درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study sought to cast light on differences in strategies of compliment responses used across Persian and American English. For this purpose, 110 participants, under three groups of Persian native speakers, American native speakers, and Persian learners of English, answered a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), followed by a semi-structured interview with the Persian learners of English to cross-check the findings of the DCTs. The collected responses from the DCTs were coded at macro and micro-levels. Moreover, a macro-level of Persian cultural schemas was used for the Persian groups. The chi-square test revealed the independent performance of the three groups. Judged by the written DCTs while performing in English, the learners’ responses displayed cases of utilizing the native Persian cultural schemas. More specifically, the English learner respondents employed different instances of ta’arof and shekaste-nafsi . Confirmed by the interview, such failures resulted from insufficient exposure to the American English culture and more importantly from their lack of instruction and awareness of cross-cultural pragmatic differences.

In line with the technological advancement during the last few decades, virtual learning has been addressed more widely, which affected English language teaching and learning as well. Since Covid 19 pandemic, which has resulted in the long-lasting closure of educational settings worldwide, virtual learning as the alternative of traditional education has been developed unprecedentedly. An option for virtual learning specifically for language teaching is teaching on the phone which has been mostly neglected in educational research. The aim of this study was to analyse the lived experience of 16 adult English language learners who experienced learning English through one-to-one, audio call sessions. Due to the pandemic, semi-structured interviews were conducted on the phone, which were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed with a phenomenological approach. Many times revisions of the statements driven from the transcriptions resulted in six themes namely: a) learning on-the-phone as a new, satisfying experience, b) advantages, and c) disadvantages of one-to-one audio sessions, d) the participants’ preferences, e) the requisites of on-the-phone-learning, and f) the expectations of on-the-phone teacher, According to the result of this study, some educational recommendations for improving on-the-phone teaching are: covering four language skills through developing individualised lesson plans based on each learner’s needs and English language proficiency level; holding group video sessions along with one-to-one audio sessions; and using the facilities of messengers like WhatsApp to send audio, video and textual files to learners based on their needs and learning objectives.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty members and students had to leave their face-to-face (FTF) classes and move into emergency distance education (EDE) contexts. Due to this drastic change in the system of education, investigating the probable effects of EDE on the quality of education seems essential. As such, this study has attempted to probe the effect of EDE on the language skills of Iranian EFL students. To do so, drawing on the maximum variation sampling, the present study embarked on a qualitative descriptive research method, triangulating data through written open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data from 170 EFL students from different universities in Iran. The sample included BA students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and English Literature, aged above 18. Using Thematic Analysis (TA), students’ responses were transcribed, codified, and interpreted. The findings of TA revealed that along with several disadvantages and challenges that Iranian EFL students experienced in EDE with regard to learning English language skills, EDE provided some opportunities and benefits for their learning. The analysis of students’ responses also indicated that they deemed speaking skill as the most negatively influenced language skill and listening skill as the most positively affected skill. Furthermore, the findings represented that most of the students held teachers and administrators responsible for the problems and challenges they experienced in EDE contexts. The findings of the present study can encourage administrators, teachers, and students to prepare themselves for EDE against the possible subsequent waves.

Standard political discourse is replete with ambiguity and vagueness. Politicians frequently use vague language to hide their inadequate knowledge, show their low interest in the issue, and/or evoke emotion. This study reports on a qualitative content analysis of vagueness in two Iranian presidents' political interviews within a pragmalinguistic and sociopolitical paradigm. The data consisted of nine question-answer exchanges extracted from seven internationally live broadcast interviews. A total of 57 instances of vague language use were analyzed in terms of 21 pragmalinguistic vagueness strategies. Implications are that vagueness in political discourse is motivated by a multiplicity of factors such as face management, sociopolitical and situational adaptation, conflict avoidance, and personal characteristics of the interviewers and the respondents. Vagueness was also found to be a sign of diplomatic prudence or wisdom.

Given its key role in enhancing learners’ communicative competence, willingness to communicate (WTC) has received much research attention in the field of second language (L2) teaching and learning. Numerous studies have explored the antecedents of WTC in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. As an attempt to shed more light on this line of research, this study was set to investigate the effects of grit and foreign language anxiety as predictors of L2 WTC among Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose, a number of 163 undergraduate English major students from several universities participated in this survey. The required data were collected by distributing valid and reliable instruments measuring the three target variables (i.e., WTC, grit, and anxiety). A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was utilized to test the hypothesized structural models for the relations between these variables. The SEM results indicated that grit accounted for 10.6 % of the variance and FL anxiety explained 20% of the variance in the participants’ L2 WTC. Furthermore, the unique impact of foreign language anxiety on WTC was greater than that of grit. The implications of these findings for language teaching and learning are discussed at the end of the paper.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the acceptability of two Persian translations of Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by finding the position of each Persian translation in the literary polysystem of Iran. It also aimed to identify the most/least used translation strategies applied by each Persian translator, Morteza Madaninejad (2000) and Hamideh Ashkannezhand (2004), for translating culture-specific items (CSIs) from English into Persian. To do so, CSIs were extracted from the novel and classified based on Espindola and Vasconcellos's (2006) classification of cultural items. Then, Pederson's (2005) taxonomy of translation strategies was used to analyze the two Persian translations. The results indicated that Madaninejad preferred to use source oriented strategies. Thus, the translation he produced occupied the primary position in the literary polysystem. By contrast, Ashkannezhand had an interest in the use of target -oriented strategies. The findings have implications for translators of literary texts.

ELT coursebooks are the fertile soil for the transmission of cultural perspectives and also strong tools for shaping L2 learners' behaviors and expectations. This study investigated the existence of covert/ hidden curriculum in two of the widely used ELT coursebook series-- Top Notch and English File . To do so, the content of the series was analyzed via Moran's (2001) model of dimensions of culture and Chao’s (2011) main categories of culture . The results indicated that the series, along with covering different dimensions of culture, are biased mainly in favor of the western products, persons and perspectives, and that despite their global EFL/EIL audience, they vividly base their dialogues, reading and listening on the norms and values of the English-speaking countries, with almost no attention to the local, especially Asian values. The study, discussing the implications of such culture- related covert curricula in the ELT coursebooks, makes relevant suggestions for the design of ELT coursebooks in the present global village.

Annually, a good number of Iranian students who have completed their undergraduate studies in non-English-related majors apply and enroll in Master’s level Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) programs. Although evaluating MA TEFL program in Iran from university instructors’ and students’ perspectives has so far been the subject of several studies, the experiences and views of these TEFL major-changers have not been duly explored. To address the existing gap, in this qualitative research, the experiences of major-changers studying TEFL at MA level in three state universities in Tehran have been investigated. Besides, six TEFL university instructors were asked to share their perspectives concerning major-changers attending MA TEFL programs. In the main , the findings revealed that motives like interest in pursuing an English teaching career rather than a job related to their former major; gaining the required competency through attending crash courses held by university exam preparatory institutes; facing challenges in acquiring the specialized discourse of the community; and witnessing realities which ran counter to their prior supposition, as discussed by the major-changers and the instructors, formed part of the lived experiences and views of these major-changers.