درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aimed at investigating the Persian human and machine (Google) renderings of The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini, through comparing and contrasting culture specific items (CSI) as well as the exploited translation strategies. Thus, the relevant problematic forms of the cultural differences were identified and the procedures suggested by Newmark (1988) were examined to see how they fit into the translation of cultural differences in English and Persian. The results of this qualitative study revealed that Literal Translation, Naturalization and Transposition strategies were used most frequently in both human and machine translations. However, machine translation could not present a comprehensible translation due to overuse of these strategies (75%). It was also revealed that the spirit of source text was kept intact in both renderings due to closeness of Iranian and Afghan cultures. It was further discovered that the human translated version carried the real beauty and creativities of the original work. In facty, the terms that were transformed and localized were able to carry over the flavor of the author’s work. Finally, it was shown that the regretful theme of the source text was reserved to a great extent in the human rendering of the novel, while machine translation failed to get it. Generally-speaking, based on the findings of this study, culture-specific terms make it difficult for machines to achieve complete word-for-word equivalence, and at the same time, human translator must have a broad knowledge of the literature and traditions of both the source and target languages to come up with a faithful translation in terms of both form and content.

Considering the great importance of speaking to EFL learners, teachers have tried to use different teaching techniques to help learners master this skill. One of these techniques is learner-based language teaching. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of using selected class presentation on the speaking development of EFL learners.  To this purpose, a mixed-methods research was conducted, with both qualitative and quantitative data. The population of the study comprised 66 female EFL students of a language institute in Bandar Abbas. To homogenize them, Nelson Placement Test was administered and as a result, 50 students whose score were around the mean were selected as the pre-intermediate participants of the study. They were randomly assigned to two equal, experimental (EG) and control groups (CG). The experimental group was exposed to treatment by the teacher, while the control group was taught through traditional speaking method.  A standard speaking test was used as both pre-test and post-test. The results obtained from the statistical analysis of the participants’ scores in pre-test and post-test revealed that using selected class presentation in the class has considerable impact on the improvement of learners’ speaking performance. This finding shows that emphasizing on the role of the learners by involving them in suitable the speaking tasks can positivity affect their Oral language output.

This case study examined the adaptivity of learning transfer from an English for general academic purposes course to different disciplinary writing contexts. Data were collected at the end of one academic semester from 7 students of engineering disciplines enrolled in the writing course. Their EGAP writing course lasted for 16 weeks over which they were taught The St. Martin's Handbook, 6th Edition. The participants’ disciplinary writings together with interview transcripts served as the data sources for the extraction of adaptive transfers and also the processes of realizing the transfers. Adaptive transfers were identified by participants. Findings indicated that learning outcomes can transfer adaptively through a variety of processes to accommodate to the new writing demands. The results showed that the participants could adapt their learning along two broad dimensions of transfer, ‘idea generation’ (IG) and ‘text construction’ (TC) with the former involving ‘explication’ and ‘integration’ of knowledge and the latter achieved at macro and micro level. Within these adaptive transfers, we found a range of writing issues pursued including ‘goals, topics, logics, propositions, integrity, disciplinarity, linearity, paragraphing and linguistic resources’. Furthermore, the findings displayed two broad categories of ‘higher order’ and ‘lower order’ processes employed for the realization of adaptive transfers. While higher order processes operated through ‘transformative and evaluative’ mechanisms, the lower order processes involved two categories of ‘avoidance and affordance’, with the former as an attempt to refrain from going wrong and the latter as an effort to generate adaptivity. The findings for L2 writing are theoretically discussed.

This comparative corpus-based study was launched to analyze the use of intensifiers and indefinite pronouns indicating generality in two disciplines of applied linguistics (AL) and power system engineering (PSE). Accordingly, four corpora were considered in this study: two corpora representing English articles written by L1-English writers in applied linguistics (L1-English AL corpus) and power system engineering (L1-English PSE corpus), and two other corpora (L1-Persian AL corpus and L1-Persian PSE corpus) belonging to English articles written by L1-Persian writers in the same two disciplines. The findings revealed that the indefinite pronouns were used more frequently than intensifiers in all corpora; on the other hand, the use of qualified-generalization markers in the two L1-Persian corpora exceeded that in the L1-English corpora. As for disciplinary differences, the AL conclusions contained more generalization and qualified-generalization stance markers, as compared to their PSE counterparts. The study concludes with some implications regarding the representation of authorial voice.

EFL teachers’ professional identity is a multi-dimensional and complicated concept. It is influenced by many other issues in the educational context such as reflective practice. This study intended to explore the relationship between professional identity and reflectivity of Iranian EFL teachers. It also aimed to examine how high and low reflective teachers perceive the professional identity components. The participants were 89 EFL teachers teaching at three universities in Shiraz, Iran. Their selection was based on convenience sampling. The participants were asked to fill out two questionnaires including teacher professional identity questionnaire (Liou, 2008) and teacher reflectivity questionnaire (Akbari et al., 2010). Pearson product correlation coefficient revealed that there was a positive relationship between EFL teachers’ professional identity and reflectivity. Furthermore, the findings of regression analysis indicated that reflectivity could predict EFL teachers’ professional identity. Furthermore, the participants were categorized into two high and low reflective groups. Two groups were interviewed to examine the professional identity perceptions used by high and low reflective teachers. The thematic analysis showed that high reflective teachers used and implemented much more professional identity components in their teaching practice in comparison to the low reflective teachers.

Writing is considered one of the most difficult skills in EFL/ESL. Thus, meticulous recognition and classification of students’ errors in certain contexts is a worthwhile endeavor which provides us with both diagnostic and prognostic power. Accordingly, a total of 430 students in 15 English writing classes held during 12 consecutive semesters in a private university in central Taiwan were the subjects of this study. They composed 5703 essays which were rated and coded by the authors. Adopting and modifying the error taxonomy proposed by Zheng & Park (2013), the authors classified a sum of 63460 errors into four main groups with their subsequent subcategories. This study revealed that the highest problematic areas for Taiwanese university students were ‘misformation’ with 51.55% of the whole including errors in tenses, parts of speech, prepositions, subject/verb agreements, and run-on sentences. Then, ‘omission’ errors ranked second with 21.30% including errors in articles, plural suffix-s, and relative pronouns. Finally, the third and fourth error types were ‘others’ with 15.13% including spelling, capitalization, and wrong vocabulary, and ‘addition’ with 12.01% containing errors in articles, unnecessary words, and conjunctions. This study provides numerous genuine samples from the students’ compositions being annotated based on the applied error taxonomy. Thus, the data presented in this study can provide researchers with a practical framework for future studies in error analysis, as well as pedagogical implications in the field.

The present study examined the comparative effects of Etherpad-based writing instruction and face-to-face writing instruction on EFL learners' writing quality and writing self-efficacy. It also aimed at finding the learners' attitude towards the influence of Etherpad and their reason for success/ failure in this writing course. To this end, ninety students were selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned to one of the two instruction groups. In addition to an IELTS writing task, Self-efficacy in Writing Scale (SWS) was administered. During the course, the students received instruction on writing an argumentative essay. After the treatment, the SWS and another IELTS writing task were given. Subsequently, a semi-structured interview was conducted with twenty Etherpad-based learners to find their attitudes towards the reason for their success/ failure and the effectiveness of Etherpad. The results revealed that the Etherpad-based group significantly outperformed the face-to-face group in the writing posttest and demonstrated a higher level of writing self-efficacy. The interview data showed that the students attributed their success to both internal and external factors. Whereas, they ascribed their failure to internal factors rather than external ones. It was also revealed that the students found Etherpad as a predictor of their success in writing performance.

Contemporary literature in English language teaching shows some impacts of oral narrations on learners’ speaking competence and phonological processing. However, little research has explored the relationship between this methodological practice and young learners’ L2 reading comprehension. This paper investigates the effect which story retelling has on young English learners’comprehension of reading. The researchers employed quantitative and qualitative approaches. Forty children were chosen from two different classes of a comparable level of proficiency and assigned into two groups for a two-month treatment. The results show that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on the reading comprehension posttest. The questionnaire and observation data also indicated that the children responded positively to story retelling and that story retelling brought about excitement in the reading class, motivated young learners to read as well as shaped young learners’ behaviours and attitudes. This study suggests using story retelling more often in L2 language programs for young learners.

Research has not investigated the motivation of students toward learning Persian as a foreign/second language. This study examines the integrative, instrumental, intrinsic, and extrinsic types of motivation among language learners learning Persian as a second language. A questionnaire consisting of 40 questions, adapted from Gardner (2001), Ryan and Deci (2000), and Noels et al. (2001), was used to collect the required data. Statistical procedures were followed to analyze the data from 135 (59 females and 73 males) language learners. Results showed that integrative and extrinsic were respectively the most and the least significant forms of motivation among these participants. They reasoned that they mainly learn Persian language to understand Persian art, literature and history, increase their knowledge, and communicate with Iranians. Variables such as gender, education, and age showed significant differences among the males and females concerning instrumental and intrinsic types of motivation. Furthermore, whereas the results indicated significant variation between the participants’ education levels and their integrative motivation, there was not any significant relationship between the age and motivation.

Transitioning smoothly from traditional learning of language to independent learning and consequently, moving from teacher-assessment to self-assessment faces teachers with a dilemma of deciding on learners’ final improvement. To assist to eliminate this dilemma and to compare learners’ self-assessment of reading comprehension skills with those of teacher assessment, the present study was set out. To this end, 190 B.S. Iranian engineering students were selected based on intact classes. The participants’ proficiency was determined by the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Prior to the instruction, the participants’ ability to use two reading skills, i.e. scanning and skimming was assessed by their instructor and by themselves through using a Likert Scale questionnaire. After instructing each skill, the participants received post-tests, both self-assessment and teacher assessment. Following the post-self-assessment, the participants answered an open-ended questionnaire to reflect on their assessment. To analyze the data and understand the differences and correlations between the two types of assessments, SPSS was performed. Intriguingly, the results from self- and teacher-assessment were pro-self-assessment. Besides, the outcomes of the open-ended questionnaire indicated that it is time to trust learners and allow them to assess their own learning and decide on their learning process.