درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Despite the importance of author engagement in the literature review of academic articles, many writers fail to publish their academic articles due to being incompetent in using conventional engagement resources. In view of this problem, the present study aimed to study linguistic representation of engagement as a dimension of evaluation in academic articles published in international and Iranian local journals. To do so, the literature review section of eighty psychology and applied linguistics articles as representatives of humanities and mechanical engineering and medicine articles as representatives of hard science articles published between 2008 and 2017 in the international and Iranian local journals formed the corpus of the study and were analyzed on the basis of the engagement resources proposed by Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory The findings indicated that monoglossic resources were used more frequently in articles published in local journals than those published in international ones. Regarding heteroglossic resources, intra-vocalizing resources (countering, denial, pronouncement, and entertainment) were found more frequently in articles published in international journals. However, extra-vocalizing resources (endorsement and attribution resources) used in local journals outnumbered those used in international ones. The findings can provide insights for teaching academic writing in EFL contexts.

In translation, choosing appropriate equivalent is essential to convey the right message from source-text to target-text, and one of the issues that may have a determinative role in appropriate equivalent choice is the semantic prosody (SP) behavior of words and the relation existing between the SP of a word and semantic senses (i.e. negativity, positivity or neutrality) of its collocations in the context. This research explored the impact of Iranian translator trainees' semantic prosody knowledge on the appropriate selection of equivalents in translation. The probable influence of proficiency level or fields of study on the appropriate selection of equivalents with respect to SP was concentrated as well. To fulfill the aims of the study, a translation test including a number of near-synonym pairs with different SPs was administered among participants with different fields of study as well as different proficiency levels. Findings were analyzed based on Sinclair's (1996) hypothesis of SP as well as Stubbs' (1995) model of SP classification. The study showed where there is more than one equivalent of a word in another language, having the knowledge and being aware of the conditions of semantic prosody is necessary to select the appropriate, accurate equivalents and thus to convey the exact message from a source text to the target one. The results also revealed that proficiency level and field of study among language learners can have an influence on choosing appropriate equivalents with respect to SP. The findings of the present study can be beneficial for the instructors and learners in both fields of translation and Teaching English as a Foreign Language to improve equivalent choice appropriateness. Also, this study by highlighting the essential role of semantic prosody in selecting appropriate equivalents can be beneficial to dictionary compilers to include semantic prosody behaviors in the definition and information of words.

It is often wrongly assumed that the provision of teacher corrective feedback naturally entails learners' attendance to and application of it, but learners have repeatedly been reported not to pay attention to teacher feedback due to lack of motivation and the distracting effect of the grades they receive. The present study was an attempt to tackle this problem. To do so, the technique named Draft-Specific Scoring (Nemati & Azizi, 2013) was implemented. In DSS, learners receive both teacher feedback and grades on their first drafts; however, they are given up to two opportunities to apply teacher feedback and revise their drafts accordingly. The scores they receive may improve as a result of the quality of revisions they make. Students’ final scores will be the mean score of the grades they receive on the final drafts of each assignment. 57 Iranian intermediate students attending the ‘Advanced Writing’ course at University of Teheran, with an age range of 21 to 27 took part in this study. The gain score analysis and the SPANOVA used showed the superiority of DSS over more traditional methods in improving learners’ overall writing proficiency as well as fluency and accuracy of their written texts. Moreover, no adverse effect was observed for the treatment group regarding the grammatical complexity of their texts. This indicates that in order to make teacher feedback work, there are a number of intervening variables one needs to consider, the most important of which being learners’ motivation to attend to teacher feedback.

The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between metacognitive reading strategies, reading self-efficacy, and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 119 Iranian B.A and M.A students majoring in English at Imam Khomeini International University and Islamshahr Azad University. A Michigan Test of English language Proficiency was given to the participants to determine their language proficiency and reading comprehension. Then, they were asked to respond to the two questionnaires of MARSI (Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory), and RSEQ (Reading Self-Efficacy Questionnaire). To analyze the data, multiple regression analyses and correlation procedures were used. The results revealed a significant relationship between the use of reading strategies and reading comprehension. Also, a significant relationship was found between the use of reading strategies and reading self-efficacy. Moreover, the findings showed a positive relationship between reading self-efficacy and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The results of this study may have implications for teachers, learners, and materials developers.