درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

One of the main aims of the education agenda in the last decade has been to develop critical thinking and autonomy among children, in order to educate them to be activeand involved persons in society. The present study sought to examine the relationship between Iranian male and female EFL learners’ autonomy and their critical thinking ability. To this aim, the researcher used a language proficiency test, a questionnaire of autonomy, and a questionnaire of critical thinking. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, 242 third-grade high school students of Urmia city were provided with a Key English Test (KET). Afterwards, 162 of them were selected as the homogenizedgroup and were given a questionnaire of autonomy and questionnaire of critical thinking. Finally, the results of 144(because some of participants did not complete their critical thinking questionnaire) participants were analyzed. The Pearson coefficient of correlation revealed that Iranian EFL learners’ autonomy and critical thinking were significantly related. The findings offered important pedagogical implications for teachers, learners, and syllabus designers.

This study aimed to explore the function and frequency of textual metadiscourse markers (MDMs) in scientific English and Persian texts. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of textual markers characterizing the selected genre, four different textbooks, two written in English and two in Persian were analyzed to identify the textual metadiscourse categories (including logical markers, code glosses, and sequencers) used in these texts and to determine the sociopragmatic differences existing in these languages, chi-square test was run and the findings suggested that textual MDMs were present in both English and Persian texts, but they differed in their frequency of occurrence. The contrastive comparison between the English and Persian texts revealed that the frequency of the textual MDMs was greater in the Persian texts. Therefore, it was concluded that such discrepancy could be attributed to the differing rate of explicitness in these two languages. The Persian writers were more interested in explicating their ideas for readers through the text via the use of textual markers (TMs) to a greater extent. It was further found that different factors may influence the use of MDMs, namely the culture, the writer's preferences, the text, and its genre. The implications could include the precaution that Iranian EFL writers ought to be advised to approximate their writing style, in terms of using MDMs, to that of native speakers of English while writing in English.  

Whether negative evidence should be incorporated in or excluded from an SLA or FLA setting has long been a major concern for practitioners and researchers in the SLA and FLA domains. Some (Bowen, Madsen & Hilferty, 1985; Lightbown & Spada, 1990; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Askew & Lodge, 2000; and Ashwell, 2000) endorse the use of corrective feedback while others do not (Krashen, 1982; VanPatten, 1988; Dekeyser, 1993; and Truscott, 1996). What these researchers; however, fail to take under advisement in this realm is learners and teachers’ Attitudes towards Error Correction (ATEC). The present experiment wishes to address the issue from this angle, i.e., how teachers and learners’ attitude converge and/or diverge as far as their attitude towards error correction is concerned. Some 410 students and 34 teachers were invited to fill out the questionnaires. Additionally, 45 students and 13 teachers were interviewed to delve into the versatile facets of error treatment qualitatively. The results showed which error treatment techniques the students and the teachers most and/or least favored. Not only does the analysis of the data support Vahdani and Mirsaidi's (2007) claim on students' ATEC, but also data analysis suggests common grounds can be detected between students' attitudes and those of their teachers. It can, therefore, be concluded that corrective feedback has won the favor of learners and teachers and that in their now statistically tenable estimation it should be factored in FLA settings.

این مقاله جنبه های مختلف گفتمان کلاس را در یک کلاس تدریس زبان انگلیسی که در آن از روش ارتباطی استفاده می شود مورد بررسی قرار می دهد. اطلاعات لازم از طریق مشاهده تعاملات کلاسی و ضبط صدا در 5 جلسه و جمعا بالغ بر 4 ساعت جمع آوری شد. برای تحلیل داده ها، چهارچوبی تحلیلی تهیه شد که مشتمل بر ویژگی های مهم کلاس یعنی تبادلات آموزشی، ویژگی های نهاده، روش بازخورد، و نوع سوالات بود. نتایج حاصل از تحلیل داده ها نشان داد که اطلاعات جمع آوری شده حاوی 52 مورد تبادلات آموزشی است که در 73% آنها واکنش معلم به گفته های زبان آموزان بیشتر کارکرد ارزیابی دارد، معلم گفتار خود را با توجه سطح دانش زبانی زبان آموزان تغییر می دهد، و از میان روش های مختلف بازخورد اصلاحی روش بازریزی (51%) و بازخورد صریح (22%) بیشتر از بقیه مورد استفاده قرار گرفته است که به تبع آن فرصت و شانس کمتری برای عکس العمل و خود اصلاحی از سوی زبان آموزان ایجاد می شد. همچنین، بیشتر (57% ) سوالاتی که معلم از زبان آموزان می پرسید با هدف سنجش دانش زبان آموزان بود و تنها در 21% آنها هدف کسب واقعی اطلاعات بود که پاسخشان برای سوال کننده معلوم نبود.