درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The purpose of this cross-cultural CMC-based study is to investigate how the speech act of criticism is realized in the Instagram comments by Persian and English-speaking users in response to an announcement in Fall 2020 about school reopening during COVID-19. To this end, 400 Persian and English comments were collected in Fall 2020 from the Instagram pages of Iran and the U.S Secretaries of Education where they posted about the students’ return to school during the pandemic. The data were then analyzed based on Nguyen’s (2013) model of speech act of criticism. The findings show that both Persian and English-speaking users tended to use direct criticism over indirect criticism with an explicit expression of dislike and an explicit expression of disapproval as the most frequently used direct criticism strategies. Moreover, with regard to indirect strategies, Persian speaking users employed more request for change strategies while English speaking users outperformed hint strategies. Also, the uses of supportive moves and internal modifiers were similar in the two corpora. The findings of this naturally occurring observational study partially confirm the results obtained by elicited-based research method. The results showed that despite the similarities between the corpora, teaching criticism strategies and mitigating devices can help language learners perform the act of criticism more appropriately and avoid non-native like language use.

This study focused on the effects dynamic form of text-based vocational vocabulary glosses: Dynamic glosses are a series of incremental mediations intended to support students in identifying correct word definitions. After running a pre-test (TOFEL i), 34 ESP learners in medical university were chosen to participate in the study, 17 students randomly assigned to the treatment group and 17 randomly assigned to the control group. Participants in treatment and control conditions received three short ESP texts with many vocational vocabularies using the computers in the language lab and the Adobe Connect application. As the participants in the dynamic gloss condition faced unknown vocational vocabulary items in the passages, the teacher provided the learners with a set of mediations from the most implicit to the most explicit prompts, and the learners tried to identify the correct meaning of the word. In the non-dynamic gloss condition, the learners were given the L1 definition for the target words. The post-test results indicated that the treatment group meaningfully outperformed the control group.    

This experimental research centered on considering the effect of cognitive intervention instruction on the phonological awareness of Iranian dyslexic students at primary schools. For this purpose, 32 male and female students between 8 to 11 years of age with 90 to 110 IQs average, were purposefully selected from primary schools and randomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group. Wechsler Intelligence test (WIT), Karami and Noori (KNT) test, and a cognitive intervention package were used as tools in this research. Then, to check the participants’ phonological awareness, (KNT) measurement was applied to the students. The covariance analysis of the resultant data showed that this package was effective on the phonological awareness of the experimental group after receiving the cognitive intervention package in contrast to the control group. The independent sample t-test also showed that there was no statistically meaningful difference between dyslexic male and female students in the experimental group regarding phonological awareness. The findings recommend that instructors at primary schools should teach the students to use cognitive intervention programs in phonological awareness to accelerate and do their more effective homework and develop productive insights into their phonological awareness.

This study explored possible reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing by investigating the effects of two different test designs and scoring criteria on Iranian IELTS candidates’ obtained grades in IELTS and World Englishes (WEs) essay writing tests. To this end, first, a WEs essay writing test was preliminarily designed. Then, 17 Iranian IELTS candidates wrote two essays on the same topic, one under the IELTS test condition and one under the WEs test condition. Each of the 34 obtained essays was scored six times, three times based on IELTS scoring criteria, each time by a different rater, and then, three times based on WEs scoring criteria. The results of repeated-measures ANOVA showed that test design and scoring criteria had significant effects on essay grades. The study concludes that some of the reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing may be rooted in the test design and scoring criteria of the IELTS essay writing test, not necessarily in IELTS candidates’ weaknesses in writing. The implications of the study focus on the importance and relevance of the results to IELTS candidates, international students, and the future of assessing writing in World Englishes contexts.

Knowledge of verb-argument constructions (VACs) has been examined in a variety of contexts where English is mostly taught from the early stages of their schooling. No study has so far examined EFL learners’ knowledge of VACs in a context where English as a foreign language is taught only late at the secondary school level. The current study fills this gap by exploring construction knowledge in a context where teaching EFL is postponed until other languages have been introduced to learners. Using written essays of 180 students of 3 different proficiency groups, three indices of syntactic sophistication (i.e. the frequency of the Verb-argument constructions, the frequency of the verb-construction combinations and the verb-construction strength of association) were examined for their development across the three grade levels. As a second objective, this study examined the ability of these indices to predict students’ writing quality, through their grades. The results suggest that while the higher proficiency group showed a significant improvement in the rareness of their VACs, the three groups showed slow progress in the use of less frequent and less strongly associated verb-construction combinations. Similarly, only the index of construction sophistication (i.e. rareness) correlated significantly with and could predict variance in the writing score. This suggests that EFL learners follow a ‘necessary first’ principle in their learning of constructions. Similarly, these results indicate that the use of rare constructions enhances raters’ judgements of students’ writing quality.

This study explored the syntactic acquisition by Persian monolingual and Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English as a second and third language and the effect of instruction on beginner learners' syntactic acquisition with reference to UG-based non-primary language learning theories. A group of EFL learners (23 Persian monolingual and 73 Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners) were selected. They were divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced levels based on their performance on the Oxford Placement Test. A grammaticality judgment test, a translation test and a functional test were used to collect data. ANOVA analyses indicated that Kurdish- Persian bilingual learners of L3 English and Persian monolingual learners of L2 English were able to reset the parametric variations related to the intended features at intermediate and advanced stages of L3 acquisition, but they failed to do so at the initial stage. The Direct Access (DA) hypothesis, the Full Transfer/Full Access (FTFA) hypothesis and the Modulated Structure Building Hypothesis (MSBH) were found to best explain the findings. Paired-samples t -test showed that instruction positively influenced the acquisition of the syntactic features by beginner-level learners after the treatment.

Attention plays a vital role in education. Children who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suffer from impairing levels of inattention. ADHD is a relatively common childhood disorder (Scahill & Schwab-Stone, 2000), which, if left untreated, results in adverse consequences (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). This necessitates employing attention-training methods, such as neurofeedback training (NFT). But although conventional, NFT is expensive and time-consuming; therefore, the need for finding other methods is felt. The total physical response (TPR) method can provide a suitable venue for teaching young learners with ADHD (Nunan, 2011). Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the comparative effects of NFT and TPR on ADHD young learners’ attention. To do so, 16 students with ADHD were selected from a school in Shahryar. They were randomly assigned to NFT and TPR groups, receiving these treatments for twenty sessions, respectively. The Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA+Plus) was used as the pre- and post-test to measure full, auditory, and visual attention. To answer the research questions investigating the comparative effects of NFT and TPR on ADHD young learners’ attention, non-parametric one-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted. Moreover, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test was used to explore within-group differences. The results indicated significant improvements for both groups. Nevertheless, NFT was found to be more effective regarding full and auditory attention. Concerning visual attention, both treatments were similarly effective. The findings suggest both treatments can improve participants’ attention. The study has implications for education by shedding light on attention-training methods.