درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Despite widespread interest and research among applied linguists to explore metadiscourse use, very little is known of how metadiscourse resources have evolved over time in response to the historically developing practices of academic communities. Motivated by such an ambition, the current research drew on a corpus of 874315 words taken from three leading journals of applied linguistics in order to trace the diachronic evolution of stance markers in methodology section of research articles from 1996 to 2016. Hyland’s (2005b) model of metadiscourse was adopted for the analysis of the selected corpus. The data were explored using concordance software AntConc (Anthony, 2011). Moreover, a Chi-Square statistical measure was run to determine statistical significances. The analysis revealed a significant decline in the overall frequency of stance markers in methodology section of RAs. Interestingly, this decrease was entirely due to the overall decline in the use of self-mentions. Approaching interactional dimension of academic writing from such a diachronic perspective, it might be argued that the very selective use of stance markers by academic writers over time means metadiscourse does not operate in vacuum and is sensitive to changes within disciplines and their academic practices.

The purpose of this study was to examine the accords and discords between English language teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teacher interpersonal behavior in four selected secondary schools in Ethiopia. The samples of the study were 48 English language teachers and their respective 420 students. In order to collect data, questionnaires were administered to both students and teachers. To analyze and interpret the data, a two-tailed independent sample t-test was used. Accordingly, the findings revealed that teachers rated themselves considerably higher for helpful/friendly, leadership, and strict behaviors and lower for uncertain, admonishing, student freedom/ responsibility and dissatisfied behaviors as compared to their students’ rating of them. However, no significant difference was found between the two bodies for understanding interpersonal behavior. Similarly, teachers notably felt they were highly in control of classroom communications and had more affiliation/ connection with the students in the process of communications than their students’ perceptions of them. Hence, there were much discords between English language teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teacher interpersonal behavior. Following the findings, some recommendations were forwarded.

The increasing impact of audiovisual media and film industry in particular has led researchers to think of audiovisual translation strategies. Huge investments in film industry need global markets. Hence, there is a need for qualified translations and systematic studies dedicated to this area are in great demand. This study aims to investigate translation strategies adopted in the translation of two awards-winning dramas. The selection criterion is based on winning international awards or compliments received in the target community. Although some may argue that these successes are rooted in the selected movies’ ideologies, the role of an accurate translation in transferring such elements is undeniable. The present study analyzes the translation strategies employed in the subtitled version of the following films: A Separation and I Daniel Blake. The theoretical framework of the current study is based on Gottlieb’s (1992) Classification of Interlingual Subtitling. The obtained results depicted that except dislocation and transcription, all Gottlieb’s strategies were applicable. The results also showed that the film’s genre plays an influential role in translators’ decisions. As these films were warmly welcomed by the target audiences, the frequent translation strategies will be useful and practical for the future of audiovisual translation industry.

The purpose of the present study is to compare the impoliteness strategies employed by Iranian and English students in English and Persian Languages. The participants consisted of 6o Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency, 60 Iranian non-English major students, and 212 native English-speaking students. The data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire in the form of discourse completion task where responses to different threatening situations were elicited. The questionnaire consisted of six situations with variations in social power. The data were analyzed based on Limberg’s (2009) model of threat responses. The findings showed variations in the use of strategies employed with variation of social power in different situations. Moreover, the overall findings displayed the frequent use of tendency strategies, that is, toward compliance, toward non-compliance, by the three groups of respondents. It is hoped that the findings of this study can add to the body of knowledge in impoliteness studies and to our understanding of how threat responses vary cross-culturally in particular.

This study explored both teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of teachers’ pedagogic strategies which may engender willingness to communicate (WTC) in an English as a foreign language class and the difference between their perceptions to detect how convergent or possibly how divergent these are. The project used a convenience sample of 300 students taking an intermediate English course and their teachers (N=60) in several English Language Institutes in Tabriz, Iran. The instruments included a Likert scale questionnaire on teachers’ pedagogic strategies and learners’ WTC completed by both teachers and learners. Based on the data collected from the questionnaires, it was revealed that the teachers and learners agreed on the role of teachers’ wait time in learners’ WTC but not on the other strategies such as motivating strategies, error correction strategies, and teachers’ congruence. The findings of the study have important implications for teachers in terms of reconsidering their pedagogic strategies to play their facilitating roles in engendering students’ WTC in the class. The results also have the implications for EFL teacher education in the new era of communication.

Essay genres are often employed to assess learning at higher education. Students are sometimes required to write essay in examinations and assignments. The expectations of assessors in writing essays are students’ ability to present analytical and reasoned arguments and to engage with alternative viewpoints. In fact, in evaluating essays, assessors consider the extent to which a student is able to meet these expectations. However, students may have challenges meeting these expectations and instructors, particularly instructors in the discipline, may not be prepared to provide students with an explicit linguistic description of how these expectations are met. Thus, this study draws from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to scaffold students’ challenges in meeting the expectations of essay genre. In fact, it uses Dreyfus et al’s (2010) 3 x 3 linguistic toolkit to analyze essays written by postgraduate students in the department of English at one university in India. The 3 x 3 linguistic toolkit is used to zoom in student’s challenges in controlling the resources of SFL’s three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) at the level of whole text, paragraph, and sentence. After the analysis, the findings revealed that students face challenges controlling the resources of the three modes of meaning at all levels. These challenges include difficulties in grammar, lexical choices, punctuation, following expected organization, answering the question, the use of signposts to create a coherent text, and the use of engagement resources to develop a consistent argument. This study has implications for teaching and assessing academic writing.

Interlanguage pragmatics has attracted considerable attention in recent years. One strand of interlanguage pragmatics research includes studies comparing the effectiveness of implicit versus explicit teaching on the development of pragmatics. Many studies, although inconclusively, have shown the superior effect of explicit teaching of pragmatics, but few have focused on finding ways to improve the implicit teaching of pragmatics. The present study attempted to unfold the effect of collaborative dialogue on the quality of implicit teaching of request (head act and preparator). To this end, 28 participants (19 to 33 years old, intermediate) majoring in English (freshman and junior) were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=14) had the opportunity to complete the tasks collaboratively and the control group (n=14) were not provided with any specific pragmatic instruction. The instructional procedure included four successive sessions of teaching request in situations where the sociological parameters were systematically varied. For the purpose of data collection, the classes were audio-recorded and a pretest-posttest design for discourse completion task (DCT) was adopted. For the purpose of data analysis, target request head acts and preparators were scored and also the audio recordings of classes were transcribed and the process of learning during treatment was checked in detail. The findings indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in producing target preparators and head acts. And evidence of noticing the pragmatic forms namely noticing unnoticed forms, noticing the gap, and negotiation of form was observed during the collaborative task. This study suggests that teachers may need to provide learners with the opportunities for collaborative tasks along with input enhancement tasks in order to improve the pragmatic knowledge of the learners.

The present study examined the effect of multimedia glosses on foreign language listening comprehension. To this end, 94 male students studying at Rasa English Institute in Tehran were selected for the treatment. The participants consisted of three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one of the following treatment conditions: textual, pictorial, and textual-pictorial glossing. They were given a vocabulary pre-test before the treatment. The purpose of this test was to exclude the words which were already familiar to the participants from the posttests. Meanwhile, a listening comprehension post-test was administered at the end of the treatment period. To investigate the effect of multimedia glosses on listening comprehension, the data obtained from the listening comprehension post-test were analyzed using one-way ANOVA. The result showed that textual-pictorial glosses had a significant effect on listening comprehension. The findings of this study may have implications for language learners, teachers, researchers, and materials developers.

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n=21) were taught based on regular in-class writing instruction and the students in the experimental group (n=25) made use of blogs in addition to the traditional in-class writing instruction. The data were collected through administering a learner autonomy instrument, consisting of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective components, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the blog-mediated writing instruction contributed to enhancing learner autonomy of the participants. More specifically, the students who experienced blog-mediated writing activities showed improvement in metacognitive and cognitive components of learner autonomy. The findings offer significant implications for EFL teachers.

The present study aimed to examine the translatorchr('39')s solutions to the translation of conversational implicatures from English into Persian. To do so, 120 conversational implicatures were extracted from the novel the Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954) and classified based on Gricechr('39')s (1975) categorization of Maxims, including quality, quantity, relevance, and manner. Mur Duenaschr('39')s (2003) taxonomy of translation strategies was used as a valid framework to find out the translation strategies the translator employed to transfer the 120 conversational implicatures. Furthermore, the most /least frequent translation strategies applied by the translator were investigated. At the end, the effectiveness of the source text (ST)-and target text (TT)-oriented strategies in transferring the same meaning of implicatures to the target text was determined. As the results indicate, the translator employed five out of six of Mur Duenaschr('39')s translation strategies, namely TL cultural cognate, SL cultural and linguistic borrowing, replacement of the SL cultural reference by explanation, TL cultural reference suppression, and TL cultural reference literal translation, of which SL cultural and linguistic borrowing and replacement of the SL cultural reference by explanation were the most/least frequently-used strategies. Moreover, the translator preferred to employ the ST-oriented strategies rather than the TT-oriented ones that referred to the employment of the ST-oriented strategy for the whole text. Based on Gricechr('39')s theory, the researcher concluded that the ST-oriented strategies were more effective than the TT-oriented ones and helped the translator to produce comprehensible translations and convey the meaning of implicatures to the target readers.

Considering the fact that engagement with political economy is central to any fully rounded analysis of language and language-related issues in the neoliberal-stricken world today, and that applied linguistics has ignored the role of political economy (Block, Gray, & Holborow, 2012), for the first time, this study investigated the representations of neoliberal ideologies in the Interchange Third Edition Series. To this end, both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted based on Du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, and Negus’s (1997) model of ‘Cultural Circuit’, especially their concept of ‘Representational Repertoires’. Furthermore, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) ‘visual grammar’ was used for the analysis of the artwork. The results of the quantitative analysis revealed that more than 50% of the total number of units in each of the textbooks featured neoliberal-related content. Moreover, the results of the qualitative analysis confirmed Du Gay et al.’s (1997) argument that textbooks are not only curriculum artifacts but also cultural artifacts or communicative acts which serve to make English mean in particular ways - in this case the hegemonic culture of neoliberalism. As a result, it is necessary for EFL/ESL teachers and students to collaboratively develop counter-hegemonic discourses through critical thinking and dialogic interrogations of neoliberal discourses.

Speaking and writing are the productive skills of language and share similar components. In other words, writing and speaking are clearly related activities, but the modes of production are different. In addition, among a number of personality variables in predicting English language proficiency, extraversion/introversion has been extensively studied. This quasi-experimental study aims at exploring the impact of using guided writing practice on speaking proficiency of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with extroverted and introverted orientation. For the purpose of the study, 60 homogenous students aged 18 to 28 were selected based on Oxford Placement Test (OPT) scores and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) among pre-intermediate participants from Mehraeen English language institute in Rasht, Iran. They were divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received guided writing practice and the control group was instructed based on the typical method of the institute. A series of t-test was conducted to evaluate extroverts and introverts’ speaking ability with respect to their personality type. The results of posttest revealed that using guided tasks improved speaking proficiency of the learners. Also, the treatment had a significant impact on extroverted learners in comparison with introverted learners.

Teacher resilience, as a recent issue of concern, enables teachers to bounce back and thrive rather than just survived in the face of challenging circumstances. Although self-efficacy has been prompted to enhance resilience, there is little empirical research to investigate the relationship. To address this gap, the present study is an attempt to examine the connection between EFL teachers’ resilience and self-efficacy. In doing so, ninety-two EFL teachers completed Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) and resilience scale (RISC). The findings showed the positive impact of different dimensions of self-efficacy on resilience. The results of the correlational analysis indicated that all three self-efficacy subscales had a significant positive relationship with teachers’ resilience. The results of multiple regression also suggested that, save for classroom management, two other subscales of efficacy as efficacy for student engagement and efficacy for instructional strategies were the good predictors of teacher resilience. In line with these findings, some suggestions for further research are provided and pedagogical implications are proposed.

Density and distribution of Unfamiliar Lexical Items (ULIs) appear to influence learners’ Reading Comprehension Achievement (RCA). This study concerns the impact of these two variables on Iranian EFL learners’ RCA. For this, two groups of students timetabled for the experiments designed to assess learners’ RCA. To determine the participants’ levels of proficiency a Quick Proficiency Test was first given to the total population of 87 students and 60 selected as participants. They were then divided into four subgroups of 15, each of which took the pertaining text as the treatment. To do so, three short passages were administered, two for the density and one for distribution. Then, data were gathered from the questionnaires and answers analyzed by SPSS. The results revealed the participants in low density/distribution subgroups outperforming their counterparts in high density/distribution subgroups on tests devised to measure the learners’ inferencing of ULIs boldfaced in the texts. The selected method was a quasi-experimental, post-test only design and the procedures comprised short passages, multiple-choice tests, and statistics. To conclude, ULIs found detrimental to the learners’ successful RCA in the foregoing experimentation, where it can serve as a resource to the EFL development programs.

The rich and still expanding literature on TBLT is helping to mature both its theoretical conceptualization and practical implementation in foreign and second language education. Similarly, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has grown as a field, with the use and integration of technology in the classroom continuing to increase and will continue to play an important role in this maturation process. The present study, hence, reports on an empirical study that investigated the effects of CALL-mediated TBLT on the perceived self- efficacy of Iranian university non-English major EFL students. Through non-probability and convenience sampling, two intact freshmen classes were chosen and randomly assigned as the experimental and the control group. During the treatment sessions, the students in the experimental group received instruction in a CALL-mediated TBLT format, while the control group received no CALL-mediated TBLT instruction but underwent only a task- based instruction on reading without the mediation of CALL. A univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was run, while controlling for pre-intervention scores as the covariate. A significant effect was found for CALL-mediated TBLT (F = 81.450, p = .000, partial eta squared =.504), suggesting CALL-mediated TBLT had a positive effect on the self-efficacy perceptions of the students in the experimental group .