درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Student evaluation apprehension as one of the detrimental factors in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, reduces and gradually diminishes student participation in classroom activities, since learners are mostly concerned with how others (teacher and classmates) evaluate/judge their performance. Due to the fact that the studies considering the important role of student evaluation apprehension are scarce in number, this study was conducted to validate the newly-designed questionnaire via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and find the relationship between student evaluation apprehension and academic achievement, gender, and educational level of 258 EFL students. The results from EFA, CFA, and reliability analyses revealed that the new questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument measuring EFL students’ evaluation apprehension. Moreover, a significant negative correlation was observed between student evaluation apprehension and academic achievement. Besides, it was found that females experience evaluation apprehension more than males, and BA students were also found to have more evaluation apprehension than their MA counterparts.

This study explored the impact of task complexity on task performance of Iranian lower-intermediate and advanced language learners. It also investigated how working memory was related to task performance and mediated the influence of complexity conditions on language performance. Task complexity was operationalized by designing differing tasks along the +/- reasoning and the +/- few elements dimensions. Eighty Iranian EFL learners (40 lower-intermediate and 40 advanced) carried out argumentative tasks which differed in complexity level. Working memory capacity was measured by applying the Persian translation of Wechsler's (1987) working memory test, and task performance was measured in terms of accuracy and fluency. The results revealed that for lower-intermediate learners, task complexity led to decrease in accuracy in the complex tasks, while fluency was boosted in simple task condition. For advanced learners, task complexity resulted in improved accuracy, while fluency decreased in complex condition. The results of multivariate analyses revealed that learners' language performance in the complex group significantly differed from that of the simple group on the combined dependent variables for both lower-intermediate and advanced learners. There was no significant correlation between working memory and any performance measures.

This study sought to evaluate the usefulness and desirability of the English textbooks for Iranian second grade students in senior high school, Vision 2. To this end, the extent to which the textbooks materials satisfy the prescribed curriculum was explored based on Littlejohn’s (2011) evaluative framework. Employing stratified random sampling, a total of 12 private and public senior high schools (six girl students and six boy students) were selected randomly among all the schools located in the six education districts in Isfahan. To select the teacher participants, a convenience sampling method was employed and those who agreed to be surveyed took part in the study. The 20 teachers who participated in this study have been teaching Vision 2 since the beginning of 2017 fall. The process of the content analysis deals with a deeply analytical content evaluation based on a framework containing different parts (objective description analysis, subjective analysis, subjective inference) done by a teacher committee. The results revealed that there is a need to adapt the materials to the target situation of use. Such adaptation needs to cover both design- and publication-oriented aspects of the materials. As a practical implication, the findings may urge the developers of the textbooks to launch a modification project relying upon the results of the systematic phase, therefore, it may enrich English teaching and learning material in Iranian high schools.

Using evaluative language has been considered as the significant predictor of academic writing success in second and foreign language research. Such an importance paved the way for the current study to investigate the use of the APPRAISAL tool, namely ATTITUDE resources, in the research articles (RAs) written by native (N) and non-native (NN) writers, focusing on the discussion sections. A qualitative corpus selection resulted in choosing 30 RAs written by American writers and 30 authored by Iranian writers. Two coding schemes were used: one for discussion boundaries based on Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) discussion move structure, and the modified version of APPRAISAL theory (Xu, 2017) for identifying attitudinal resources. The corpus analysis revealed that academic writers preferred to use a great number of inscribed ATTITUDE resources, that is, APPRECIATION tools compared to JUDGMENT. There was also a significant difference between N and NN sub-corpora in using attitudinal resources, highlighting that the language of N RAs contained more authorial stance of ATTITUDE compared to NN sub-corpus. However, the use of idioms as evoked ATTITUDE was found to be frequently applied by NN authors. The findings of the study contributed to the significance of using evaluative language in academic writing through which the writers can make a dialogic interaction with readers and enhance their critical stance by involving them in the argument.

Processability Theory (PT) is regarded as one of the prominent theory of second language acquisition (SLA) developed to illuminate the developmental sequences in SLA as well as some other linguistic phenomena (Pienemann, 1998a; 2011).Since 1990s, Processability has been at the center of attention in second language acquisition research. Within the framework of Processability theory and through analyzing the written performance of Iranian EFL learners, the present research focused on the acquisition of “Copula inversion” and “Negation” across five proficiency levels, from elementary to advanced and compared it with the stage-like development model of morpho-syntactic structures proposed by Pienemann (1998a, 2011). The study followed a descriptive method of research and the data was collected from 350 participants in five different proficiency levels from elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced. The participants were asked to provide samples of their written performance on different tasks such as introduction task, habitual action task, story retelling task, audio-video-retelling task, picture description task, composition, communication task. The data in this research was analyzed both qualitatively, in order to identify and classify the type and order of the morpho-syntactic structures; and quantitatively, by calculating means. The results of Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that “Negation” emerged at the elementary level of the language learners’ performance and “copula inversion” emerged at the intermediate level. Just the same, the competence of the learner grows stronger in concern with these variables through the higher proficiency levels. These findings imply that PT is valid for Iranian EFL learners, as well.   

This study sought to investigate translation strategies in translation of culture-specific items (CSIs) in Persian translation of ‘The Egyptian’ novel by Mika Waltari. To this end, it benefited from corpus-based comparative content analysis design within a qualitative approach. The corpus of this study consisted of 150 pages of the novel ‘The Egyptian’ by Mika Waltari along with their Persian translations by Zabihollah Mansouri, which were selected through simple random sampling. Data analysis included parallel comparison of the source text and its translation in terms of the occurrence of different types of translation strategies used in the translations. Furthermore, statistical procedures which were conducted consisted of calculation of frequency and percentage of different translation strategies (to identify the most and least frequent strategies) and chi-square test (to see if there is a significant difference between the frequencies of different strategies used by the translator). The results of data analysis showed that the translator has used the following translation strategies: Calque, equivalence, adaptation, literal translation, modulation and omission. Moreover, it was found that the most frequent strategy was calque. Furthermore, the lowest frequency belonged to modulation and omission. In addition, a significant difference was revealed between the frequencies of different translation strategies. The findings have some implications for translation students, translation teachers, and translators.

This study intended to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ life satisfaction as well as their empathy levels. Furthermore, the relationship between Iranian EFL teacher’s life satisfaction and their empathy was investigated. To achieve these objectives, a group of 245 male and female Iranian EFL teachers with the age range of 20 to 55 years old participated. Data were collected through Life Satisfaction and Empathy Questionnaires. Results revealed that EFL teachers were satisfied with their life and were empathic teachers. Moreover, a significant relationship was found between these two variables. The main conclusion is that life satisfaction can have positive impacts on certain aspects of life; hence, it is recommended that proper conditions be provided for the EFL teachers. Additionally, having empathy with students may create happiness in both students and the teacher. Such happiness can presumably make the student bear a positive perspective towards language learning, thereby making them more motivated to learn English.    

The present study is part of a Ph.D. program that explores the possible effect of critical thinking-oriented dynamic assessment (CT-DA) on learners' learning potential in reading comprehension skills. 21 Iranian language learners who were homogenized in terms of their language proficiency, reading comprehension, and critical thinking abilities participated in this study. Learners were divided into three groups of CT-DA, dynamic assessment (DA), and Control group. While learners in CT-DA received mediation loaded with critical thinking techniques, learners in DA group received dynamic assessment mediation, and learners in the Control group did not receive any mediation. The analysis of the results revealed that DA and CT-DA significantly improve learners' reading potential scores. Moreover, significant differences between the Learning Potential Score (LPS) of DA and CT-DA groups were found, denoting the better performance of participants who received a critical thinking-oriented dynamic assessment. Finally, the qualitative analyses led to the detection of eleven mediational strategies which nurtured the development of the reading comprehension ability of L2 learners during CT-DA. The article concludes with suggestions for further research on dynamic assessment and critical thinking in second/foreign language development.

The present study aims at investigating English lexicon polysemy within the cognitive approach to study the way based on which Persian language learners learn English lexicon with the concepts used in cognitive linguistics such as, prototype, polysemy, categorization, etc. The nature of the methodology used in this qualitative research for studying the meanings of English lexicon is a descriptive-analytic method. After the semantic analysis of the English lexicon based on the model of Dirven & Verspoor (2004), it was found that the meanings of the lexicon are classifiable based on theoretical procedures on cognitive semantics. The authors are trying to show the cognitive concepts in cognitive linguistics can be used for teaching English lexicon. The findings, generally, showed that the unconscious knowledge of learners in learning the cognitive structure of the meanings of the lexicon has a meaningful relationship with learning. The results also revealed that the lexicon has a semantic network semantically, in which the notion of core or prototype is located in the center of the semantic network and the rest of the meanings can be examined as the peripheral meanings of a lexicon.

High-stakes tests exert impacts on teachers’ perceptions, methodology, practices, and materials used in the classroom. However, previous research studies have overlooked the role of teachers’ past experiences in the tests and their instructional planning prior to, during, and after the preparation courses. This study inspected the washback effect of IELTS examination on Iranian EFL teachers’ instructional planning considering their IELTS related experiences. Through a mixed-methods research design, two sets of questionnaires were distributed among 120 Iranian IELTS instructors to examine the IELTS washback effect on their perceptions of instructional planning. Afterward, a semi-structured interview was held with 15 instructors, selected from among 120 initial participants, to supplement the previously collected data. The results of one sample t-test and Wilcoxon signed-ranks test indicated that the current level of Instructional planning at item and total score level was beyond average. Likewise, the results of Spearman rho indicated a positive and significant relationship between instructors’ instructional planning and their past IELTS related experiences. It was also found that the IELTS examination made the instructors develop exam-oriented plans by focusing on the students’ test performance. The results are invaluable for IELTS instructors in that they can raise their knowledge and awareness about the nature and scope of IELTS washback effect and ways to develop exam-oriented plans.