درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Abstract in every research paper has always been functioning as an attention-grabber which can encourage readers to keep reading the research or to dissuade it. Although abstracts are believed to play an important role in distributing the research findings, few studies have been done to evaluate the rhetorical organization of thesis abstracts, especially in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Thus, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the rhetorical moves of the MA thesis abstracts written from 1988 to 2015 in the field of TEFL in Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU), an Iranian university. To this end, 300 MA thesis abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2000) rhetorical move framework. To track the rhetorical move trends of the thesis abstracts and for the ease of analysis, they were analyzed in three time intervals. The results revealed that while in the first interval (1988-1997) the most frequent rhetorical moves were the “Purpose”, “Method”, and “Product”, in the other two intervals (1998-2007 and 2008-2015) the “Purpose” was the most used rhetorical move. In addition, the least frequent rhetorical moves were the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” for the three intervals. The findings, on top of these, indicated that the rhetorical move patterns of thesis abstracts moved from Purpose-Method-Product (P-M-Pr) to Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C). That said, it can be concluded that in the examined thesis abstracts, the highest average of information was provided on the “Purpose” of the study, while the other moves, especially the conclusion move, was not deemed important; moreover, an increasing rate of information provision was detected on the “Method” and “Product” moves. This research bears some implications for L2 learners to better know their community of practice and writing instructors to prepare genre-based writing materials.

In response to the competitive demands for establishing their international academic and financial credentials, the universities globally distribute some online introductory information about themselves. To this end, the university homepages have increasingly turned into the rhetorical space for the development of promotional academic texts in recent years. In this study, we examined university overview genre that provides the visitors with brief presentation of the simple facts while endorsing a specific perspective of the university and strengthening its position in the academic community. The corpus comprised 70 overviews extracted from the academic websites of the first top 500 universities. We analyzed and coded the texts to specify their overall rhetorical framework, functional moves and constituting steps, and optimal order of moves. The findings indicated that overview genre incorporates six obligatory moves including 'source of reputation', 'historical origin', 'current status of development', 'commitments, goals and orientations', 'global state', and 'services and supports'. Also, the results demonstrated that the academic genre did not follow a single, invariant pattern of sequenced moves in a clearly linear order. The findings further suggest that the nature of overview genre could be characterized by its twofold informative and persuasive functions. Finally, implications of the findings of the study are presented

Task-based language teaching is considered an effective way to achieve a harmony between grammar and communication. The present study investigates two different ways of teaching modal verbs: task-based versus traditional approaches. To this purpose, an Oxford Placement Test was administered to select 40 homogeneous participants out of a larger population who took this test. The selected participants were randomly divided into experimental and control groups of 20 students each. Those in the experimental group attended an English class six days a week, practicing grammar through tasked-based approach, while the control group did not receive any task-based work. The OPT was administered at the end of the semester again to see which group could do modal verbs better. A final test of modal verb tasks was also administered at the end of the study to see if all the learners have improved in using modal verbs in the same way/at the same amount through task-based language teaching. The results of this study indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group, meaning that teaching modal verbs through task-based approaches has been more effective than teaching them in traditional ways. It was also revealed that the modal verb can was improved much more, while have to and must were improved less. The results of the study may have a significant implication for teaching modal verbs in particular and language learning in general.

The study of compliment speech act has been under investigation on many occasions in recent years. In this study, an attempt is made to explore appraisals performed by native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners to find out how these two groups diverge or converge from each other with regard to complimenting patterns and norms. The participants of the study were 60 advanced Iranian EFL learners who were speaking Persian as their first language and 60 native English speakers. Through a written Discourse Completion Task comprised of eight different scenarios, compliments were analyzed with regard to topics (performance, personality, possession, and skill), functions (explicit, implicit, and opt-out), gender differences and the common positive adjectives used by two groups of native and nonnative participants. The findings suggested that native English speakers praised individuals more implicitly in comparison with Iranian EFL learners and native speakers provided opt-outs more frequently than Iranian EFL learners did. The analysis of data by Chi-square showed that gender and macro functions are independent of each other among Iranian EFL learners’ compliments while for native speakers, gender played a significant role in the distribution of appraisals. Iranian EFL learners’ complimenting patterns converge more towards those of native English speakers. Moreover, both groups favored explicit compliments. However, Iranian EFL learners were more inclined to provide explicit compliments. It can be concluded that there were more similarities rather than differences between Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers regarding compliment speech act. The results of this study can benefit researchers, teachers, material developers, and EFL learners.