درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

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.

This study assessed the effect of using English songs on Iranian pre-school students’ speaking proficiency in Kerman. The study was conducted at Novin pre-school, in total, fifty pre-school students aged 5-6 participated in the study. At the beginning of the study, a pre-test of speaking was administered to the participants of the study. Then, they were assigned into two groups, 25 students were in the control group and 25 students were in the experimental group. English songs were used to expand the students' speaking proficiency in the experimental group and the participants of the control group utilized conventional methods of teaching speaking skills. After the treatment, a speaking post-test was administered to the participants of both groups to assess the effect of treatments on their speaking ability. The results were analyzed using the independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test. The results of the study indicated that English songs had a significant effect on the speaking ability of Iranian pre-school students in Kerman. Finally, the findings of the study assist the pre-school instructors to attract their students to learn a foreign language by using a song-based strategy.

With the increasing importance of Language Assessment Literacy in recent years, identifying the assessment literacy components in different contexts becomes essential to ensure that language teacher professional development is on the right path, thus providing students with proper evaluation. This paper describes a research project in which an adapted version of Fulcher's (2012) Language Assessment Literacy Survey was delivered via the Internet in an attempt to characterize the levels of assessment knowledge of English language teachers in Syria. Three hundred and thirty Syrian English language teachers participated in the study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to the data obtained from the constructed-response item, and qualitative data analysis procedures were applied to the open-response items. The results indicated that Language Assessment Literacy in the Syrian context mainly comprises four factors: social impact of tests; test prepping and administration; test design, development, and interpretation; and evaluating language tests. On the other hand, the content analysis applied to the responses given by Syrian English teachers to the open-response questions indicated failings in both theoretical and practical assessment literacy in Syria's education scene, particularly the former, calling for an immediate change in teachers' preparatory courses in Syria. It is hoped that the study results can help language teacher education programs specify EFL teachers' academic assessment goals and enhance the nature of future language assessment programs, particularly in Syria; it can further provide a basis for comparison with other contexts and countries, thus contributing to a cross-cultural understanding of language assessment literacy.

Textbooks play a crucial role in language education even in a digital age where education tends to be digitalized. It has been claimed that pronunciation is underrepresented in EFL textbooks, notwithstanding its significance in spoken interaction. To this end, this research investigated the treatment of pronunciation in a multilevel EFL textbook series along with such components as teacher’s book, pronunciation extra, and MyEnglishLab. Following the analysis of a total of 264 units in student’s book and other textbook components individually, it was found that suprasegmental features predominated the textbook series compared to segmentals. It was also discovered that controlled practice activities prevailed, pursued respectively by description and analysis, and listening discrimination activities. The findings suggest that the analyzed textbook series contain sufficient amount of pronunciation practice, albeit not including adequate guided and communicative practice. The research concluded that pronunciation is not underrepresented in this textbook series. It might accordingly be inferred that there might be other causes of ignoring pronunciation than its treatment in EFL textbooks in the Turkish context, such as teacher cognition (i.e. beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge, etc.), institutional policies, time constraints, or psychological reasons.

Researchers stated that learning and applying certain set of lexical bundles of native lecturers by non-native lecturers would help students improve their proficiency through incidental vocabulary input. The present study shed light on the lexical bundles in hard science lectures used by Native and Non-native lecturers in international universities with the main purpose of analyzing the structural and functional similarities and differences in their usage. The secondary purpose was to finalize and present a list of explored lexical bundles employed by Native lecturers in these lectures which could be helpful for students and also Non-Native lecturers. The corpus of this study consists of five and a half hours of three different native university lecturers’ lectures and about five and a half hours of three different non-native university lecturers’ lectures who were teaching hard science (nuclear physics and electronic engineering). The data were analyzed using n-gram tool in lextutor.ca website which is a free online software to analyze the lexical bundles of more than two corpora and compare them. Functional and structural analysis gave the following results. Findings showed that lexical richness of both Native and Non-Native lecturers was not good enough to expose students to rich environments to help them improve their English proficiency. In light of structural classification, the results revealed that dependent clause fragments in addition to verb structure phrases were the most widespread and Noun phrase + of-phrase fragments were the least employed structures of the identified lexical bundles in the lectures of Non-Native and Native lecturers. In terms of structural analysis, it was concluded that stance bundles were the most frequent function bundles used by both groups. Therefore, there were both similarities and differences in the structural and functional classifications of lexical bundles in the lectures of native and non-native lecturers.