درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study examines the role of gender in reading comprehension of short stories taught through awareness-raising among Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, twelve male and eighteen female learners with lower intermediate English proficiency were selected as the research sample. Next, they were randomly divided into two fifteen-member groups (i.e., a control group and an experimental group). The control group followed the conventional methods and the experimental group was taught the same short stories using awareness-raising activities. Consequently, an independent sample t-test was run. The obtained results indicate the experimental group demonstrates a better performance than the control one. According to the means, the female learners in both groups outperformed the male ones. 

This study aims at investigating the interface between emotion and intonation patterns (more specifically, duration and pitch amplitude of speech). To this end, the acoustic properties of spectral parameters related to speech prosody are investigated. The results of acoustic and Statistical analysis show that mean level and range of FO in the contours vary strongly as a function of the degree of activation of the portrayed emotions. The results also indicate that FO/pitch and other vocal aspects affected by emotion and/or emotional arousal in collected samples of speech in Persian.

Technology mediated learning brings together the users with shared interests. This method makes learners informally engaged in language learning. This study intended to investigate the effect of technology mediated instruction on cognitive scaffolding, academic performance and motivation. Employing a quasi-experimental research, 80 learners from two intact classes at Islamic Azad University, Osku Branch were selected as the experimental and control groups. Telegram as a tool was used in the experimental group, while the control group received traditional way of instruction. Critical ethnography approach was implemented to consider the amount of cognitive scaffolding. To measure the students’ motivational level in both groups, Course Interest Survey (CIS) was administered at the end of the semester. The total average score for each group was calculated. To compare students’ academic achievement, their average scores in the final academic test were considered. An Independent samples t-test in was used to compare the mean scores. The results indicated that technology mediated learning brought about cognitive scaffolding and the students in the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of motivation and academic achievement. The results of the study suggest that to bring about academically successful students, practitioners should use technology mediated instruction.

Abstract: Over the last few decades, several aspects of pragmatic knowledge and its effects on teaching and learning a second language (L2) have been explored in many studies. However, among various studies, the area of interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) assessment is quite novel issue and many features of it have remained unnoticed. As ILP assessment has received more attention recently, the necessity of investigation on the EFL teachers’ rating criteria for rating various speech acts has become important. In this respect, the present study aimed to investigate the native and non-native EFL teachers’ rating scores and criteria regarding the speech act of request. To this end, 50 American ESL teachers and 50 Iranian EFL teachers participated to rate the EFL learners’ responses to video-prompted Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) regarding the speech act of request. Raters were supposed to rate the EFL learners’ responses and mention their criteria for assessment. The results of the content analysis of raters’ comments revealed nine criteria that they considered in their assessment. Moreover, the result of the t-test and chi-square analyses of raters’ rating scores and criteria proved that there are significant differences between native and non-native EFL teachers’ rating pattern. The results of this study also shed light on importance of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic features in native and non-native teachers’ pragmatics rating, which can have several implications for L2 teachers, learners, and material developers.

Burnout is one of the potential threats to teachers which can negatively influence their performance and bring about many side effects such as poor health conditions, depression, absenteeism, etc. It has, however, been found teachers who use effective coping strategies to deal with stressful job conditions can resist burnout. This qualitative design study aimed to investigate the coping strategies of 15 Iranian high school EFL teachers who did not show burnout on Maslach Burnout Inventory. The participants were interviewed and observed in classrooms and they were asked to keep journals for 8 sessions. The data were content analyzed and results show that establishment of rapport with students, discussing problems with principals and colleagues, class management, reflection, ongoing learning, adherence to moral principles and adopting a traditional teaching style are among the coping strategies these teachers used. The low frequency of these strategies, however, implies that EFL teachers, even those who resist burnout, need to be trained on different burnout coping strategies. Keywords: burnout, coping strategies, qualitative design, Iranian EFL teachers   راهبردهای مقابله با فرسودگی شغلی در میان معلمان زبان انگلیسی ایرانی فرسودگی شغلی یکی از خطرات بالقوه ای است که معلمان در معرض آن قرار دارند و می تواند تاثیر منفی بر عملکرد آنان داشته وموجب  عوارض جانبی بسیاری مانند وضعیت بد سلامتی، افسردگی، غیبت از محل کار، و غیره شود. با این حال مشخص شده است که معلمانی که از راهبردهای مقابله مؤثر برای رویارویی با شرایط استرس زای شغلی استفاده می کنند می توانند در برابر فرسودگی شغلی مقاومت نمایند. این مطالعه کیفی با هدف بررسی راهبردهای مقابله مورد استفاده 15 معلم زبان انگلیسی ایرانی که در دبیرستان تدریس می کردند ودر پرسشنامه فرسودگی شغلی مازلاک فرسودگی شغلی کمی نشان داده بودند انجام شد. شرکت کنندگان مورد مصاحبه  و در کلاس های درس مورد مشاهده قرار گرفتند و از آنها خواسته شد به مدت 8 جلسه خاطرات کلاسی خود رابعد از کلاس ثبت نمایند. داده های جمع آوری شده مورد تحلیل محتوا قرار گرفتند و نتایج نشان داد که ایجاد رابطه مثبت با دانش آموزان، بحث در مورد مشکلات با مدیران و همکاران، مدیریت کلاس، تفکر و تأمل، یادگیری مداوم و پایبندی به اصول اخلاقی جزء راهبردهای مقابله مهم مورد استفاده  معلمان می باشد. یافته های مطالعه حاکی از ضرورت آموزش راهبردهای مقابله به معلمان زبان انگلیسی است تا بتوانند د رمقابل فرسودگی شغلی از خود محافظت نمایند. کلمات کلیدی: فرسودگی شغلی، راهبردهای مقابله، مطالعه کیفی، معلمان زبان انگلیسی ایرانی

The complexity of self-regulatory strategies has been challenging to educational researchers who seek to find proper interventions that benefit students and teachers. This study has employed the Self-Regulatory Strategy Development (SRSD) model of instruction to help students monitor, evaluate and revise their writing. SRSD would be beneficial for adult students with learning disabilities in the procedure of essay writing. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a cognitive-behavioral dysregulation is a consequence of deficits in self-regulatory process. Many students with learning disorders such as ADHD have trouble in the mechanics and process of writing. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of SRSD on the essay writing of EFL undergraduate students. This study tried to evaluate the effects of SRSD intervention on the essay writing of ADHD and NON-ADHD students. To fulfill the mentioned objectives, 126 EFL undergraduate students who enrolled in essay writing course at Tehran Azad University participated in this study. The results indicated that SRSD instruction had a significant effect on the essay writing of the EFL undergraduate students. Likewise, ADHD students could achieve a significant improvement after receiving SRSD intervention. چکیده: پیچیدگی روش های خود تنظیمی برای محققین حوزه آموزش معمولا چالش برانگیز بوده است و آنها همیشه سعی در یافتن روش مناسبی برای دانشجویان و اساتید در این زمینه داشته اند. این تحقیق از روش "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" برای کمک به دانشجویان در زمینه های مشاهده، ارزیابی و تجدیدنظر بهره برده است. "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" برای دانشجویانی که در زمینه نگارش مشکل دارند مفید خواهد بود. "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" به عنوان یک نابهنجاری شناختی- رفتاری، که درنتیجه اختلال درفرایند خود تنظیمی بوجود می آید، مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. بسیاری از دانشجویان که در یادگیری دچار مشکل هستند برای مثال آنهایی که "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" دارند در روند و مراحل مقاله نویس با مشکلاتی روبرو هستند. هدف این تحقیق بررسی تاثیرات "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" بر توانایی نگارش دانشجویان کارشناسی زبان انگلیسی (زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان بیگانه) بوده است. این تحقیق به منظور ارزیابی تاثیرات بکارگیری روش "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" بر نگارش دانشجویانی که مشکل "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" داشتند و دانشجویانی که این مشکل را نداشتند انجام شد. به این منظور 126 دانشجوی کارشناسی زبان انگلیسی (زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان بیگانه) که درس مقاله نویسی را در دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی میگذراندند در این تحقیق شرکت کردند. نتایج نشان داد که روش آموزشی "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" بر توانایی مقاله نویسی دانشجویان تاثیر قابل توجهی داشت. همچنین دانشجویانی که مشکل "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" را داشتند بعد از بکارگیری "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" پیشرفت قابل ملاحظه ای داشتند.  کلید واژه ها: اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه – خود تنظیمی – استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی – مقاله نویسی.  

The score reliability of language performance tests has attracted increasing interest. Classical Test Theory cannot examine multiple sources of measurement error. Generalizability theory extends Classical Test Theory to provide a practical framework to identify and estimate multiple factors contributing to the total variance of measurement. Generalizability theory by using analysis of variance divides variances into their corresponding sources, and finds their interactions. This study used generalizability theory as a theoretical framework to investigate the effect of raters’ gender on the assessment of EFL students’ writing. Thirty Iranian university students participated in the study. They were asked to write on an independent task and an integrated task. The essays were holistically scored by 14 raters. A rater training session was held prior to scoring the writing samples. The data were analyzed using GENOVA software program. The results indicated that the male raters’ scores were as reliable as those of the female raters for both writing tasks. Large rater variance component revealed the low score generalizability in case of using one rater. The implications of the results in the educational assessment are elaborated.

In our modern life, the introduction of new technologies and subsequent boom in satellites, television, as well as the Internet has made the world a much smaller place allowing different nations, cultures, and languages to interact more frequently. One of the biggest concerns of audiovisual translators is cultural and ideological items which taboo terms are included. This study aims at investigating the strategies applied in the translation of taboo terms, from English into Persian, in five dubbed Hollywood movies broadcast by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The original movies were compared with their dubbed Persian versions based on Sharifi and Darchinian’s (2009) strategies. The “Censorship” strategy is the topmost used strategy in the rendition of the taboos with the highest frequency (56%). The second frequent strategy is “Taboo to Taboo” which involves 19%, the third frequent strategy is “Euphemism” with 13%, and the least frequent strategy for dealing with taboos is “Taboo to Non-Taboo” which is 12%. The results of the present study show that considering ideological and cultural aspects of the society, Iranian AV translators attempted to moderate and soften the original taboo terms, which would be considered as taboo by the cultural standards of the Iranian audiences.

This study investigated the effectiveness of colligational corpus-based instruction on enhancing the pragmalinguistic knowledge of speech act of request among Iranian intermediate EFL learners. The objective of the study was to find out whether or not providing students with corpora through using colligational instruction had any significant effects on enhancing their pragmalinguistic knowledge and, hence, speech act learning. Sixty participants from several institutes in Mazandaran Province, Iran, participated in the study. They were all intermediate- level students, and were divided into two homogeneous groups (30 each) of experimental and control groups based on the OPT results. A multiple discourse completion test was then administered to both groups as the pretest to measure their ability and knowledge in using the speech act of request. Subsequently, the treatment started where the experimental group received corpus-based instruction through colligational practices, while the control group practiced learning the same speech act through traditional or common methods of learning speech acts (i.e., using textbooks, audios, and videos). After 15 sessions of training, a posttest of multiple discourse completion test was administered. The data were analyzed using paired- and independent-samples t tests. In order to increase the validity of the results, the researchers observed and interviewed all the participants, too. The results that learning of the speech act of request improved significantly better through corpus-based instruction vis-à-vis traditional method of teaching colligations.

Formative assessment is deemed the collaborative processes in which teachers and learners are engaged for the purpose of understanding the learners' learning and diagnosing their strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, teachers' beliefs about formative assessment are paramount and might be influenced by a legion of variables such age, educational background, instructional experience, and gender. This study investigated the impacts of EFL teachers' age, educational background, instructional experience, and gender on their beliefs about formative assessment. To this aim, 100 male and 100 female EFL teachers from Ahvaz junior and senior high schools participated in the study. The participants were given the questionnaire of teachers' beliefs about formative assessment. The results regarding EFL teachers' age, educational background, and gender revealed no statistically significant influence on their beliefs about formative assessment. However, teachers' teaching experience had significant impacts on their beliefs about formative assessment. These findings can contribute to EFL authorities concerning assessment procedures in language learning and teaching.