درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

For centuries the speculations on man's mental functioning posed a great challenge for the scholars in various disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociocultural studies, education, ethnolinguistics, discourse analysis, literary criticism. Researchers have been pondering over the ticklish question: is it the mind making the human society, or is it the society that shapes up the human mind? Researchers not informed in Vygotsky's contribution to the resolution of the issue, may still find the vicious circular question glaring in the face. But thanks to Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (SCT), the hazy horizon has cleared away and today we are convinced of the truth of Vygotsky's claim that man's mental functioning is mediated by sociocultural artifacts (physical and psychological tools) which imbue us with the capacity the shape natural environment, and in so doing change the natural circumstances in which we live, and the capacity to organize and gain voluntary control over our biologically specified mental functioning. The pivotal concept in this outlook is that man, released from biological constraints, emerges as the master of his own destiny. It goes without saying that a conception as such invests the educationists, social reformers, statesmen with a grave responsibility regarding the necessity of providing appropriate conditions for individual's cognitive, ethical and social development. Indeed, Vygotsky's position on the genesis of man's higher mental functioning which is said to be hinging on the social, cultural, and historical variables provides a viable solution to the mind-society enigma. This said, we intend to submit some ethnomethodological evidence in support of Vygotsky's claim regarding the genesis of man's higher mental conditioning.

As an integrative component of textual structure, formulaic expressions (FEs) play a key role in communicating the message and comprehending the text. Furthermore, interlingually contrastive features of FEs add to their both significance and complexity of their instruction. Given these facts, this study was an attempt to explore a sound mechanism on how to teach FEs; whether an explicit or CA-based approach to FEs instruction could entail various achievements among EFL learners’ reading ability. To this end, three groups of Iranian EFL learners, identified as homogeneous based on Nelson Proficiency Test, were classified into one control and two experimental (i.e. explicit and CA-based instruction) ones. They were exposed to conventional, explicit and CA-based instructions of a set of selected FEs developed into and presented in the form of an instructional handout. Their Knowledge of reading was also tested based on a researcher-made diagnostic test prior to the experiment. Both quantitative and qualitative paradigms were employed to measure both the achievements and the extent of contrast between Persian and English languages in terms of FEs. The former analysis revealed significance difference among the groups in terms of instruction type effectiveness; both explicit and CA-based instruction groups outperformed the control group; on the contrary, no statistically significant difference was revealed between the experimental groups. Additionally, the latter paradigm revealed differences and mismatches between Persian and English FEs in terms of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic parameters. The findings could be insightful for EFL instructors, learners, textbook writers, and syllabus designers to take into account issues like these in their pedagogical programs.

Task-based language teaching, which requires learners to transact tasks resembling their real life language needs, demands language learners to perform planning at different stages of their learning. Since various types of tasks can be used in task-based instruction, the present study examined the effect of task types and various participatory structures during pre-task planning on the quality of learners' writing performance, (i.e., accuracy). Towards this end, 120 intermediate EFL students were randomly assigned to 3 experimental groups and one control group. While the experimental groups were subjected to different pre-task planning conditions, (i.e., individual, pair, and group), the control group performed tasks without any planning. During the treatment, they experienced task modeling, presentation and completion. A factorial design was followed in the present study, and the collected data were analyzed through ANOVAs that revealed task type and pre-task planning condition influenced the writing accuracy of the participants in a way that resulted in greater accuracy in the decision-making task in the experimental groups, thereby ensuring the effectiveness of the treatment in mitigating the long-standing problem of EFL learners in achieving higher levels of accuracy when a specific task type is concerned.

Emerging within Systemic Linguistics, Appraisal/Evaluation is a framework for analyzing the language of evaluation, providing techniques for the systematic analysis of evaluation and stance as they operate in whole texts and in groupings of texts. There are three systems in the Appraisal framework: Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. This study sets out to analyze the use of the system of Engagement within a sample of English Literature (prose fiction) and the News (news articles). Engagement is a medium through which the speaker or the writer engages dialogistically with others (i.e., the addressees, within the process of evaluation). A corpus of 20,000 words was selected from each genre, involving five cornerstones of short fiction and a collection of news articles from CNN, Reuters, BBC, Daily Mail and Yahoo News. The study sheds light on the fact that both genres are strikingly close in using the four subsystems of Engagement, and both are inclined towards dialogic expansion, albeit for different generic reasons, with dialogic contraction taking a backbench. Appraisal as a whole is a promising model to explore texts in different genres, paving the way for richer more illuminating analyses of the interpersonal semantics operating in them.

This paper reports on the findings of a study designed to investigate the cultural and social complexities governing the compliment responses among the Persian native speakers. 200 Persian respondents took a 24-item Discourse Completion Task (DCT) while 15 native field workers were also set responsible for collecting the examples of complimenting exchanges they either observed or participated in. The results suggested a significant effect for the treated intervening social variables of age, gender, educational background, social distance, and relative power as well as compliment topics in determining the type of compliment response. The responses were further suggestive of the contextual effects of the three systems of hierarchical, solidarity and deferential as well as a newly coined system as kinship system.

A growing body of research has indicated that students of ESL/EFL are reticent and unwilling to be engaged in oral activities in English lessons. Communicative language ability includes speaking ability, so vocabulary knowledge plays an integral role in speaking a language. However, there have been few studies examining the degree to which vocabulary knowledge affects speaking ability. The present study aimed to explore the degree of reticence in Iranian EFL learners and to find out the roles that productive vocabulary knowledge and gender may play in their reticence. To accomplish this, 56 male and female English language learners participated in the study. Unwillingness-to-Communicate Scale and Vocabulary-Size Test of Controlled Productive Ability were used. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-moment Correlation and an independent t-test were used. Results of the study revealed a relatively low level of reticence among Iranian EFL learners. However, it seems that learners mostly avoid communication rather than have a negative attitude toward class participation. In addition, it was found that the learners’ vocabulary knowledge had a significant relationship with their reticence; while, no significant difference was found between Iranian male and female learners in terms of reticence.