درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

To analyze and evaluate textbooks, researchers have either proposed scales and checklists to be filled by teachers and learners or conducted qualitative investigations of the match between SLA theories and textbook activities. This study, however, employs the microstructural approach of schema theory to scrutinize the reading passages of “Mosaic 1 Reading”. To this end, 17 passages of the textbook were randomly chosen and their constituting words were explored as semantic, syntactic, and parasyntactic schemata. The passages were also analyzed in terms of their readability indices. The results showed that they consist of 3722 schema types, 2979 (80%) of which are semantic in nature. Although the textbook aims at “academic success” at English language “proficiency levels”, it provides no objective definition of what they stand for. In terms of readability, however, the passages vary in difficulty from grade three in primary school to college level. Further, the textbook is discussed in terms of its constituting schemata and suitability to the Iranian context and suggestions are made for future research. The findings of this study have important implications for language teaching, testing and materials development. They show that language proficiency must be defined in terms of schema types and the bulk of class time must be spent on teaching semantic schemata rather than syntactic and parasyntactic ones. Similarly, for testing the reading comprehension of these passages, the number and type of test items must be based on the percentage of semantic and syntactic schema types and subjective criteria such as teachers’ intuition or experience must be avoided both in teaching and testing the comprehension of passages.

This study aimed to investigate how English language teaching textbooks portrayed male and female social actors according to their social roles and gender identities. To examine the linguistic representation of male and female social actors and construction of gender identities in ELT textbooks, Top Notch series was selected. To do so, attempts were made to analyze the series in terms of the features introduced in two analytical models: Van Leeuwen’s (1996) framework and Halliday's transitivity model (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). All of the sentences in reading passages and conversations were counted and analyzed critically through discursive features of these two models. The findings of this study revealed significant differences in representation of male and female social actors in some discursive features. Male social actors were described as more autonomous, successful, and active compared to female social actors.

Iran's National curriculum standards represent the guiding blueprints which provide direction for instruction and assessment nationwide. Iran's official university curriculum standards were designed by Iran's Ministry of Sciences, Research and Technologyto provide a frame of reference and guidance for the instructional materials used and decisions made by university instructors. Using a widely accepted measure of describing cognitive processes, that is,Bloom's revised taxonomy of educational objectives, thispaper aims at comparatively investigatingIran's B.A. official curriculum standards of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and ET (English translation). Thestandardspertaining to TEFL and ET fieldswerecontent analyzed in terms of Bloom's revised taxonomyby using a detailed checklist developedbased on the respective classification of cognitive objectives.The findings showed slight differences between both fields in terms of critical thinking skills and that lower-order cognitive skills were more prevalent than higher-order ones. Furthermore, the English translation standards pertained to critical cognitive skills in general and evaluation and creation in particular to a larger extent. Results of this study have implications for policy makers, curriculum designers, materials developers and instructors involved in language education.

One skill that student teachers need to develop during their academic studies is the capacity to produce accurate and well-organized texts. This study reports on the comparative impact of metalinguistic feedback (MLF), teacher interactive feedback (TIF(, and the peer-feedback (PF) on the accuracy and organization of postgraduate ELT student teachers’ writing. The participants were 57 postgraduate students who were recruited from a population of 70 postgraduate students, in three classes, that were randomly assigned as the MLF group, the TIF group, and the PF group based on the focus of the presentation and the feedback type they would receive during the 14 session treatment. A hybrid process-oriented and genre-based methodology was employed to teach the identical teaching materials to all the groups with a focus on grammatical features and relevant grammatical exercises in the MLF group,   on reflective and interactive negotiation of form and meaning in the TIF group, and on individual peer-assessment of the peer’s writing in the PF group. The results revealed significantly higher levels of accuracy among the MLF group with no significant difference in the organization of the groups’ writing. The findings underscore the role of MLF in enhancing accuracy. 

Within Systemic Functional Linguistics, Grammatical Metaphor (GM) is a meaning-making resource lying at the experiential level that extends the meaning potential through cross-stratal re-mappings between the grammar and the semantics, boiling down, in one of its manifestations to expressing something that should have been a process (verb) in terms of a thing (noun). This study is an attempt at seeing how the frequency of GM used in the novel ‘Frankenstein’ written by Mary Shelly plays out in its cinematic adaptation. It is an attempt at investigating possible differences in the use of GM in the novel as a type of literary prose fiction and in one of its cinematic adaptations, the respective frequencies, along with what implications these differences carry in terms of generic features and functions of GM. In the 4200-word corpus analyzed for the movie adaptation, there were 70 instances of GM emerging upon analysis. In the 4200-word purposively sampled excerpt of the novel, there were above 330 instances of GM emerging. So the frequency of instances of GM in the written version was much more than that in the cinematic adaptation. This significant difference carries many possible cognitive, semantic, discursive, generic and textual implications. A number of pedagogical implications accrue to this research, such as increasing the knowledge of teachers and English language instructors with regard to the role of GM in making metaphorical forms in different texts, increasing knowledge of how to approach the teaching of the skill of reading and writing in upper-intermediate and intermediate classes, deeper critical reading abilities for learners, etc. 

The present study adopted a mixed-methods research design and explored the role of a set of cognitive (i.e., aptitude and working memory) and motivational (i.e., self-regulatory capacity and self-efficacy beliefs) individual difference variables in the writing quality and composing behavior of 78 Iranian undergraduate EFL learners. The necessary data were collected through a series of instruments and both quantitative (e.g., multiple regression and t-tests) and qualitative (e.g., narrative construction and qualitative comparative analysis) techniques were used to analyze the data. The results of these analyses indicated that the construct of foreign language aptitude had the highest level of correlation and contributory potential to account for the writing competence of the learners. The composing process of learners with different individual characteristics was also compared and it was found that learners with high self-regulation capacity orchestrated and managed their composing behavior in more effective ways compared to their less self-regulated counterparts. Moreover, the narratives and qualitative comparative analysis provided some insights about how various individual characteristics might affect the composing behavior of the individual learners. Finally, it was suggested that consideration of individual differences in writing can reveal more subtle information about the causes of strengths and weaknesses of different learners and may enable the teachers to design and implement more effective instructions targeting their learners’ individual needs

در مقاله حاضر رابطه بین ریسک پذیری، انگیزه ی یادگیری، اضطراب صحبت کردن به زبان انگلیسی و اعتماد به نفس زبانی با درستی، روانی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان آموزان زبان انگلیسی مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است. همچنین تاثیر تکرار فعالیت برروی متغیرهای فوق و همچنین بر روی درستی، روانی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان آموزان مورد مطالعه قرار گرفته است. جهت انجام تحقیق، پرسشنامه ای که به این منظور طراحی شده به 142 نفر زبان آموزان زبان انگلیسی داده شد. سپس، آنها به طور تصادفی به دو گروه آزمایش و کنترل تقسیم شدند. شرکت کنندگان در گروه آزمایش فعالیت مربوطه را در پنج نوبت که هر کدام یک هفته باهم فاصله داشتند تکرار نمودند. شرکت کنندگان در گروه کنترل فعالیت مربوطه را فقط در دو نوبت به فاصله سه هفته از یک دیگر تکرار نمودند. پرسشنامه مربوطه مجددا در پایان تحقیق به کلیه شرکت کنندگان داده شد. نتایج نشان داد که ریسک پذیری، انگیزه یادگیری، اضطراب صحبت کردن به زبان انگلیسی و اعتماد به نفس زبانی بر روی درستی، روانی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان آموزان تاثیرگذار می باشد. علاوه بر این، تکرار فعالیت به آنها کمک می کند تا درستی و پیچیدگی گفتاری زبان انگلیسی خود را بهبود ببخشند.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of IT system-based instruction vs. traditional instruction of teaching English on Iranian low-intermediate EFL learners’ reading comprehension ability in a smart school in Tonekabon, Mazandaran, Iran. To collect the data, 60 low-intermediate high school learners took part in the study. As to the homogeneity of the participants, they took Solution Placement Test (SPT). The participants were divided into one experimental group (i.e. receiving the treatment in terms of using smart tools) and one control group (i.e. receiving no treatment and being traditionally taught through white board). A reading comprehension test (pre-test) was given to examine the participants’ initial knowledge of reading comprehension. Similar to the pre-test, a reading comprehension test (post-test) was utilized to check the participants’ performance of reading comprehension and look into their probable progress as a result of receiving the treatment. Findings revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group after the treatment highlighting the success of instruction in enhancing the students’ reading comprehension ability. The results suggest the application of smart tools to promote interaction among the learners and assist them to freely express their thoughts in the e-learning environment.