درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

هدف از پژوهش حاضر، بررسی تأثیر چهار روش تدریس واژگان تخصصی زبان اقتصاد، یعنی تدریس از طریق تفصیل ریشه ای، تعریف بافتی، ترجمه ی فارسی و تدریس ضمنی، بر درک مطلب متون تخصصی اقتصاد بوده است. یافته های پژوهش نشان داد که در زمینه درک مطلب کلی تفاوت معنی داری بین روش های تدریس وجود ندارد اما در مورد درک ایده ی نویسنده ، روش تدریس تفصیل ریشه ای بر سایر روش ها برتری داشت.

The study aimed at investigating the efficacy of written corrective feedback (CF) in improving Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy. It compared the effects of focused and unfocused written CF on the learners’ grammatical accuracy. 75 EFL students formed a one control and two experimental groups. The focused feedback group was provided with error correction in tenses. The unfocused feedback group was provided with error correction in tense, articles, spelling, pronouns, vocabulary, and prepositions. The results indicated a significant improvement in accuracy for the two experimental groups from pretest to posttest. The outcomes demonstrated that giving written CF was effective, which enhanced learners' grammatical accuracy, and that focused and unfocused written CF were not of differential significant effect in such manner. The results on the construct of the attitudinal questionnaire indicated learners’ preference in two experimental groups for the interactional activities, error correction, and the different type of CF techniques. The mean scores on each content area of the questionnaire suggested that learners in the focused group scored higher than the other groups in their attitudes toward the errors to be corrected.

Reading strategies are seen as supportive means to help learners process and comprehend English texts effectively. The present research probed to posit a discipline-specific model of reading strategies for Iranian TEFL postgraduate students. The motive behind developing a local model of reading strategy is twofold: first, a variety of postgraduate students admitted for M.A and Ph.D. programs, either may not have received their first degrees in TEFL or they are TEFL graduates who lag behind disciplinary-knowledge in terms of reading. Consequently, Twenty- eight postgraduate students majoring in English Language Teaching from Shiraz University, Isfahan University, Yazd University and Islamic Azad university of Bandar-Abbas wherein M.A and Ph.D. programs in TEFL are offered were asked to brainstorm their ideas as to how they approach technical materials in English. Conducting a 3-session semi-structured interview with 22 participants and focus-group interviews with six participants, the researchers then transcribed and codified the data according to Corbin and Strauss (2014) systematic steps of open, axial and selective coding for grounded theory. The findings revealed a six factor model encompassing 32 categories. The factors include: a) previewing the content, b) recognition of the salient and pronounced features, C) emphasis and clarification upon the significant features, d) consulting auxiliary sources, e) ruminating and reflecting upon the text, and f) reviewing the gist of materials. As a matter of fact, the proposed model can help postgraduate students move away from teacher authority and develop reading autonomy.

This study aimed at investigating the possible impact of gender and proficiency level on the relationship between autonomy and listening comprehension ability among Iranian low and high proficiency male and female EFL learners. One hundred six English learners, based on the results of Oxford Placement Test (OPT), version II, took part in this study. Both female and male learners with the age range of 13 to 29 from two girl language institutes in Khomeynishahr and one boy school in Shahrekord participated in the study. The instruments of the study consisted of an OPT, an autonomy questionnaire, and two listening comprehension tests. First of all, the participants were required to take the OPT and autonomy questionnaire and then in a different session they were asked to sit for the listening comprehension tests. The collected data were analyzed by means of SPSS and the results of statistical analysis indicated that (1) gender could not modify the relationship, (2) proficiency level, on the other hand, had a significant effect on the relationship between autonomy and listening comprehension ability and those with higher proficiency outperformed the lower proficiency learners. The findings of this study could have implications for learners, teachers, and material developers.

Using rhetorical figures in specialized languages like the language of newspaper headlines is common. The present study attempted to conduct a contrastive analysis of the English and Persian sport newspaper headlines related to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Toward this end, a corpus consisting of 400 English and 400 Persian headlines published during 12th of June to 13th of July, 2014 was collected. The framework developed by Lapsanska (2006), including phonological, lexical and morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects, was employed. The frequencies of the use of sub-variables were calculated and chi-square tests were administered to determine whether the differences in the use of linguistic means between the two languages were statistically significant. The results showed that English and Persian sports newspaper headlines were similar in the use of rhythm and metaphor. However, they were generally different in four aspects particularly in the use of alliteration, foreign words, idiomatic constructions, formation of new words and phrases, hyperbole, phrase, and personification. The results can have pedagogical implications for journalism students, English for specific purposes (ESP) students, teachers, and translators.

These days the use of portfolio assessment is very popular. If it is believed that students at all levels should be doing more than studying for tests; teachers should be doing more than teaching to tests; students should take a more active role in the learning process; and, then the portfolio assessment is an idea worth exploring.. The aim of this study was to introduce portfolio assessment into our classrooms for improving students' reading comprehension. To achieve this goal, the researcher adopted the quasi-experimental design comprising the pretest-treatment-posttest paradigm. Two classes were selected as the experimental and control groups from Cambridge Institute in Sari. They were 52 female students. The only difference between the two groups was integrating portfolio into learning for the experimental group. The result of this study indicated that portfolio assessment did not have a significant effect on the students' reading skill.

This study explored the effect of teaching Self-Regulated Strategy on the writing accuracy and cohesion of Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, this study followed the SRS instruction model, using a transition word chart, examples, and a graphic organizer. To achieve the objectives, 50 intermediate Iranian EFL learners participated in this study. The design was experimental which used a proficiency, pretest-posttest and random sampling. The analyses of writing tests in the control and experimental groups revealed that SRS instruction had a positive impact on the participants’ writing ability. The effect of SRS instruction was significant on the participants’ writing accuracy and cohesion. The findings draw language instructors’ attention to the meta-cognitive dimension of writing and importance of teaching self-regulatory strategies as a way for achieving autonomy in writing.

The literature of ELT is perhaps overwhelmed by attempts to enhance learners’ writing through the application of different methodologies. One such methodology is critical discourse analysis which is founded upon stressing not only the decoding of the propositional meaning of a text but also its ideological assumptions. Accordingly, this study was an attempt to investigate the impact of critical discourse analysis-based (CDA) instruction on EFL learners’ writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 female intermediate EFL learners were selected from among a total number of 100 through their performance on a piloted sample PET. Based on the results, the students were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group with 30 participants in each. Both groups underwent the same amount of teaching time during 17 sessions which included a treatment of CDA instruction for the experimental group. A writing posttest was administered at the end of the instruction to both groups and their mean scores on the test were compared through a MANOVA. The results led to the rejection of the three null hypotheses, thereby demonstrating that the learners in the experimental group benefited significantly more than those in the control group in terms of improving their writing CAF. To this end, it is recommended that CDA instruction be incorporated more frequently in writing classes following of course adequate syllabus design and materials development.

This study attempted to systematically inspect the impact of direct and indirect corrective feedbacks on the writing ability of EFL learners when using product/process based instructions. To do so, 110 female EFL learners, between the ages of 15 and 18, were randomly assigned into four experimental groups to receive four different kinds of treatments, namely product-based instruction with direct feedback, product-based instruction with indirect feedback, process-based instruction with direct feedback, and process-based instruction with indirect feedback. The treatment took 10 sessions. Analyzing the results of the two writing tests (pretest and posttest) showed that direct feedback had significant effects on EFL learners' writing in process-based instruction and product-based instruction but indirect feedback failed to show any significant effect on EFL learners' writing in both process-based instruction and product-based instruction. The results also indicated that direct feedback had significantly better impact on EFL learners writing in the process-based instruction than product-based one.