درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The importance of demotivation in language learning has been overshadowed in the commonplace research on language learning motivation and even in mainstream psychology (Dörnyei, 2005). The purpose behind conducting this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ demotives for studying in general and English language in particular. Besides, the importance of educational context was investigated through explaining the changes in students’ responses based on the type of university and gender. In Iran, university education is highly important for youngsters and the type of university with their various contexts is determining for their future. There are popular state universities among which one technical university as well as its satellite campus were selected. Besides, a distance-education and a unisexual university were represented in the present sample, overall comprising 194 bachelor students of different majors. Consequently, the factors considered as demotives are ranked, elaborated on and analyzed in order to shed light on the educational context-specific demotives and the pros and cons of current practices of EFL instruction in the universities.

Reading comprehension (RC) and critical thinking (CT) are the two basic cognitive skills that should be developed through involving language learners in a carefully planned instruction. Multiple intelligences (MI) instruction may assist learners in developing RC and CT in L2 education. This study probed the effect of MI-based reading instruction on the Iranian EFL learners’ RC and CT skills. In so doing, it compared the effectiveness of an MI-based reading instruction with a traditional one. To this end, 4 intact classes from several English language institutes, comprising 56 Iranian intermediate-level EFL learners, were selected and randomly assigned to MI-based (experimental) and traditional (control) groups. A multiple- choice RC test, a reading summary test, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test were used as the instrumentations to collect data on the participants’ RC and CT. Analysis of covariance revealed a significant effect for the MI-based reading instruction. Furthermore, the RC scores increased more significantly in the MI-based group in comparison to the traditional one. However, the CT scores did not significantly improve in both groups. There was also no statistically significant difference in the CT scores between the two groups after the treatments. Iranian EFL educators are, then, encouraged to develop MI-based lessons and activities for diverse students and take explicit instruction for the enhancement of CT skills in EFL reading courses

Abstract in every research paper has always been functioning as an attention-grabber which can encourage readers to keep reading the research or to dissuade it. Although abstracts are believed to play an important role in distributing the research findings, few studies have been done to evaluate the rhetorical organization of thesis abstracts, especially in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Thus, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the rhetorical moves of the MA thesis abstracts written from 1988 to 2015 in the field of TEFL in Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU), an Iranian university. To this end, 300 MA thesis abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2000) rhetorical move framework. To track the rhetorical move trends of the thesis abstracts and for the ease of analysis, they were analyzed in three time intervals. The results revealed that while in the first interval (1988-1997) the most frequent rhetorical moves were the “Purpose”, “Method”, and “Product”, in the other two intervals (1998-2007 and 2008-2015) the “Purpose” was the most used rhetorical move. In addition, the least frequent rhetorical moves were the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” for the three intervals. The findings, on top of these, indicated that the rhetorical move patterns of thesis abstracts moved from Purpose-Method-Product (P-M-Pr) to Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C). That said, it can be concluded that in the examined thesis abstracts, the highest average of information was provided on the “Purpose” of the study, while the other moves, especially the conclusion move, was not deemed important; moreover, an increasing rate of information provision was detected on the “Method” and “Product” moves. This research bears some implications for L2 learners to better know their community of practice and writing instructors to prepare genre-based writing materials.

در روزگار جهانی سازی به چه زبانی باید ارتباط برقرار نمود؟ این پرسشی اساسی است. از آنجایی که زبانها قابل مبادله نیستند و هر یک از آنها جهان بینی خاص خود را به همراه دارند، ترجمه بهترین راه برای برقراری ارتباط است. در ارتباطات بین المللی، مترجمان ضامن خوب برگزار شدن جلسات هستند. هنگامی که سخن رانها به زبان خود سخن می گویند، مترجمان شفاهی عقاید ایشان را از زبان مقصد به طبیعی ترین شکل ممکن با حفظ معنا، لحن و ویژگیهای خاص سخنران به زبان مقصد منتقل می کنند. این مقاله بر تحقیقی اشاره می کند که در ایران انجام شده و در آن بیست نفر از مترجمان شفاهی حرفه ای و نیمه حرفه ای شرکت داده شده اند. هدف این مقاله تحلیل عوامل زبانی و فرازبانی ای است که می توانند بر فرآیند و محصول ترجمه ی شفاهی تأثیرگذار باشند. می کوشیم که کارآمدی یا ناکارآمدی نظریه های مربوط به ترجمه ی شفاهی را در سطح کاربردی و با توجه به کار مترجمان شفاهی ایرانی ای که در این مقاله به آنها پرداختیم بررسی کنیم. نتایج به دست آمده اهمیت عوامل زبانی و فرازبانی در ترجمه ی شفاهی را برجسته می کند.

To investigate the effects of etymological elaboration, contextual pragmatic clues, and lexical knowledge on L2 idioms comprehension and production, 60 male intermediate level EFL students in three groups were selected. Each group was randomly assigned to one treatment condition. Group one participants were presented with the etymological explanation of idioms. In group two, the same idioms were presented in short, familiar contexts, and in the third group, the participants focused on the exact meaning of the constituent parts of each idiom. At the end of the experimental period, comprehension and production posttests of idioms were administered. Two one–way ANOVA procedures were used to analyze data. Results showed that the participants of the etymological elaboration group performed significantly better than the participants of the lexical knowledge group on idiom production. The differences between the means in all other comparisons were not statistically significant. These findings may have implications for teachers, learners, and syllabus designers.

The present study sought to investigate the evidence for cross-linguistic transfer in a partial English immersion and non-immersion educational setting. To this end, a total of 145 first, third and fifth graders in a partial English immersion program and 95 students from the same grade levels in a non-immersion program were chosen. Six different English and Persian tests were administered: the Cambridge English for Young Learners (YLE) Test for Reading, a Persian reading achievement test, the English and Persian Phonological Awareness Sound Detection tests and the English and Persian Rapid Automatized Naming Tests. Given the nature of the research question and the design of this study, linear regression analysis was run through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings suggest that there is an apparent cross-linguistic transfer between English reading achievement and Persian cognitive predictors in both educational settings. Relatively speaking, Persian cognitive predictors can moderately predict English reading achievement in Grades 1 and 5 and can weakly predict English reading achievement in Grade 3.

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the impact of manipulating task performance conditions on listening task performance by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was designed to explore the effects of changing complexity dimensions on listening task performance and to achieve two aims: to see how listening comprehension task performance was affected and to investigate possible overlaps between EFL learners’ perceptions of task difficulty and hypothesized task complexity. A purposive sample of 54 first-year EFL learners randomly assigned to two parallel conversation classes in an English department of a major public university participated in the study and performed listening tasks in a language lab. The instruments used for data collection were seven tasks taken from a TOEFL Test Preparation Kit, each followed by listening comprehension questions and an item on the participants’ personal perception of the difficulty of the task. During counter-balanced administrations, the tasks were manipulated for one of the four dimensions of task difficulty (adequacy, immediacy, perspective, and prior knowledge). The resulting data included the participants’ perception of difficulty as well as their performance scores under less complex and more complex conditions. One-sample T-test and correlation analyses of the data revealed that for all of the four complexity dimensions, the hypothesized less complex task condition led to better learner performance. The correlation between learner-assigned difficulty score for the task at hand and theoretical task complexity level was significant only for the immediacy dimension (r=-0.67, p<.05). The results offer support for task complexity frameworks, raise doubts about learners’ perceptions of tasks, and imply possibilities for task manipulation in language learning contexts.