درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Initiation into contextualizing mindful second language teacher education (SLTE) has challenged teacher educators causing their retreat into mindless submission to ready-made standardized directives. To revive the starting perspective in curriculum development in light of the recent trend towards responsive SLTE, this practitioner research investigated how the context was incorporated into the initial program phase. We reported an intrinsic case self-study narrating the contextualization events unfolded in the first five sessions of an English language teacher education program in Karaj, Iran. Selected factors guided data mining in an interview, classroom interaction transcripts, reflective tasks, institutional documents, and the teacher educator’s journal entries and recollections. The data underwent meaning-oriented, temporally sequenced content analysis. We redrafted the resulting narrative after member checking, and critical reviews. Afterwards, we conducted a layered context-bound thematic analysis on the big story followed by further theme analysis of the existing and emerging facets of adaptive expertise. Engagement in this narrative inquiry developed awareness of her practices and professional agency, constraints and affordances within the context of SLTE program. The findings extend narrative knowledging to the wider professional community of SLTE.

Any language classroom is a distinctive learning context offering numerous affordances that might be perceived effectively, remain unnoticed, or even act as constraints. Therefore, exploring students' perception toward a particular method of instruction is crucial since it may produce a reliable piece of evidence for teachers to confirm or refute the effectiveness of the intended instructional activities. This study was an attempt to survey Iranian EFL learners' perception of the efficacy of activity theory-based reading comprehension. To this end, 60 students studying English translation at Islamic Azad University, Tehran Central Branch participated in the study and received the reading instruction based on the elements of activity theory, i.e., subjects, object, mediating artifacts, rules, community, and division of labor. After receiving the treatment, the students filled in two perception questionnaires and took part in a semi-structured focus group interview. The findings indicated that the students showed favorable perception toward activity theory, for which they perceived different affordances. Moreover, the results demonstrated that there was a significant difference between the students’ perception regarding the mediating elements of activity theory.  The study provides EFL teachers with new insights into the considerable benefits that activity theory might bring to reading classes.

The application of Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) in rating test takers’ oral language proficiency has been investigated in some previous studies (e.g., Winke, Gass, & Myford, 2012). However, little research so far has ever documented the effect of test takers’ genders on their oral performances and few studies have investigated the relationship between the impact of raters’ gender on the awarded scores to male and female test takers. Thus, this study aimed to address the above-mentioned issue. Twenty English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers rated the oral performances of 300 test takers. The outcomes demonstrated that test takers’ gender differences did not have any significant role in their performance differences when they were rated by the raters of the same or opposite gender. The findings also reiterated that raters of different genders did not demonstrate bias in rating test takers of the opposite or same gender. Moreover, no significant difference was observed regarding male and female raters’ biases towards the rating scale categories. The outcomes of the study showed that both male and female raters assign fairly similar scores to test takers. This suggests no evidence based on which either male or female raters must be excluded from the rating process. The findings imply that there is no need to worry about the impact of gender for a more valid and reliable assessment.

With the current availability of state-of-the-art technology, particularly the Internet, people have expanded their channels of communication. This has similarly led to many people utilizing technology to learn second/foreign languages. Nevertheless, many current computer-assisted language learning (CALL) programs still appear to be lacking in interactivity and what is termed social presence, which is in turn an obstacle to the learners assuming active roles in their online experience of L2 learning. Consequently, the existing CALL programs do not seem to have updated themselves from the obsolete behavioristic and communicative genres to reach for the integrative one to yield optimum interactivity. The present study has attempted to cast light on the prospect of creating an online learning community that could optimize the patterns of interaction among the students and the teacher with the intention of creating online social presence. Using a qualitative research based on grounded theory, the researchers attempted to collect and analyze the data vis-à-vis the participants’ feedback on the research questions that were cyclically obtained from 42 English students of the first researcher’s weblog through 41 semi-structured interviews at the end of each virtual class on Skype and Discord over one year. The results suggested that content-based instruction (CBI) in which the students can opt for and create the content of the course through engaging in asynchronous activities and performing peer-assessment in the comment forms and discussion boards before practicing negotiation of meaning in each synchronous class could maximize the level of student-student interactivity and social presence among the L2 learners.

Élever un enfant bilingue est le souhait de certains couples appartenant aux sociétés monolingues qui n’ont pas le moyen naturel pour offrir aux enfants la chance de devenir bilingue. Nombreux sont les pères et les mères qui pratiquent une deuxième langue, y tiennent et souhaitent pouvoir transmettre cette passion à leurs enfants. Cependant la question qui s’impose c’est la manière de faire pour qu’un enfant devienne bilingue sans qu’il y prouve aucune obligation. Cet article est centré sur les stratégies discursives à adopter dans le cas d’un bilinguisme précoce quand on implique la règle «un parent, une langue» en faisant une étude longitudinale sur l’acquisition de français en Iran par une petite fille de 3 ans dans un cadre familial monolingue. Les données sont retirées des enregistrements sonores entre l’âge de 36 et 40 mois, réalisés par la mère de l’enfant lors d’interactions dyadiques pendant les séances de jeux et de la lecture dialogique.La création des situations qui mettent en priorité la présence de la langue française lors des échanges langagiers, aboutira aux changements des habitudes langagières de l’enfant en lui attribuant plus d’occasions pour employer la langue française.

This study aimed at investigating the potential of collaborative and e-collaborative writing modalities in developing interactional complexity, utilization of interactional demonstrators and density of interaction. To this end, 66 Iranian intermediate female English as foreign language learners (EFL) were selected to participate in this study according to their scores on Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Participant assignment into experimental group was done on the basis of computer literacy criterion. The conversation analysis of transcribed conversations in collaborative writing and log analysis of e-collaborative writing on e-writing forum indicated that collaborative writing led to more complex interaction than e-collaborative writing on the basis of interaction complexity measure. Significant differences were found in the frequency of interactional resources and demonstrators in two writing modalities using chi-square analysis. Informational demonstrators occurred more in e-collaborative writing, and interactional, attitude and empathic resources occurred more in collaborative writing. Interaction density measure was also in favor of collaborative writing. The results implied that implementation of collaborative tasks is potential technique for the development and assessment of interactional competence .

This study examines the potential connections among learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English, their perceptions of autonomy-supportive teaching and two individual difference variables, i.e. motivation and English speaking self-efficacy. Two hundred and five Iranian EFL learners responded to four questionnaires. The data obtained from the collected instruments were subjected to structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed significant positive paths from autonomy-supportive teaching to motivation, WTC in English, and English speaking self-efficacy. Further significant paths were found leading from motivation to WTC and from English speaking self-efficacy to motivation. The findings also indicated that autonomy-supportive teaching style and English speaking self-efficacy could indirectly affect learners’ WTC through the mediation of motivation. Furthermore, autonomy-supportive teaching was found to indirectly predict learners’ motivation through the mediating role of self-efficacy. The implications of the study for teachers and teacher educators are discussed.

Test washback is held to be complicated and multifaceted in that a host of cultural, social, individual, test, and institutional factors are involved in shaping it. Thus far, the majority of washback studies have had as their focus the role of teachers in test washback or washback to teachers. How educational environments or institutions might function in isolation or in interaction with other factors in shaping washback to the learners and test takers has not received adequate research attention. The current study examined the mediatory role of academic institutions in washback to learners' perceptions of test content and test preparation. To this aim, 86 senior English students from two universities, one a top tier and the other a low tier one, completed two questionnaires: one on test takers' preparation practices including test analysis, test taking skills, drilling target skills, and socio-affective strategies; and the other on test takers' construal of test demands and uses as well as their expectation of success on the test.  The data analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling revealed that a washback model based on expectancy-value theory explains a moderate amount of variance in test preparation. Further, for test takers from the low tier university, favorable perceptions of test content were associated with more value placed on test taking. However, Multi-group analysis pointed to group-invariance of the model across the two institutions, indicating a lack of strong evidence for the mediatory role of educational environments in washback to test takers’ perceptions and preparation.