درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study investigated learning style preferences among professional translators. The purposes of the study were to (a) find the prevailing learning style among the Iranian professional translators; (b) reveal any significant difference in the translators’ learning style preferences in terms of gender; and (c) find any significant difference between individual learning style and translation competence of the male and female translators. To this end, 110 professional translators from 35 translation centers in three Southern Provinces of Iran (Fars, Hormozgan, and Bushehr) were selected through non-probability sampling. The data pertaining to learning style were collected through an adaptation of Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, and translation competence was examined through a text that the participants translated. Findings revealed that the translators’ predominant learning style was Reflector, followed by Pragmatist, Activist, and Theorist, although those preferring the Theorist style showed better performance. Furthermore, the findings did not show any significant difference between translators’ gender and learning style preferences. Finally, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference across the groups in terms of learning style preferences and translators’ translation competence. Some pedagogical implications were also discussed.

This study aimed to compare the effect of teaching metacognitive listening strategies through shadowing activity on the listening comprehension of field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) EFL learners. Since the researcher had access only to female participants,85 female EFL learners from a language institute in Tehran, at the pre-intermediate level of proficiency with the age range of 18-35 were selected out of the initial 120 participants based on their performance on a piloted PET. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was administered to the selected participants in order to categorize them into the two experimental groups (49 FD and 36 FI). The participants including both FD and FI sat in several classes. During a five-week instruction period (twice a week), both groups practiced listening comprehension for 45 minutes through a combination of shadowing activity, and metacognitive strategy instruction with no difference in treatment. The results of the independent samples t-test demonstrated that there was no significant difference between listening posttest scores of FI and FD groups. Therefore, it was concluded that metacognitive strategy training coupled with shadowing activity could be equally beneficial in terms of listening proficiency for all students regardless of their perceptual tendency (FD/FI). The findings of the present study have implications for language teachers regarding metacognitive strategy training and listening comprehension enhancement.

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.

This meta-analysis is an investigation into the impressibility of two dimensions of the speaking skill, namely accuracy and fluency, in relation to the experimented treatments among Iranian EFL undergraduates. Having surveyed a collected bank of 74 research reports, the relationships among the variables in the 14 included studies were examined. More specifically, the analysis involved a statistical review of 67 effect sizes (at 95% CI) calculated from studies conducted between 2006 and 2016, including 890 participants. The analysis indicated that in 77% of the experimented treatments, the students performed as well as the students in the regular programs with no significant improvement in oral accuracy. The analysis also demonstrated that 63% of the treatments did not yield significant improvement in oral fluency in comparison with the regular instruction. Moreover, the synthesis of the effects of the contextual factors showed that low-level (i.e., elementary) learners experienced a better improvement in speaking performance. The analysis also revealed that, among the experimented treatments, dialogic tasks were most effective on oral accuracy while interviews were influential in promoting the students’ both oral accuracy and fluency. Finally, the quality of the study reports was analyzed and some directions for further research were suggested.

Motivation raising strategies are frequently used in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes; nevertheless, learners’ perceptions of such strategies used by language teachers have not sufficiently been explored. Also, there are not enough studies on differences and similarities between more and less proficient EFL learners regarding this issue. To scrutinize this topic, a groups of more (No=50) and less proficient EFL learners (No=50) participated in this study by completing to a validated, researcher-made questionnaire with a five-point Likert type format. Non-parametric Mann-Whiteny U test was run in the SPSS ver. 23 to check the differences between the two groups. The results of the study verified that, regardless of each individual scale in the utilized questionnaire, overall, the more proficient ones manifested significantly less perceptions on teachers’ motivation raising strategies based on the total estimated mean ranks compared with the less proficient learners.  However, within the surveyed scales, only in the classroom atmosphere scale, the results showed that the less proficient learners were more mindful of teacher strategies for motivation raising. The findings from this study have implications for motivation raising strategy instructions for a language classroom. 

Many studies have examined the effect of different approaches to teaching grammar including explicit and implicit instruction. However, research in this area is limited in a number of respects. One such limitation pertains to the issue of construct validity of the measures, i.e. the knowledge developed through implicit instruction has been measured through instruments which favor the recipients of explicit instruction. The present study expands on the previous studies by exploring the effectiveness of explicit and implicit instructions through administering a timed GJT and an untimed GJT. Data were collected from three different groups: (a) the explicit group was presented with rules of verb complementation, (b) the implicit group received visually enhanced texts, and (c) the control group received no instruction of the target feature. The results of the mixed between-within subjects ANOVA test revealed that the learners in explicit group outperformed the learners in implicit and control groups in post-tests and delayed post-tests even in the case of the implicit measure. Furthermore, the results indicated the more durable effects of explicit instruction compared with implicit instruction. Taken together, the study provided evidence for the efficiency of explicit teaching compared to implicit teaching in the context of L2 development.

The present study aimed to investigate the interaction among grade dropping and reflective thinking abilities of the participants and to also check if action research enhances learners’ reflective thinking. A cyclic action research was run for 8 sessions. Kember et al.’s (2010) reflective thinking questionnaire and three in-term quizzes were administered. Students also made questions based on their course book passages and develop reflective thinking journals. Although the results suggested no linear relation between grade dropping and reflective thinking, students strategically decided to drop their lowest score and receive a replacement exam. Furthermore, analyses of students’ questions based on Bloom’s (1956) Taxonomy and their reflections revealed that learners’ reflective thinking level was enhanced. Such results might be conducive to highlighting students’ role in assessment policies.

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.

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.  

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.

The present study aimed to examine the effect of three vocabulary techniques (dictionary use, etymological analysis, and glossing) on the Iranian ESP learners' vocabulary production. Forty-five university students majoring in architecture at Azad University, Anzali branch,  participated in this study. They were divided into three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one kind of treatment condition (dictionary use group, etymology group, and glossing group). The Michigan proficiency test was used to ensure the homogeneity of the  ESP learners. The three experimental groups received instruction for three weeks. ESP learners took a vocabulary production test (VPT). A one-way between groups ANOVA was conducted to analyse the data. The results showed that dictionary use improved ESP learners' vocabulary production, and dictioary use group outperformed the other two groups. The study concludes that dictionary use faciliates vocabulary production.

This study tried to find out what factors underline the characteristics of acquisition of English language in EFL classrooms. To this end, the Characteristics of English Language Acquisition Scale (ELAS) consisting of 41 items was designed by the researchers of this study and administered to 388 pre University Iranian EFL students at various private and public schools in Neyshabour and Zebarkhan. Factor analysis was run to determine the number of factors underlying the scale. The application of Principle Axis Factoring and rotating the extracted factors showed that the characteristics loaded acceptably on twelve factors underlying the learners’ EFL acquisition, i.e., learning boosters, facilitation, determination, voluntary, teaching methodology, affective factors, attitudes toward foreign speakers and their culture, learner engagement, adjustment, enhancement, teachers' output and individual differences. The results are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.