درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The importance of input has been a broadly documented concept in the field of second or foreign language acquisition. However, kinds of input and ways of its presentation are among the controversial issues in L2 classroom research. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the effects of three kinds of input-based instruction on intake and acquisition of the English causative structures by Iranian EFL learners. A total of 105 university students in four intact classes were randomly assigned to four different conditions: processing instruction (PI), textual input enhancement (TE), consciousness-raising (C-R), and control (CO). A pretest/posttest (immediate and delayed) design was used, where participants’ ability to interpret and produce the target structure was assessed through administering a multiple choice interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Moreover, a grammaticality judgment test was run to assess the amount of intake. Results revealed that learners in the PI group significantly outperformed learners in the other groups on both immediate/delayed production posttests. The findings also indicated that, C-R group could not retain the significant effect of instruction on delayed production posttest and TE tasks were not effective in improving the learners’ production of the target structure. Moreover, the PI group outperformed the other groups on grammaticality judgment test too. Based on these findings, we can conclude that PI which encompasses the most outstanding features of both focus on form and meaning instruction might be a more effective approach in helping EFL learners to acquire the target grammatical forms.

هدف این تحقیق, تحلیل استعارى عقاید زبان آموزان در مورد شرایط کنونى و ایده آل تدریس و یادگیرى زبان انگلیسى در مدارس و مؤسسات زبان و تاثیر این شرایط در چگونگى یادگیرى آنهاست. به منظور بررسى کیفى از زبان آموزان مؤسسات و مدارس خواسته شده که نظرات خود درباره شرایط کنونى و ایده آل تدریس و یادگیرى زبان را در قالب استعاره با کامل کردن جملات ناتمام، بیان کنند. بررسى و تقسیم بندى استعاره هاى بدست آمده توسط دستورالعمل ارایه شده مارتینز (2001) نشانگر اجراى شیوه هاى تدریس و یادگیرى رفتارگرایی در مدارس بود، در حالیکه زبان آموزان آنها به شیوه هاى شناخت گرایی گرایش نشان دادند. نتایج همچنین حاکی از این عقیده زبان آموزان مؤسسات است که در حال حاضر در کلاسهاى آنها از شیوه هاى شناخت گرایی استفاده می شود در حالی که آنها به شیوه هاى نوین تدریس موقعیتى تمایل دارند. در مجموع نتیجه گیرى می شود که زبان آموزان مؤسسات از نقطه نظر استفاده از شیوه هاى تدریس و یادگیری یک گام فراتر از زبان آموزان مدارس هستند که تأیید این نکته مى تواند دلیلی بر موفقیت بیشتر آنها به شمار آید. در پایان، کاربرد این یافته ها در موقعیت انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی در ایران مورد بررسى قرار گرفته است.

Although images are abundant and play significant aesthetic and pedagogical roles in today’s EFL course books, they are still one of the less explored areas of research. The present study is an attempt to examine the role and function of images in Iranian high school EFL course books; it also aims to cast a critical eye over their suitability and efficiency. To this end, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) model of visual grammar was adopted. The findings revealed that although the informative and/or illustrative functions of the images make them important resources in Iranian high school EFL course books, their full potential for language learning does not seem to be adequately exploited. This relates to flaws at the representational mode of meaning making, such as outdated portrayal of objects, gender stereotyping, and overdramatizing national identity as well as shortcomings at the interactive mode, such as poor modality due to grayscale printing and plain graphics with no contextualization or pictorial detail. These flaws make the images seem out of today’s world and hardly credible for high school students who are already adept at new technology. Since these shortcomings may sacrifice pedagogical objectives, the study calls for changes in both technical quality and underlying messages of images in the course books.