درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

این تحقیق، با استفاده از یک برنامه ی چندرسانه ای رایانه ای، به بررسی تاثیر زیرنویس متون بر درک شنیداری ویادگیری واژگان در زبان خارجی پرداخته است. علاوه براین، تاثیر ترتیب ارائه ی زیرنویس (درمرتبه اول یا دوم) و تعامل آن با سطح دانش زبانی فراگیران زبان را درعملکرد درک شنیداری و واژگان آنان بررسی کرده است. به منظور نیل به این اهداف، یک نرم افزاری رایانه ای طراحی شد و از 200 نفر از فراگیران زبان خارجی ( 100 نفر سطح متوسط-بالا و 100 نفر سطح متوسط -پایین) خواسته شد که در این تحقیق شرکت کنند. شرکت کنندکان به طور تصادفی به چهار گروه تقسیم شدند: گروه زیرنویس (با دومرتبه گوش دادن به متون همراه با زیرنویس)، گروه بدون زیرنویس (با دومرتبه گوش دادن به متون بدون زیرنویس)، گروه اول زیرنویس (با گوش دادن به متون مرتبه ی اول همراه با زیرنویس و مرتبه-ی دوم بدون زیرنویس)، گروه دوم زیرنویس (با گوش دادن به متون مرتبه ی اول بدون زیرنویس و مرتبه ی دوم همراه با زیرنویس). آنان دومرتبه به چهار متن شنیداری (داستان کوتاه) گوش دادند و به آزمون های درک شنیداری و واژگان ازطریق نرم افزار و رایانه پاسخ دادند. نتایج بدست آمده ازآزمون تی و تحلیل واریانس دوسویه نشانگر این مسئله بود که عملکرد زبان آموزان درداستان های زیرنویس شده موثرتر بود، ولی ترتیب ارایه ی زیرنویس تاثیر معنا داری درعملکرد آنها در درک شنیداری و واژگان نداشت. بالاخره، تعامل معنا داری بین ترتیب ارایه ی زیرنویس و سطح دانش زبانی در دو گروه مشاهده نگردید.

تحقیقات اخیر در زمینه منظور شناسی بین زبانی به این نتیجه رسیده اند که بعضی از جنبه های منظور شناسی زبان را می توان در محیط های کلاسی آموزش داد. اما اینکه چه روشهایی و چه مفاد آموزشی بهترین تاثیر را دارند قابل بحث است. بنابراین، هدف از تحقیق حاضر بررسی تاثیر مطالب خودآگاهی بخش برگرفته از ویدئو بر درک کنش های گفتاری عذرخواهی، درخواست و امتناع می باشد. بدین منظور، 78 فارسی زبان سطح متوسط به بالا بطور تصادفی در چهار گروه (فرا منظور شناسی، جستجوی ساختار، ایفای نقش، و کنترل) قرار گرفتند. به این چهار گروه 45 برش ویدیو که از فیلم های Flash forward, Stargate TV series & Annie Hall, در 9 جلسه 60 دقیقه ای هفته ای دو بار تدریس شد. نتایج آزمون چند گزینه ای تکمیل کلام نشان داد که تمامی این سه روش آموزش موثر بوده اند و تست Tukey (HSD) نشان داد که عملکرد گروه فرا منظور شناختی از گروههای دیگر بهتر بوده است. یافته ها حاکی از ان است که مدرسین و تالیف کنندگان کتاب های آموزشی می توانند از ویدیوهای آموزشی برای آگاهی بخشی مفاهیم منظورشناسی در کلاس درس استفاده کنند.

Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA), distinguished as a distinct phenomenon from general language anxiety, has been shown to have a negative impact on reading comprehension skill especially for less proficient EFL learners. FLRA is believed to originate from "unfamiliar writing system" or learners' difficulty in pronouncing words and sentences (Saito, Graza, & Horwitz, 1999). Slow or word by word readers are often anxious while trying to read unfamiliar words. In addition, readers experience anxiety when they want to relate texts' message to their background knowledge; FLRA comes from "unfamiliar cultural materials" (Saito, et al., 1999). Pedagogical implications of FLRA studies usually suggest anxiety free situations as well as anxiety reducing strategies to help low level learners overcome their reading anxiety and better develop their reading skills. This study was conducted to find the possible effect of an amalgamate of scaffolded and extensive reading (SER) to relieve FLRA. Fourty low-ability readers were divided into two groups, control and experimental groups. Experimental group read 10 story books during ten weeks in a scaffolded environment, whereas control group continued their traditional reading class. Analysis of the results of the study indicated that after treatment, the experimental group was significantly less anxious than the control group and confirmed the effectiveness of the program to reduce FLRA of Iranian low proficient readers

The present study investigates the central concerns of the use of visuals within the four EFL textbooks taught at Iranian high schools which have been prescribed by the Ministry of Education. To do this, the four EFL textbooks were evaluated and analyzed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data quantitatively. The analysis indicated that over the four textbooks, 95.71 percent of all visuals were drawings and 4.29 percent were photos. The analysis revealed, then, among three fundamental categories of pictures function (i.e. Illustrative, Stimulus-Response, and Student-Generated), stimulus-response pictures constituted the largest percentage (70.50%) which tend to focus on low-level language skills; illustrative pictures constituted 29.49%, while none of them were used for the student-generated purposes. The visuals, furthermore, were largely being used for fairly grammatical part of language practice (87.45%). Moreover, all the pictures within each of the four textbooks under consideration were used for the purpose of 'talking about a picture'; no exercises were found to meet the 'talking with the picture' criterion. Findings of the study pedagogically call for using appropriate pictures of real people and real environment which provide sufficient input for language learners

This study was motivated by the researchers’ goal to unfold the quality of the English translations of Persian tourism industry texts and discover the most frequent error patterns the Iranian non-native translators have committed in such texts. Thus, the following research questions were addressed: 1) Are the English versions of Persian tourist guidebooks and multimedia compact discs provided by Iranian translators appropriate in terms of syntax, semantics and pragmatics?, and 2) What are the possible patterns of the errors found in English translations of Persian tourist guidebooks? To answer these questions, three English tourist guidebooks translated from their Persian source texts into English by Iranian translators as well as two multimedia compact discs whose primary purpose was to introduce Isfahan tourist attractions in English were selected and carefully studied. Three hundred sentences were randomly extracted and subjected to error analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that over one-third of the total number of the sentences under study were syntactically, semantically or pragmatically erroneous. Thus, based on the proposed model of the study which was a combination of American Translation Association's (ATA, 2010) error identification categories and Keshavarz’s (1993) linguistic taxonomy of errors, the most frequent errors were identified and statistically tabulated. Most of the syntactic errors came to belong to ‘grammar’ pattern, most semantic errors to ‘terminology, word choice’ pattern , most  pragmatic errors to ‘mistranslation into target language’ error pattern, and most translation-specific errors were found to have an ‘Incomplete Passage’ pattern

The ability to write effectively is becoming progressively important and instruction in writing is assuming an increasing role in second and foreign language education. Students’ writing abilities have been tested through various writing tasks. Independent tasks of writing or writing-only tasks have been utilized to test students’ writing ability; however, they have been criticized for their lack of authenticity and validity and integrated tasks of writing have been proposed as an alternative. In this regard, this study attempted to examine the impacts of reading-to-write and writing-only tasks on the writing ability of Iranian EFL learners. The main participants of the study were 68 intermediate-level EFL learners divided into two homogeneous groups: experimental and control. After the writing pretest, the experimental group was given reading-to-write tasks for 15 sessions, while the control group was provided with writing-only tasks. Eventually, a writing posttest was administered. The statistical analyses of the collected data revealed a statistically significant difference between the writing ability of the participants of the two groups. To be precise, reading-to-write tasks were found to be more effective than writing-only tasks. The data collected via the reading-to-write questionnaire was likewise analyzed with the results showing a unanimous preference for reading-to-write tasks.

Willingness to communicate (WTC) plays a central role in learning a second/foreign language. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of doing problem-solving task on learners’ WTC in English. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 61 pre-intermediate learners were chosen by means of administrating a placement test. Learners were pretested through three scales of WTC and its two antecedents: self-perceived communication competence (SPCC) and communication apprehension (CA). Of course, the experimental group was provided with fifteen problem-solving tasks during the course, while the control group was not. After fifteen sessions of the treatment, two groups were posttested through the same three scales. The results demonstrated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of their WTC’s level. Moreover, the learners’ WTC was found to be directly related to their SPCC and indirectly related to CA. So based on the MacIntyre’s path model (1994), these both antecedents can be the best predictors of WTC. The analysis of the data was done through multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) statistical programs.

Second language (L2) communication strategies (CSs) have traditionally been dealt with through either interactional or psychological perspectives. However, this paper is a critical attempt to question the status of the particular kinds of psycholinguistic and interactional approaches that currently dominate the field of second language acquisition (SLA). In this way, it expands the significance of CSs by examining the other important dimensions of language within L2 contexts that affect/are affected by CSs. The new paths to dealing with CSs proposed in this paper rely on three aspects. First, the abundant use of CSs in non-native teacher talk within L2 classroom contexts is dealt with. Second, the neglected role of discourse-based CSs in previous studies is taken into account. Third, the particular relevance of CSs to noticing function of output hypothesis is considered. By challenging prevailing views and concepts, and by critically examining theoretical assumptions, the ultimate goal is to argue for a re-conceptualization of CSs within SLA research.

هدف تحقیق حاضربررسی تاثیر سه روش متفاوت نگارش دفتر تفکرات انتقادی به صورت انفرادی، مشارکتی با همگروه و به صورت مشارکتی با معلم بر روی مهارت خودسازماندهی زبان آموزان ایرانی میباشد. در ابتدا صد و پنجاه زبان آموز ایرانی سطح فوق متوسط مونث که در یک موسسه زبان مشغول فراگیری زبان انگلیسی بودند به سوالات پرسشنامه مقیاس سنجش خودسازماندهی تحصیلی پاسخ دادند. از بین این صد و پنجاه نفر، تعداد شصت زبان آموز که نمره آنها در این آزمون در محدوده یک انحراف معیار بالاتر و یا پایین تراز میانگین بود، انتخاب و به صورت تصادفی به چهار گروه تقسیم شدند. پس از استفاده از روش نگارش دفاتر تفکرات انتقادی برای یک ترم چهل و دو ساعته از شرکت کنندگان خواسته شد مجددﺍ به سوالات پرسشنامه خودسازماندهی تحصیلی پاسخ دهند. نتایج تحلیل پراکنش آزمون مرحله دوم نشان داد که نگارش افکار و وقایع انتقادی به صورت مشارکتی با همگروه یا معلم که فرصت استفاده از بازخورد همگروه و یا معلم را فراهم می آورد می تواند مهارت خودسازماندهی زبان آموزان را به صورت به صورت معنا داری افزایش دهد. زبان آموزانی که از روش نگارش تفکرات و وقایع استفاده کردند اما از بازخورد همگروهان و یا معلم بهره نبردند نیز نسبت به زبان آموزانی که این روش را به کار نبردند نمرات بهتری کسب کردند. بنابراین، نتایج این تحقیق نشانگر نقش موثر نگارش تفکرات انتقادی به صورت انفرادی در بالابردن مهارت خودسازماندهی می باشد.

The present paper aimed at highlighting the judicious incorporation of literary genres (i.e. novel, short story/fiction, drama, and poetry) as a supposedly inspiring teaching technique and an allegedly potent learning resource into ESL/EFL curricula. The rationale behind this pedagogical inclusion is to promote both teaching and learning effectiveness through capitalizing intensively on the genres so as to teach basic language skills and language areas- macro and micro levels. Much mention was made of the 'why' (i.e. justification and benefits), the 'how' (i.e. logistical considerations), the 'where' and the 'when' (i.e. spatiotemporal factors) aspects of introducing literary texts into the confines of the ESL/EFL classroom. What this vigorous discussion spawned was some detailed accounts of literary competence as an overarching term consisting of morphological, lexical, phonological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, discourse, stylistic, and sociolinguistic / sociocultural knowledge bases . Afterwards, evaluation process as the last but most important element of the teaching-learning process was explicated. In the end, seven solutions to the problems and dangers of using culture transmitters in the ESL/EFL classroom were suggested in an attempt to bring literature and ESL/EFL pedagogy into a happy contact leading to teaching and learning effectiveness maximization.