درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Plagiarism is considered as a serious problem in academia around the world. The issue of plagiarism has recently received global inquiry in different fields of science, especially in foreign language (L2) academic writing. To meticulously assess the Iranian academics for plagiarism at both theory and practice grounds, developing an accountable instrument seemed to be inevitable. To bridge the gap, in phase 1 of the study, a conceptual framework for Iranian academics’ grasp of plagiarism and its components was designed after a thorough review of literature. In phase 2, a number of M.A. graduates and graduate students (n = 224) in six State and Islamic Azad universities in Iran were recruited to partake in piloting the newly-designed plagiarism questionnaire. After a two-step revising the inefficient items (n = 11), the final draft of the developed questionnaire with 36 items was administered with the main sample of participants (n = 288). An Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to identify the components of the instrument, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis to measure its construct validity. As a result, the final draft of the Sociocultural Plagiarism Questionnaire contained 31 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items in four components of awareness (10 items), attitude (8 items), sociocultural beliefs (8 items), and perception (5 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items), which were suggested as having fundamental contributions to the Iranian academic writers’ sensitivity to plagiarism. Findings of the study suggested that (a) the Iranian academic writers’ normative sociocultural beliefs can probably reduce their sensitivity to plagiarism, (b) while the Iranian academics might have relatively high awareness and deep perception about plagiarism, their attitude toward plagiarism seems relatively neutral or even insensitive.

تحقیق حاضر تلاشی است برای ارزیابی مجموعه کتاب های پراسپکت و ویژن (کتاب های زبان انگلیسی دوره اول و دوره دوم دبیرستان) با توجه به سه عنصر اصلی منظورشناسی؛ نشانگرهای ادب ورزی، کنش های کلامی و نقش های زبانی. به همین منظور تمامی مکالمات (۱۷۲ مکالمه) این شش کتاب مورد بررسی و تحلیل دقیق جهت پاسخگویی به موارد ذیل قرار گرفت: پربسامد ترین نشانگرهای ادب ورزی؛ رایج ترین کنش های کلامی وپربسامدترین نقش های زبانی به کار رفته در کتاب های پراسپکت و ویژن نتایج این تحقیق نشان داد که نشانگرهای ادب و نشانگرهای اقدامی پربسامد ترین نشانگرهای ادب ورزی هستند. کنش های کلامیِ نمایندگی و بخشنامه ای پربسامدترین کنش های کلامی هستند. و همچنیمن نقش زبانیِ اطلاعاتی، پرتکرار ترین نقش زبانی به کار گرفته شده در این مجموعه کتاب ها هستند. از سوی دیگر عدم استفاده و یا استفاده محدود از برخی از عناصر منظور شناسی به عنوان نقص در این مجموعه ها شناخته شد. همچنین بر اساس نتایج حاصل از این مطالعه مشخص شد که توزیع مولفه های منظورشناسی به صورت مساوی در مکالمات هر دو سری کتاب ها صورت نپذیرفته است و هیچ ارتباطی میان سطح این کتاب ها و میزان استفاده از این مولفه ها وجود ندارد. و در نهایت، راه کارها و پیشنهاداتی به مسئولین تهیه و تدوین منابع درسی جهت به کارگیری عناصر منظورشناسی در کتاب های درسی زبان انگلیسی و تحقق اهداف آموزشی ارائه شد.

Academic literacy is a transformative approach to EAP studies that highlight the backgrounds and needs of the EAP learners in order to empower them by participating in the social practices of the international research community. From this perspective, EAP textbook development research aims to find how textbooks could empower EAP learners though considering their real needs. Accordingly , this study aims to find how EAP textbooks match/mismatch with the EAP learners’ needs. The sample of the study included 40 participants who were selected through purposeful homogeneous sampling. All participants who had passed ‘English for the Students of Science (ESS)’ as the main textbook of the EAP course completed a structured interview questionnaire that its findings were gone under content analysis and a nonparametric test of rankings themes, i.e. Friedman test. Then textbook was evaluated in terms of the established frameworks. Finally, identified themes of the interviews were compared with the content of the textbook evaluation. Findings of the study showed that EAP learners prioritized reading, writing, listening, and speaking English language skills respectively as the main language needs in the EAP community of practice. The study also found that although the design of the EAP textbook matched learners’ needs at the macro-level of needs analysis, there was little enough evidence in the content of the book that could support and match these EAP learners’ needs. The findings might have many implications for EAP textbook developers, learners, and teachers. 

This study examined the combined effects of two task complexity levels (i.e., high- and low-complex) and two planning conditions including pre-task planning and on-line planning on Iranian intermediate language learners’ speech production regarding complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To this end, 90 intermediate EFL learners from a language institute in Shiraz were randomly assigned into two control and four experimental groups. At first, the language learners in all groups participated in the speaking pretest. Presented with a series of picture description tasks, the participants were asked to narrate a story. During 10 treatment sessions of picture description task performance, the experimental and control groups attempted different planning time conditions including pre-task planning, online planning, and no-planning along with task complexity levels. Finally, following the last session, the posttest was administered to all participants. The narrations analysis, as well as the results of Mixed between-within groups ANOVAs and a series of one-way ANOVAs, manifested that language learners in the pre-task high complexity group outperformed all other groups in terms of complexity. Moreover, the online low complexity group and online high complexity group outperformed the pre-task planning low complexity, no-planning low complexity, and no-planning high complexity groups regarding accuracy. With regard to fluency, the pre-task planning low complexity group significantly outperformed the no-planning low complexity, no-planning high complexity, and online high complexity groups. It was also concluded that pre-task planning affected language learners’ speech fluency. The implications of the results are also addressed.

Regarding the belief that willingness to communicate is strongly tied with developing some insights into the L2 culture, such a connection may not be always positive and the issue of cultural attachment and identity may sometimes function as a hindrance. Individuals are believed to be highly emotional in terms of “religion and spirituality", among other components of cultural identity. This study aimed at investigating the interrelationships of willingness to speak and cultural identity with English speaking proficiency. To this aim, 215 Iranian intermediate and upper intermediate EFL learners took part in this survey study to complete the Home Culture Attachment Scale and the Revised Version of Willingness to Communicate questionnaire. Using SEM, path analysis showed the degree to which the variables were related to one another. Also, Pearson Correlation was used for verification. The findings revealed positive significant relationships between all subscales of Home culture Attachment and both speaking and willingness to speak, except for the element of religious attachment. Further, willingness to speak was positively and significantly correlated with speaking skill. Having found a rather negative influence of religious attachment, it may be concluded that religion, as a cultural barrier, may hinder the process of L2 learning.

This comparative study aimed at finding out the types of grammatical shifts which have occurred in two English translations of the Quranic rhetorical questions, and the impact of such shifts on the said rhetorical questions. For these purposes, the study firstly analyzed the Arabic and English texts syntactically using the x-bar theory for Haegeman (2006) and then classified the grammatical shifts according to Catford’s (1965) kinds of shifts. The X theory has been applied as a tree diagram and liner structure. Where necessary “al-Gadwal fi i’arab al-Quran”/the Quran grammatical analysis” of Safi published in (1995) has been used. The two English translations used in the study were “the Koran Interpreted” by Arberry (1955) and “the Noble Quran: English translation of the meanings and commentary” (1996) by al-Hilali and Khan. According to the analysis, different types of grammatical shifts, e.g. class, unit, structural and level shifts have occurred in the two translations. Further, another kind of shift has appeared in the two translations. This refers to the syntactic shift where a question has been changed into a statement. With respect to the impact of such shifts on the meanings of the Quranic rhetorical questions, sometimes the entire meaning of the ST rhetorical questions is distorted like in al-Hilali and Khan’s translation. In addition, the intended reason of the function is changed like in Arberry’s translation. By and large, it can be argued that the shifts committed by Arberry affected the ST rhetorical questions more than those made by al-Hilali and Khan.

This study investigated the comparative effect of collaborative strategic reading (CSR) and metacognitive reading strategy (MRS) on the reading comprehension of Iranian extrovert and introvert EFL learners. To achieve the purpose of this study, a sample IELTS was administered to 325 students studying at Marefat Language Academy in Tehran from whom 225 were selected based on their performance on that test. Next, the above students sat for Eysenck Personality Inventory questionnaire to determine their level of extroversion and introversion. As a result, a total of 150 learners (75 extroverts and 75 introverts) were selected as four experimental groups and two control groups. The four experimental groups, comprised of 1) 25 extroverts undergoing CSR, 2) 25 extroverts receiving MRS, 3) 25 introverts undergoing CSR, 4) 25 introverts undergoing MRS while the two control groups, with 25 extroverts and 25 introverts, the learners experienced the conventional procedure of teaching reading comprehension in the language school. Ancova and two-way Ancova were conducted which revealed introvert learners with MRS outperformed the extrovert with MRS, introvert and extrovert with CSR, and control groups, suggesting a decisive role for personality traits in reading comprehension classes with different reading strategies instruction. 

In order to establish the why of noticing, it is imperative to empirically explore the factors that potentially mediate noticing. This study aimed to explore two factors that are believed to affect noticing: the complexity of target structures and learners’ second language (L2) proficiency level. English relative clauses (RCs) were selected as the target structures, and Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis (AHH) was taken as the measure of the complexity of the RCs. A sample of 113 freshmen English language majors were selected as the participants of the study. A test of English RCs was developed as the placement test, and Key English Test (KET) was used to classify the participants into three groups of High (N=38), Mid (N=37), and Low (N=38) L2 proficiency level. Note-taking was used as the measure of noticing. After administering the RC test and the proficiency test, the participants were given a number of authentic reading texts containing instances of RCs and were required to take notes during reading activity. The non-parametric Friedman’s test demonstrated that the complexity of RCs positively affected the participants’ noticing while the non-parametric ANCOVA indicated that the participants’ L2 proficiency level had no significant effect on noticing. The findings of this study can be helpful to both teachers and material developers in providing learners with optimal conditions for noticing linguistic forms, which in turn, could facilitate L2 learning.