درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Languages as living and dynamic structured systems were influenced at the very first moments of the COVID-19 pandemic as they became medicalized by the use and practice of various jargons and technical terms. Meanwhile, homebound individuals around the world started to create a COVID-19 pandemic-related lexical-overload of neologisms (Coroneologisms or Corona coinages) in different languages which started to spread across the globe by mass media, and some of them even entered the official databases of the well-known dictionaries and Wikipedia corpora. This study was a scrutinized attempt to explore the English vs. Persian (Farsi) Coroneologisms across various Extensible Markup Language (XML) corpora and a huge body of E-resource discourses (websites, social media, and news channels and forums) based on embedded mixed-method design to provide a comprehensive insight into their types, structures, and meanings. To provide a better understanding of how and why particular Coroneologisms were created in terms of social, cultural, or political contributing factors, they were investigated based on the reflections of a series of sociolinguistic focus-group E-interviews with 184 volunteer English and Persian native speakers. This study might provide implications for sociolinguistics, corpus-based language studies, lexicographers, designers of corpora, etymologists, and discourse analysts in English and Persian.

این تحقیق سه نوع تفکر کلامی که در روش تدریس ادراکی جامع رایج است را مورد بررسی و مقایسه قرار داد تا تاثیر این سه شیوه به زبان آوری فکر را در فراگیری وجه مجهول در بین فراگیران زبان دوم مشخص کند. بنابراین چهار کلاس پایه دوازدهم از یک دبیرستان انتخاب شدند و به بطور تصادفی به سه گروه آزمایش و یک گروه گواه تقسیم شدند و به تمام دانش آموزان وجه مجهول آموزش داده شد. در واقع به هر کدام از سه گروه آزمایش به یکی از شیو ه های رایج آموزش ادراکی سیستمی: الف) تفکر کلامی درونی، ب) تفکر کلامی بیرونی، ج) تفکرکلامی درونی و بیرونی آموزش داده شد وبه گروه گواه به روش معمول استقرایی آموزش داده شد. نتایج تحقیق نشان داد که هر سه شیوه ادراکی سیستمی در یادگیری وجه مجهول توسط فراگیران موثربود. البته شایان ذکر است که از سه روش فوق دو روش تفکر کلام بیرونی و روش تفکر کلامی بیرونی و درونی از روش تفکر درونی موثرتر بودند. در حقیقت علت این برتری را می توان در ماهیت منحصر به فرد روش تفکربیرونی جست که همزمان به دو شکل باعث توسعه ذهنی می شود. شکل اول توسعه ذهنی از طریق مفاهیم می باشد که از ویژگی بارز آموزش ادراکی سیستمی است و شکل دوم حالت توسعه ذهنی از طریق تعامل می باشد که از ویژگی های بارز ارزیابی پویا است. به عبارتی دیگردر روش تفکر بیرونی بستری فراهم می شود تا دو مدل آموزش ادراکی سیستمی و ارزیابی پویا نمایان شوند.

To date, a number of studies have investigated the use of euphemism in media to classify and analyze the euphemisms of different categories. However, these studies were mostly based on political contexts and the corpora have been limited due to the qualitative nature of the studies. Moreover, few studies have investigated the use of euphemism in countries where English is practiced as a foreign language. This study was an attempt to not only compare and contrast Iranian-published English newspapers and the New York Times thematically in terms of euphemistic expressions but also to ascertain the most frequently used ones in both.To this end,three corpora of all the sections of three journalistic materials within (2014-2019) were thoroughly examined. The data were collected using the search section of the three newspapers to look for the euphemistic expressions based on the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms as a point of reference. The results indicated that the most frequently used expression in the New York Times was ‘African American’ whereas the most frequently used expression in both Iran Daily and Tehran Times was ‘conflict’.The thematic changes between the three journalistic materials were also examined. The results revealed that the most frequently used category of euphemistic expressions in the New York Times was ‘Commerce, Banking, and Industry’, and the most frequently used category of euphemistic expression in Iran Daily and Tehran Times was similarly ‘Warfare’. The study might inform learners about a rich source of euphemistic expressions and enable them to recognize the most prevalent categories of euphemistic expressions thematically

The aim of this study was to compare the Exceptional Student Learning English (ESLE) web application and traditional application and the evaluation of the ESLE app mainly from the exceptional student parents' perspective. To this end, five exceptional student parents with their exceptional children were selected among 30 parents in Isfahan in Isfahan province. Open-ended questionnaires were sent to five parents to collect the parents' feedback on the ESLE app and their perceptions of mobile apps-assisted language learning experiences. Results indicated that, ESLE game-based app has encouraged exciting opportunities for personalized and learner-centered environments with flexible access to learning materials anytime and anywhere. The novel and enjoyable ways of learning would have a great potential to increase learning motivation and encourage lifelong learning habits. More research will be needed in the young filed of MALL in order to suggest the right direction to effective language learning. Findings have illuminative implications for teachers, exceptional students, parents, and app developers.

With the latest paradigm shift in SLA from Cognitivism to Sociocultural Theory (SCT), more studies are carried out to investigate the efficacy of Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) through a social and cultural lens. A more recent offspring of SCT is Activity Theory which provides an explanatory framework for scrutinizing an activity in a social setting. The present study aimed at investigating the impact of Scaffolded WCF within the framework of Activity Theory on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance in terms of reduction of the learners’ writing errors with respect to the content, vocabulary, mechanics, organization, and grammar. Finally, different types of Activity Theory-based strategic mediations (i.e. artifact, rule, community, and role mediations) Iranian EFL learners employed in their writing revisions were investigated. Accordingly, 25 Iranian university-level students, through convenient sampling, were chosen to participate in the study. The treatment they received on their writings was a graduated Scaffolding WCF in their Zone of Proximal Development in the form of both peer and teacher feedback. The findings indicated that Scaffolded WCF statistically significantly contributed to the participants’ writing performance in terms of content, vocabulary, mechanics, organization, and grammar. With respect to the mediation strategies used by the learners, it was discovered that the learners benefitted from all the available mediators although with various degrees. It is hoped that the findings of this study will promise implications for promoting a teacher/learner-friendly method of providing WCF based on SCT, which can be utilized in large classes typical of Iranian EFL university courses.

The present paper addresses the issues of EFL teachers’ views and implementation of problem solving in third-year classes in the Algerian Secondary Schools. The focal aim is to highlight the importance of problem solving as a means to improve the activities of teaching and learning. The survey involved a random sample of 50 teachers to whom a questionnaire was administered. Marzano’s (2001) New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives was used as the analytical framework. According to the obtained findings, teachers (96%) agreed that problem solving is a crucial component of instruction. The majority of teachers claimed that they implement problem-solving tasks in the classroom. The main benefits of implementing problem solving in the classroom that the respondents mentioned include: the development of students’ cognitive abilities, their autonomy, and the teaching practices. The findings have important implications for pedagogical strategies that might promote the teaching and assessment of problem solving in EFL contexts.

The goal of this study was to compare the use of conceptual metaphors in English novels written by native and nonnative writers of English. Therefore, two novels were selected: To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, a native English writer, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a nonnative English writer. To find the instances of conceptual metaphors in each book, approximately 10% of the pages of each novel was randomly selected and examined line by line based on the framework introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). In the next step, to find the number and type of metaphors used in each book, the identified metaphors were categorized under their underlying concepts and counted. Then, the frequencies of different types of metaphors in each book were tallied and tabulated, and with the use of a chi-square test, the possible differences among the 2 writers’ use of different types of metaphors were found. Results indicated that, in both novels, there were significant differences among the 5 types of metaphors that were identified, namely structural metaphors, ontological metaphors, orientational metaphors, metonymy, and personification. Findings revealed that, in both books, ontological metaphors were the most frequently used type and personification was the least frequently used one. Also, no statistically significant difference was seen between the two writers’ use of the different types of metaphors. Findings are claimed to bear some implications for L2 pedagogy, benefiting teachers, syllabus designers, writers, and L2 learners.

Individuals are controlled by tests in every advanced society when they want to be admitted in educational courses, to proceed from one stage to the next, or to be given a certificate (Shohamy, 2001b). Accordingly, the present study was carried out to construct and validate educational, social, and psychological consequences questionnaires of English Language Proficiency (EPT) as a high-stakes test in Iran. To achieve the goals, after initial piloting of the item pool, a total number of 252 non-English PhD students completed the final researcher-made questionnaires developed using a comprehensive review of the related literature, experts’ opinions, documents, and interviews. A number of statistical procedures were taken to validate the current questionnaires including Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). EFA was utilized to determine the underlying factors of the scale that affect the variables in a data structure without setting any predefined structure to the outcome and to verify the number of factors; subsequently, these results were confirmed in the CFA phase. Ultimately, the results were discussed and implications of the questionnaires were presented as follows.