درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study aimed to investigate the reliability and factor structure of the self-regulating capacity in vocabulary learning strategies scale (SRCvoc) in the Iranian EFL context. To this end, the original (SRCvoc) questionnaire (Tseng, Dornyei, & Schmitt, 2006) was translated into Persian, using a translation/back-translation procedure. Then, the Persian version of the SRCVOC was piloted to 43 high school students and showed acceptable internal consistency reliability (α = .81). In the main phase of the study, a sample of 1167 high school students (grades 9-12) from fifteen high schools in three Iranian cities completed the Persian SRCvoc. Based on the results, the Persian version of the scale demonstrated acceptable internal consistency reliability (<em>α </em>= 0.81). The factor structure of the translated version of the measure was investigated through a series of factor analyses. The results showed that the translated SVLSQ is composed of one dimension with five subcomponents, with a different factor structure as compared to the original questionnaire. The findings of the study suggest that the Persian version of the SVLSQ is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring self-regulatory vocabulary learning strategies in Iran. 

The present study was an attempt to investigate to what extent Iranian EFL teachers practice critical discourse analysis in the English language classroom during their teaching. To reach this aim, a 27-item questionnaire was designed and administered among 120 male and female Iranian English teachers in different language schools in Tehran. Following descriptive statistics through which the mean, standard deviation, and reliability of the questionnaire were calculated,a factor analysis was conducted to assess the construct validity of the designed questionnaire.The results of the statistical analysis clearly demonstrated the validity of the designed questionnaire.Once validated, certain within group comparisons (with respect to the demographic factors of gender, age, and educational degree) were conducted to see how the different demographic subsets of the sample responded to the questionnaire. The study also discusses the implications of such measurement for ELT and points out a number of suggestions for further study.

Although the use of verbal protocols is growing in oral assessment, research on the use of raters’ verbal protocols is rather rare. Moreover, those few studies did not use a mixed-methods design. Therefore, this study investigated the possible impacts of rater training on novice and experienced raters’ application of a specified set of standards in rating. To meet this objective, the study made use of verbal protocols produced by 20 raters who scored 300 test takers’ oral performances and analyzed the data both qualitatively and quantitatively. The outcomes demonstrated that through applying the training program, the raters were able to concentrate more on linguistic, discourse, and phonological features; therefore, the extent of their agreement increased specifically among the inexperienced raters. The analysis of verbal protocols also revealed that training how to apply a well-defined rating scale can foster its use for raters both validly and reliably. Various groups of raters approach the task of rating in different ways, which cannot be explored through pure statistical analysis. Thus, think-aloud verbal protocols can shed light on the vague sides of the issue and add to the validity of oral language assessment. Moreover, since the results of this study showed that inexperienced raters can produce protocols of higher quality and quantity in the use of macro and micro strategies to evaluate test takers’ performances, there is no evidence based on which decision makers should exclude inexperienced raters solely because of their lack of adequate experience.

Despite the abundance of research on teachers’ repair practices in language classroom interaction, there are not enough conversation analytic studies on repair organization with the focus on the details of interaction in the context of EFL. Drawing on sociocultural and situated learning theories, this study explores the contingent nature of English language teachers’ organizational patterns of repair practices (repair focus, repair completion, repair trajectory and convergence) by adopting the context-dependency of repair as a point of departure. More specifically, we analyzed two classroom interactional contexts: form-oriented and meaning-oriented contexts as well as their realization in student participation. Data were collected through video- and audio-tape recordings of 14 lessons from eight EFL teachers at four private language institutes in Iran and they were analyzed based on the framework of conversation analysis methodology. The analysis of lesson transcripts indicated that the teachers varied in their repair practices; however, an organizational repair pattern emerged from the data. The analysis of qualitative data revealed that the teachers largely repaired divergently in form-oriented contexts but convergently in meaning-oriented contexts, and deployed other-repair more than self-repair. The pedagogical implications of the study are for language teachers’ awareness of the role of repair organization in facilitating learning opportunities and for teachers’ professional development.

If we are keen to boost the process of language learning, we need to study every aspect and component of our course. To this end, we carry out an investigation in which every detail of the course is put under microscope. Assessment of a course is an attempt in which different type of information is gathered systematically in order to study the working of a language instruction program. Certainly, program evaluation might be carried out for fulfilling different goals and purposes. Therefore, an evaluator should clarify the audience and the objectives of conducting program evaluation from the very beginning in order to obtain some adequate results.  Different researchers have presented different proposals for the specific time of collecting data, type of data, and procedures of gathering data. Consequently, an evaluator should be familiar with the different dimensions of program evaluation. Also, some researchers treat program evaluation as a neat product, i. e. merely consisting of learners’ end of instruction scores. Yet, others consider program evaluation as a process. At this juncture, the important issue is the selection of an appropriate design for the implementation of the actual process of the evaluation. It is suggested that the illuminative modelis rather a proper design for program evaluation because of its different advantages. This article attempts to shed some light on the dimensions, goals, and design of the course study.

The present article studies Quranic quotations in the poetry of Mohammad Iqbal Lahori based on the approach of intertextuality. Iqbal is one of the greatest poets and intellectuals of the Eastern Muslim world. Quran is a source of inspiration both in his life and poetic career. His poetry is interwoven with Quran through intertextual Quotations. These Quranic quotations are central to the production of meaning in Iqbal’s poems. The present research limits itself to Julia Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality. Kristeva (1980) states that meaning is not inherent in the text rather it is produced through the intertextual relations between texts. This research aims to apply Plett’s (1990) set of structural codes of quotations to Iqbal’s poetic text to expose the role of scriptural quotations in his poetry. The findings of this paper show that Quranic quotations mostly follow the rules of general quotations; except that as authoritative words they are open to some transformations at surface structure but not at deep structure. The semantic fixity of Quranic quotations does not prevent their application as means of power for purposes not endorsed by Quranic instructions. Finally, the authoritative nature of Quranic quotations allows Iqbal not to employ quotation markers in his text wherever he makes use of them.

The status of teaching ESP has been studied both internationally and locally. However, it seems that the challenges of teaching ESP in medical universities of Iran have not been studied appropriately. The main objective of the present study was to explore the main challenges of teaching ESP in medical universities of Iran. Due to the nature of the study, a qualitative res earch design (Phenomenological) was used. The data were gathered through interviewing 25 ESP stakeholders from two universities of medical sciences in Tehran. The data were analyzed through content analysis techniques. The results showed that the challenges are classified into three main themes: institution challenges, learner related challenges, and teacher related challenges. Institution related challenges consisted of undetermined aims, structure of the curricula, and content of syllabus, evaluation, time limitation and classroom size. The learner related challenges included lack of motivation, poor GEL background, and learners’ focus on test, and learners’ inappropriate needs’ analysis. ESP teachers’ related challenges included teacher’s language proficiency, teachers’ content knowledge, teachers’ perception of ESP, teachers’ teaching method, teachers’ familiarity with material development, and testing skills. The findings of the study can be used to promote the status of teaching ESP in medical universities.

This paper aims to study Vygotsky’s (1987) sociocultural theory of learning with respect to how it relates to technology-based second language learning and teaching. The researchers selected their participants from advanced students from Payame Noor University. We divided the participants into two groups- an experimental group and a control group. After teaching the course an experimental group was asked to continue practicing language in an online learning environment, whereas those in the control group were not told anything about practice procedure. We found that students’ engagement in an interactive group activity in the online learning can be a useful approach to facilitating and motivating internalization, learning, and better performance.

Some consider assessment in terms of a systematic way of gathering and evaluating information within educational system and particularly higher education. Since, the term ‘’assessment’’ refers and relates to administrative processes, this paper has shed light some consideration on how it can benefit the members of department and program. Program assessment ultimately emphasizes on direction for developing students learning quality and satisfaction of its central role in educational system. Thus, this study aimed to regard goals and purposes, specifically, explore new trends, techniques and procedures which play an important role in this aspect of assessment and also can have influences on outcomes of the academic units. To this end, some of the practical assessment methods were selected to be done on different fields of study in Shahrekord Azad University as well as discussing their description, strengths and weaknesses to expose whether assessments follow the rules and procedures of program assessment to reach the best consequences in assessment of academic units. 

EFL learners who loved to read newspapers but have difficulty in comprehending. Present paper is a study on the significance of special styles of newspapers’ writing that may contribute in decreasing reading and comprehension skills for EFL learners and also is primarily concerned with the language and style of newspaper reportage. Skilled readers don’t just read, they interact with the text. The present study aims to probe into this important issue by providing formal instruction of the strategies to a group of Iranian EFL learners and comparing their newspapers’ reading comprehension performance with another group not receiving such an instruction.

This paper presented two complex span tasks in Persian as measures of working memory capacity (WMC). Firstly, the construct of working memory (WM) and possible WM measures that could assess this construct efficiently were critically reviewed. Accordingly, as measures of domain-general components of WM, a reading span task and an operation span task which were documented to assess this construct efficiently were chosen and developed. Following this, the developed tasks were conducted on 151 teenage learners in a foreign language institute in West Azerbaijan Province. Then, the administration and scoring of the measures were described step by step. The tasks were validated against each other as well as against a digit span task which assessed the domain-specific aspect of WMC as well. The result showed a strong correlation between the reading span task and the operation span task, and a moderate correlation of either of the functions with the digit span task. Consequently, both of the developed span tasks can be valid indicators of WM capacity for Iranian individuals and can be used in a wide array of research domains in second language acquisition studies.

Cet article organise la réflexion autour de l’impact des représentations sociales sur l’enseignement de la grammaire dans les cours du FLE en Iran. Comme nous le savons, la dimension socio-affective de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage des langues, qui comprend les notions telles que les représentations sociales, les stéréotypes, les attitudes et la motivation des apprenants, se penche sur les rapports existants entre la didactique des langues et la sociologie. Cette étude a pour origine deux questions à répondre : quelles sont les représentations sociales dominantes de la grammaire auprès des enseignants du FLE en Iran ? Dans quelles mesures ces représentations sociales influent sur l’enseignement de la grammaire ? Nos résultats s’inscrivent au croisement d’entretiens semi-directifs avec les enseignants de FLE et du journal du bord du chercheur pendant l’observation des cours de ces enseignants. Nous avons pu montrer l’importance de la prise en considération des attitudes dans l’animation des séquences didactiques qui portent sur l’enseignement de la grammaire pour remédier aux représentations partielles voire stéréotypées de cette tâche en Iran et proposer des pistes de réflexion pour de futures recherches.