocabulary knowledge. Among them,15 participants (all female with a mean age of 29.40) agreed to be interviewed after the Busuu study to gain insights into learners’ perceptions and experiences with app-based learning. A pretest-posttest design using the LEX30 task, a standardized productive vocabulary assessment tool, was conducted before and after the Busuu study to evaluate participants’ productive vocabulary knowledge. Paired samples t-tests revealed no significant improvement in participants’ productive vocabulary knowledge. Nonetheless, the number of responses produced in the posttest was higher than in the pretest. According to the interview data, users rated vocabulary as the most favored feature of the app, while restricted access to premium content was noted as the least favored. Most participants acknowledged that the app exceeded their initial expectations before installing it. Additionally, improving vocabulary knowledge was the users’ primary expectation from utilizing the app. Furthermore, approximately all participants found the app beneficial for language learning. However, most of them reported low levels of enjoyment during app usage. The results can contribute to understanding what needs to be done to upgrade the quality and potential of the Bussu app, how the app can better support EFL learners in effectively activating their lexical knowledge, and what the users’ experiences and expectations from a language-learning app are.

The growing interest in learning English language as an international language through international textbooks has necessitated the need for the evaluation of the cultural content embedded in English coursebooks. With regard to the close interrelation of language and culture, this study investigated the extent to which cultural aspects are represented in two international EFL textbooks. To this end, content analysis was used to analyze two commercial coursebooks (i.e., Summit 1a and Viewpoint 1), which are used in Iranian language institutes. The results of the directed content analysis revealed that two subcategories emerged from the content analysis (i.e., technology and environment), which were coded as an off-list category. Therefore, it was found that the reevaluation and extension of Stern’s (1993) framework for culture is necessary. Moreover, the results of the quantitative content analysis showed that there was not a balanced representation of cultural aspects in the selected coursebooks and the most frequent element was individual values in life. In addition, it was found that there was significant variation between the two coursebooks in the representation of culture. The study concluded that more in-depth investigation of cultural content is needed to develop cultural awareness of language learners. This study has implications for language material developers, language teachers, and language learners.

Cloze tests are commonly used in language testing as a quick measure of overall language ability or reading comprehension. A problem for the analysis of cloze tests with item response theory models is that cloze test items are locally dependent. This leads to the violation of the conditional or local independence assumption of IRT models. In this study, a new modeling strategy is suggested to circumvent the problem of local item dependence in cloze tests. This strategy involves identifying locally dependent items in the first step and combining them into polytomous items in the second step. Finally, partial credit model is applied to the combination of dichotomous and polytomous items. Our findings showed that the new strategy results in a better model-data fit than the dichotomous model where dependence is ignored but with a lower reliability. Results also indicated that the person and item parameters from the two models highly correlate. The findings are discussed in light of the literature on managing local dependence in educational tests.

La langue et la culture sont indissociables, car la culture se manifeste dans la langue et grâce à cette dernière, pourrait être fournie la base nécessaire à la manifestation de la culture. La traduction est un discours socioculturel où les sociétés humaines pourront afficher leur identité culturelle en invoquant l'autre. La problématique principale autour de laquelle s’organise cette recherche est celle de savoir comment dans la traduction, les culturèmes provoquent le déplacement des frontières sémantiques et comment l’union entre le nous et les autres, comme l’explique Y. Lotman dans la théorie de la sémiosphère, serait possible.  Cette recherche aura pour objectif de montrer que dans la traduction du roman Papillon, la transmission du sens des culturèmes dépend des situations discursives fondées sur deux systèmes sémantiques convergents et divergents. La présente étude est fondée sur l'analyse du corpus c’est-à-dire le roman Papillon d’Henry Charrier traduit par Parviz Naghibi. Ainsi les données principales de la recherche seront collectées à partir du corpus. Après avoir analysé les stratégies du traducteur, nous chercherons à apporter des solutions pour la bonne transmission du sens des culturèmes dans le processus de traduction. Enfin, nous essayerons de déterminer les typologies de traduction des culturèmes du point de vue de J. Fontanille. Les résultats de cette recherche indiquent que le traducteur n’a pas réussi à transférer le sens des culturèmes, car en adoptant des stratégies qui ne sont pas convenables pour traduire des éléments culturels d’une langue à l’autre, il n’a pas essayé de réduire les distances entre le nous et l’autre.   

In the context of language socialization, second/foreign language (L2) instruction is a crucial context for secondary socialization, especially when it takes place outside the learners’ culture of origin. This study explored how Iranian EFL learners socialize through the rules of EFL classes and how gender, parents, and native language affect their language socialization during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on two fundamental principles of language socialization (Lee & Bucholtz, 2015): agency and identity. In this ethnographic study, we collected the data by observing two classes in a WhatsApp group, interviewing the learners four times through Skype, asking them to write down their reflections about their class procedure, and writing our reflections about teachers-students interactions. We used Direct Qualitative Content Analysis method to analyze the data. To simplify data classification and interpretation, we utilized the MAXQDA-2020 software. The findings revealed two sub-categories for learners’ agency (talent and experience) and three sub-categories for learners’ identity (gender, parents, and native language). The results also showed that language socialization is bidirectional, and learners face forms of negotiating, accepting, or rejecting their agency and identity across this socialization process. The learners’ L1 and culture influence their opinion about the English language and culture. Whether this effect is negative or positive depends on proficiency level, gender, and social context. Finally, cyberspace provided a suitable context for language socialization, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings showed several pedagogical implications for EFL teachers and learners.تجزیه و تحلیل داده ها دو زیرمقوله برای عاملیت زبان آموزان (استعداد و تجربه) و سه زیرمقوله برای هویت زبان آموزان (جنسیت، والدین و زبان بومی) را مشخص می سازد. نتایج این پژوهش همچنین نشان می دهد که جامعه پذیری زبان دوسویه است و زبان آموزان در طی فرآیند جامعه پذیری با اشکال مذاکره، پذیرش یا عدم پذیرش عاملیت و هویت خود مواجه می شوند. فرهنگ و زبان اول زبان آموز بر نظر او راجع به زبان و فرهنگ انگلیسی تأثیر می گذارد. چه این تأثیر منفی باشد چه مثبت بستگی به سطح بسندگی، جنسیت و بافت اجتماعی دارد. یافته ها به چندین پیامد آموزشی برای معلمان و فراگیران زبان انگلیسی دلالت دارند.

Many aspects of EFL teaching are negatively influenced by professional identity challenges which are not effectively responded to by EFL teachers. Considering this, few studies, however, have been conducted on EFL teachers’ professional identity challenges, and especially on their gender-specific challenges, and factors which can facilitate their professional identity construction. Therefore, this study, benefitting from a narrative inquiry method and using semi-structured interviews, aimed to examine the professional identity gender-specific challenges of six institute EFL teachers. The findings of this study showed that EFL male and female teachers were different in relation to the professional challenges they faced and a number of factors had caused this. Based on the overall findings, it is recommended that EFL teacher educators become aware of the challenges faced by teachers and factors which can affect their professional identity construction. Additionally, they need to help EFL teachers reduce the destructive effects of professional identity challenges by facing them and turning them into opportunities for learning. 

Due to time constraints and large classes, teachers typically prefer to have product-based writing classes. Going through the existing literature, almost no study has examined the interrelationships among four variables of strategy use, self-efficacy, language proficiency, and writing autonomy in product and process writing classes. To this end, 381 Iranian male and female EFL students of English majors were chosen from the Universities of Qom and Kermanshah.  OPT and the questionnaires were distributed in person, via email, and an already-made Google-Doc link of the instruments. The data were analyzed using multiple correlation and SEM. Multiple correlations pointed to two-way correlations among the included variables in the process-oriented group in comparison to the product-oriented groups. In other words, learners in the process-based group appeared to be more autonomous, more self-efficacious, and more proficient language learners and could make more appropriate use of L2 strategies. The findings obtained from SEM also revealed the fact that the model of relationships among self-efficacy, autonomy, language proficiency, and strategy use enjoyed a good fit. Teachers will be able to make more informed and proper decisions regarding the adoption of either process-based or product-based instructional approaches to teaching writing in their own classes in general, and the way students’ levels of self-efficacy, autonomy, language proficiency, and strategy use can be boosted in particular. 

Objective: The involvement load hypothesis posits that the higher the involvement load of a task, the more effective it will be in improving students’ lexical learning. It does not differentiate between the different components of involvement load (need, search, and evaluation). Nor does it assume that the type of words to be learnt has any role in the effectiveness of tasks with different involvement load indices. This study compared the effect of the components of task involvement load on the comprehension, production, and retention of concrete and abstract words. Methods: Sixty upper-intermediate students were assigned to two groups. One group received a task in which the search component was dominant, the other group received a task (with the same overall involvement index) in which search was not present, and the evaluation component was the determining factor of task difficulty. A pretest, posttest, control group design (quasi-experimental method of research) was used to address the research questions. Results: One-way MANOVA results on the immediate posttest were in line with ILH predictions, showing no significant differences between tasks with equal involvement indices. On the other hand, the delayed posttest results showed that in case of receptive knowledge, there was a meaningful difference between abstract and concrete vocabulary, and the search group outperformed the evaluation group. However, the results of the productive posttest showed that the evaluation group outperformed the search group in abstract words. Conclusions: The findings can have significant implications for language learners, teachers, materials designers, and researchers.

Motivated by the growing significance of research on language teacher emotion regulation, the present study investigated the contributions of an online asynchronous teacher education initiative to L2 teachers’ emotion regulation. Drawing on Gross’ (1998, 2015) model of emotion regulation, the data gathered from interviews with four teachers prior to and after the course, their reflective narratives, online discussions, and class observations were qualitatively analyzed. The analyses pointed to the microgenetic development of teachers in terms of the incremental learning and application of the course content (i.e., emotion regulation) to their instructional practice. In other words, the participants incrementally drew on the learned strategies to up/down-regulate their emotions as English teachers. Additionally, the participant teachers tended to articulate their thoughts via reflective narratives by adopting the professional discourse, further implying the participant teachers’ access to their cognitions.

Teachers who possess an achievement value orientation may concentrate on establishing ambitious objectives for themselves, as well as creating opportunities for pupils to showcase their abilities and attain success. This can increase student motivation and ultimately improving job performance. While previous teachers' reflective studies in the field of English as a foreign language (EFL) have examined a wide range of variables, certain variables such as EFL teachers' achievement value orientation and job performance related to reflective teaching have remained under-researched. To this end, this study examined the EFL teachers' achievement value orientation factor identified as having a contributive role in EFL teachers' reflective teaching regarding the mediating role of job performance. The study sample consisted of 237 Iranian EFL teachers aged between 25 and 60. Based on the results of structural equation modeling (SEM), EFL teachers' achievement value orientation directly and significantly influences counterproductive work behavior (CWB) dimension of their job performance as well as metacognitive and affective dimensions of their reflective teaching. It was also shown that task performance (TP) has a direct effect on cognitive, contextual performance (CP) on cognitive and critical, and CWB on the metacognitive dimension of reflective teaching. The results also indicated that the CWB dimension of job performance mediates the impact of EFL Teachers’ achievement value orientation on metacognitive dimension of their reflective teaching. Teacher training programs should emphasize the importance of developing an achievement value orientation in teachers and reflective teaching should be promoted as a key component of teachers' professional development.

The main purpose of this study is to present and evaluate a model to execute successful On the Job Training Course for Iranian EFL teachers. In order to achieve the goal of the study, 441 teachers of different language institutes in several cities of Iran were asked to complete a self-made questionnaire which was designed based on some face-to-face interviews and observation documents of 26 teachers. As factor analysis was the most crucial concern of this study, the 43 items of the questionnaire were piloted on a sample of 147 EFL teachers. Regarding this matter, the scale in this study enjoyed having a sufficient communality value greater than 0.5 for 25 questions in the questionnaire out of 43 questions. Pearson’s correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling (SEM) were run to analyze the relationships among the components. The result revealed that the research model was in the domain of acceptance. The findings of this study can provide fruitful information for English teaching and learning stakeholders, educational policy makers, supervisors, and those involved in second language teacher education as well as English language teachers in EFL contexts.

This article performs a CDA on White House press briefings and is especial in its focus on how gendered language impacts relations of power. Adopting a mixed-method approach, this study will examine linguistic strategies and deictic expressions used by male and female spokespersons articulating ideologies and constructing authority. The latter is based on Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA model, whereby text analysis is involved, together with discourse practices and social context in explaining how language reflects and constructs political realities. The research questions were as follows: (1) How are deictic expressions used by spokesmen and spokeswomen in the White House press briefings? (2) What is the inter-relationship between power and language through the usage of modal verbs, and is there a gender-based difference herein? (3) How do women spokespersons, through language, claim ideologies and power? It is a contribution to applied linguistics and presents evidence of subtle linguistic mechanisms that shape public perception of gendered language in political discourse. The research questions were as follows: (1) How are deictic expressions used by spokesmen and spokeswomen in the White House press briefings? (2) What is the inter-relationship between power and language through the usage of modal verbs, and is there a gender-based difference herein? (3) How do women spokespersons, through language, claim ideologies and power? It is a contribution to applied linguistics and presents evidence of subtle linguistic mechanisms that shape public perception of gendered language in political discourse.

Classroom management is a key component of teachers' professional competent for promoting learning. This study investigated teachers' classroom management strategies in responding to Iranian EFL learners' misbehaviours in terms of teachers' biological factors including age and gender. The participants of the study were 75 (41 females and 34 males) teachers at universities and in language institutes of Fars Province, Iran. The study enjoyed a descriptive design using two sets of instruments encompassing a Five Likert-scale questionnaire and a semi-structured interview for collecting the data. The questionnaire determined teachers' classroom management strategies and the interview collected their opinions regarding classroom management. To analyze the data, one-way ANOVA and an independent sample t-test were run. The findings indicated that teachers' age and gender had significant effects on the types of strategies that they used when they faced misbehaviour. The findings also revealed that male teachers significantly used the strategies such as verbal warning, and female teachers removing the student from the class. The age groups were different in terms of using two strategies namely reward student with free time or activities and lower students' grade. The findings could have implication for curriculum designers, EFL teachers, and policymakers because it could enhance their skills in better management of learners' misbehaviours.

"English Language and Literature" courses are essential components of university education. They provide a significant avenue for understanding the politics, economics, and customs of English-speaking countries. These courses facilitate a mastery of English grammar, which in turn enhances students' comprehension of spoken and written English content. However, traditional modes of instruction in English Language and Literature often lack engagement and interactivity, thereby limiting the effectiveness of learning in this field. In order to boost learners' interest and efficiency in studying English, it is imperative to shift away from conventional teaching approaches. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence in various domains, its integration with English Language and Literature education can yield intelligent learning experiences. This study employs a combination of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) to reform the teaching model in English Language and Literature. The results indicate that CNN and GRU methodologies offer substantial support in realizing intelligent approaches to teaching this field. These methods exhibit a high degree of similarity and accuracy in predicting linguistic features in English Language and Literature. They excel in terms of predictive and scatter error distribution, showcasing superior performance.  

 On the Elaboration of Contexts of Situation with Special Reference toRequesting Strategies in BaliI Made Netra  , I Made Suastra  , & I Putu SutamaAbstractOver the last two decades, the study of meaning has been done utilizing context of situation. It has been practiced in determining the speaker’s meanings in languages around the world. However, this research attempts to develop an elaborated form of context of situation in a culture-specific Balinese language and to explicate the speaker’s meaning bound by the elaborated context. To this end, an approach of participatory observation was applied which  was qualitative and  descriptive in nature. The data were collected from respondents and informants of Buleleng and Gianyar regencies,considering that although they share the same language, their understanding on requesting strategies, however, might be different. Requesting strategies in Balinese is contextually bound by a given and elaborated context of situation, which is referred to as Desa Kala Patra functioning both as a context of situation and an adjustment for language effectiveness.  The elaborated context is immensely applicable to different requests. The requests are articulated based on the Balinese cultural scripts. Again, as an elaborated context of situation, Desa Kala Patra can bind the requesting strategies.  As an adjustment for language effectiveness, Desa Kala Patra can mostly shift the direct strategies into indirect ones. Indirect requests can be expressed by asking, tag-questioning, giving information, giving advice, providing alternative points, offering, complaining, greeting, and inviting. The practices of requesting are configured by low-level scripts using exponents of philosophical aspects, Desa Kala Patra itself, “ if/then” condition, mechanism, results, and concluding statement.

The integration of technology in second language education has made online collaborative writing (OCW) a valuable method for enhancing writing skills. Despite this, its effects on writing skills and technological self-perception in Ethiopia have not been thoroughly explored. This study aims to fill this gap by assessing the impact of OCW, through the use of Wiki and Telegram applications, on writing skills and technological self-perception within Ethiopia's English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting. Forty-five intermediate IELTS candidates from a language school in Utopia were randomly divided into three groups: the Wiki group (n = 15), the Telegram group (n = 15), and a control group (n = 15). They participated in pre-tests, interventions, post-tests, and completed a technology self-perception survey both before and after the intervention. The one-way ANOVA results showed that the Wiki and Telegram groups outperformed the control group in post-test writing skills. However, no significant difference was found between the Wiki and Telegram groups' post-test writing skills. Moreover, both groups reported a more positive view of technology following the intervention. These outcomes hold significant implications for EFL stakeholders in Ethiopia and pave the way for further research.