درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

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.

This study compares three integrated tasks of the TOEFL iBT speaking subtest in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To this end, a group of TOEFL iBT Iranian candidates took a simulated TOEFL iBT some days prior to their real exam. The collected oral responses were first transcribed and then quantified using software such as ‘Syllable Counter’ and ‘Coh-Metrix3’ for fluency and complexity, respectively. For accuracy, however, the responses were tallied manually. The results revealed the responses to the three speaking tasks were significantly different in terms of fluency. The difference in the accuracy index also turned significant, though the pairwise comparisons showed some inconsistencies. As for the selected complexity measures, lexical diversity, the mean number of modifiers per NP, and latent semantic analysis all showed significant differences between tasks 2 and 3 on the one hand and task 4 on the other. Left-embeddedness, however, revealed no significant difference among the three tasks. The results may support the influential role of prompting texts in such integrated speaking tasks

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.

The application of zone of proximal development (ZPD), as a major tenet of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT, 1978), has recently been invited in the L2 learning/teaching profession. This study mainly examined whether Iranian EFL learners’ interactions in diverse ZPD-activated proximal contexts through the use of storytelling instruction could improve their oral (speaking) proficiency and attitudes towards speaking in ZPD-based learning context. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used with 60 intermediate EFL participants selected from Asre-no English Language Institute in Iran, after administering the OQPT. Then, the participants were assigned into 2 experimental groups (ZPD-activated equal and unequal groups), and 1 control group, with 20 participants in each group. The students in both experimental groups were exposed to the storytelling-based instruction within different ZPD-activated proximal contexts (equal and unequal), but in the control group the traditional teacher-fronted instruction within a non-ZPD context was conducted. A semistructured interview and a questionnaire were used to assess the participants’ speaking proficiency and attitudes before and after the instruction. The findings from the analysis of covariance and t test suggested that using storytelling instruction within ZPD-activated contexts significantly improved both the participants’ speaking proficiency and their attitudes. Further data analysis of the ZPD participants’ performance indicated that no significant difference between the learners’ speaking proficiency development of equal and unequal peer groups was found. By implication, ZPD-based pair work and storytelling-based instruction, interwoven with each other in a balanced manner, would be highly fruitful in developing EFL learners’ speaking skill and their attitudes.

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.

In regard to recent revolution in the education domain, English Language Teaching (ELT) assigns a sociopolitical dimension to itself in the light of Critical Pedagogy. The present study, in line with the recent educational revolution, aimed to investigate the effectiveness of critical thinking on improving EFL learners’ productive skills. The statistical population consisted of 164 pre-intermediate attendees of EFL in an English Language Institute in the city of Babol selected for taking an Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The participants were 80 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL students within 10-20-year range, enrolled in Shokouh English language institute in Babol, who were randomly divided into two experimental and two control groups of (N=20) for each group during summer 2018 through the non-probability sampling design. Then, IELTS pre-intermediate speaking and writing tests were taken as the pre-test to make sure that they have failed to have a previous knowledge of objective structures. Unlike the control group, the participants in the experimental group were told to apply critical thinking instructions in learning speaking and writing skills. After intervention, the same pretest was taken to the participants in both groups as the posttest to determine the result of gaining the medical aid. Independent and paired sample t-tests were run to answer the research questions. The results indicated that critical thinking is highly contributive in learning productive skills. The findings of this study can be applied in methodological issues.

The aim of this study was fourfold: (1) to investigate the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of Iranian Engineering students’ writing (2) to examine the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of their WhatsApp assisted writing (3) to determine whether their emotional intelligence (EI) increases through literature-based activities in a WhatsApp assisted setting and (4) to survey the effect of literature-based activities and the produced emotional intelligence on the complexity and lexical diversity of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing. In phase I, as students went through literature-based activities, no significant differences of accuracy were found; despite the fact that the mean difference and standard deviation scores were indicative of effective treatment, literature-based activities. In phase II, the results obtained from the analytic procedures of literature-based activities on the accuracy of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing showed that the experimental group showed higher accuracy of writing. In phase III, the result of emotional intelligence improvement was more remarkable in the WhatsApp assisted writing. Additionally, the WhatsApp assisted written productions were significantly more diverse in using lexis, t-units and clauses but not other parameters of complexity. The results have some implications for teachers and researchers in the ESP setting. 

English is taught all over the world either as a foreign or second language. It is taught as a foreign language in the Iranian educational system as well. However, it has always been the issue that EFL programs have been developed without conducting a systematic needs analysis from the learners’ perspective. The present study examined the effect of employing critical needs analysis on the learners' speaking skills improvement. To this end, 128 Iranian intermediate learners from three language institutes were selected and assigned to two experimental and control groups. The learners' Necessities, Wants and Lacks through a questionnaire and semi-structured interview were investigated. The experimental group received treatment based on the results of the interview and questionnaire. The results of the inferential statistics showed that the students' highest mean score was in the Necessities sub-dimension, followed by the Lacks, and Wants sub-dimensions which revealed that the students' needs were mostly the items which were necessary for the learners' use of language. In contrast, the control group received treatment based on the pre-determined syllabus of the course. The results of an independent sample t-test indicated that in the post-test, the speaking scores of the participants in the experimental group were significantly higher than the scores in the control group.