درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The purpose of the present study was first to offer a tentative solution to the problems observed in writing pedagogy in Iran by devising a more comprehensive approach to genre-based writing instruction. In the second phase, a quasi-experimental research design was adopted to determine how effective the model was in writing instruction, compared with the traditional, product-oriented approach, as well as Swales’ genre-based approach. The participants were selected randomly and then divided into three groups: A control group (CG) (N=8) that received product-oriented instruction, Swales’ model (SM) group (N=8), and the system-nested, genre-oriented, structurally mediated model (SGSM) group (N=7). The results obtained through One-way ANOVA revealed that the SM group outperformed the CG group on the posttest of writing. Moreover, the SGSM group outperformed the other two groups on the posttest of writing. The pedagogical and theoretical findings of the study were then discussed.

The objectives of the present study were threefold: First, it sought to investigate difficulties Iranian EFL high school learners face to understand English idioms. Second, it attempted to explore intermediate EFL learners’ language learning strategy preferences to comprehend idioms. Third, it aimed to examine whether there was a significant difference between successful and less successful students' strategy use in idiom comprehension. To this end, 200 Iranian male and female students of the three grades of different senior high schools in Qom, Iran, were selected through convenience sampling. They responded to a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire (Alhaysony, 2017), investigating the challenges of idiom comprehension. Afterwards, they took the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Ninety-eight of them were selected as intermediate learners. Third, they took a multiple-choice test on idiom comprehension, developed by the researcher, and responded to the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1990). Descriptive statistics, frequencies and means, and a one-sample t-test were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that the participants complained that idioms were challenging mainly because they were not taught well in class and were not part of the course syllabi. They also revealed that successful learners in understanding idioms used all six categories of strategies in the high and medium levels. They employed metacognitive strategies the most (M= 3.88), but affective strategies the least (M= 2.84). The results of the t-test suggested significant differences between successful and less successful learners' strategy use. The results provide insights into the challenges and strategies of English idiom comprehension.

Through a descriptive Ex Post Facto research design, the relationship between teacher reflection and classroom management, the predictive power of teacher reflection components regarding classroom management, and classroom management strategies used by high and low reflective teachers were examined. To this end, 113 EFL teachers completed the Attitudes and Beliefs on Classroom Control (ABCC) Inventory (Martin et al., 1998b) and teacher reflection inventory (Akbari et al., 2010). The results of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient showed that there was a significant positive relationship between teachers’ reflection and their sense of classroom management. Moreover, a multiple regression was run whose findings revealed that practical and critical components of reflection are the best predictors of teachers’ sense of classroom management. Twenty teachers were also interviewed. The thematic analysis of the interview showed that high reflective teachers used different kinds of management strategies, for their students’ social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties using proper pedagogical planning and techniques, to deal with the classroom problems in comparison with their low reflective counterparts. 

Listening comprehension is a multifaceted L2 skill and its actual mastery has proved challenging for many EFL learners (Matthews, 2018). Pre-listening supports may help us change the dire situation in developing effective listening competence. Therefore, the current study tried to examine the effect of vocabulary preparation, grammar instruction and background knowledge activation as pre-listening tasks on the listening comprehension among 95 Iranian intermediate EFL learners in three experimental groups who were randomly selected from among 142 Iranian EFL learners after administration of a paper-based TOEFL. In group A, the teacher elaborated on the difficult grammatical structures of the listening comprehension (LC) test and the students did some exercises. Group B practiced related difficult words using synonyms, antonyms, and sentence examples. In group C, some topical knowledge about the content of the LC test was given and discussed. After the treatment, a valid researcher-made LC test was given to all groups. This procedure was followed for four more listening texts and after each treatment, a valid researcher-made LC test based on the text was administered. Data analysis using one-way ANOVA and Scheffe test revealed that background knowledge activation and vocabulary preparation significantly improved learners’ listening performances; however, grammar preparation did not exert a significant influence on EFL listening comprehension. These results were confirmed by the experts’ attitudes in the subsequent qualitative phase of the study. These findings suggest that EFL teachers should use background knowledge activation and lexical preparation prior to the main listening tasks.

Communicative language use largely entails regular patterns consisting of pre-constructed phrases or sequences. These sequences have been examined by many researchers to find the situation-based formulas which may help L2 learners follow a possibly more target-like speaking system. This study, therefore, explored two categories of formulaic expressions including speech formulas and situation-bound utterances used by EFL learners. The randomly selective participants included 30 intermediate and 30 advanced learners, who performed a total number of 120 role-play tasks focused on the situations which required the use of thanking, requesting, offering, and apology speech acts. Audio-recorded data from role-plays were transcribed and analyzed based on existing lists of speech formulas. Results showed that the participants produced more than 102 types of formulaic sequences that could be called “a list of pragmatic routines for thanking, requesting, offering, and apologizing speech acts in the EFL context”.  This list includes 44 and 58 speech formulas and situation-bound utterances, respectively. Results further indicated that advanced language learners used more diverse situation-bound utterances in terms of its internal and contextual complexity than their counterparts in the intermediate group due to expert judgments. Because these formulas can increase coherence in speaking, and enhance effective and natural communication, their instruction could be part of the language teaching curriculum.

By the end of the 2020s, a change involving the substitution of the Communicative Approach to English teaching for the Structural one has been fully operative in the Iranian secondary education system. This study set out to explore the views of Iranian teachers vis-a-vis the changes introduced into the education policy of the nation since teachers as end-point policy workers play a pivotal role in the ultimate success or failure of any curricular activity. Using data from semi-structured interviews and follow-up procedures, the investigation sought to delve into how eighteen EFL teachers at the upper secondary education level made sense of changes effected at the intersection of policy and practice. Common patterns and themes were identified and presented at the level of data analysis. Despite embracing the changes, the results showed that the teachers sensed that they had been left to their own devices in translating policy into practice and that the proposed reforms were not all-inclusive in the sense that significant stakeholders including parents, school counselors, and educational leaders had been left out. They were further keenly aware of a number of obstacles in the way of policy enactment and found especially the prevalence of a regime of cramming for tests leading to the dominance of a negative teach-to-the-test culture, limited support available and infrastructural challenges, as well as resistance to change among structurally-minded practitioners as highly detrimental to implementation of change. Implications for policy, practice, and research are finally given.

Various individual differences, including ambiguity tolerance (AT), have gained momentum because of the influence they can exert on the process and product of learning, and thereby, on various aspects of the learner’s interlanguage system such as accuracy of oral speech. The present study was undertaken to examine the extent to which Iranian EFL learners’ AT was significantly correlated with the accuracy of their task-based speech. To serve the purpose, a random sample of 60 Iranian EFL learners studying English at New Pegah Institute in Tabriz were selected from a population of 150. The Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (Ely, 1995) was employed to quantify the participants’ AT while the accuracy of their speech, based on a picture description task, was measured based on the ratio of the grammatical errors to the total number of t-units produced. Correlational analyses of the research data revealed that the participants were highly inaccurate in their oral performance and that there was a significant moderate relationship between the two research variables. The findings underscore the need to determine and promote Iranian EFL learners’ AT and offer a number of pedagogical implications.  

The present study was an attempt to determine a relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and reading strategy use among a group of EFL Iranian readers (no = 100) with low vs. high proficiency levels. To this end, FLRAS (Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale) developed by Saito, Horwitz, and Garza, (1999) was used in order to measure the participants’ level of anxiety in reading and SORS (The Survey of Reading Strategies) adapted from Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002), was utilized to gauge the participants’ strategy uses.  The students’ responses to reading strategies when faced with anxiety-provoking contexts were categorized into three strategy uses including ‘global’, ‘problem solving’ and ‘support’ and mapped on their total scores in reading anxiety.  The results from Multinomial Logit Regression (MLR) showed that the students with lower level reading anxiety indices would adopt problem solving strategies more compared with support and global strategies. Regarding the interaction of proficiency level in the process, the results showed that it was less probable for the students with lower reading anxiety levels to adopt problem solving strategies compared with more anxious students who would adopt global strategies. Some possible implications are discussed in the light of improving reading instructions provided for Iranian students. <strong><em> </em></strong>  

At the age of globalization and the dominance of media, the audiovisual translation is no more considered as a marginal area and plays an important role in bringing cultures closer to each other. While taboo terms are an inseparable part of American movies, the movie maker companies have to reflect the authenticity of their language in audiovisual products in order to make them more tangible for their audiences. However, one of the biggest concerns of Iranian official audiovisual translators is cultural and ideological items such as taboo terms in audiovisual products. One of the aims of the present study was to investigate the strategies applied in the translation of taboo terms in two dubbed American movies by Iranian official audiovisual translators. The results indicated that most of the taboo terms have been altered or deleted ideologically during the process of translation due to the cultural differences between the source and the target culture. Finally, Iranian official audiovisual translators attempted to tone down the strong language, offensive expressions, vulgar descriptions, etc. in the process of dubbing and create an acceptable translation for their audiences.