درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Code-switching is known to be a widespread phenomenon among bilinguals and in ESL/EFL teaching/learning process; it refers to any alternate use of two codes or languages within the same conversation or even the same utterance. The present study is an attempt to investigatethe functions, types and frequencies of code switching in students discourse in the context of ELT classrooms.The study also explores the relationship between the language proficiency level of the students and their use of code switching. To achieve this end, two groups of students (at two different levels of proficiency) from two classes of general English courses in an institutional program in Oil Ministry Center of Isfahan were selected as participants. All sessions of an entire semester were videotaped. A coding scheme was developed for classifying students’ instances of CS into relevant functions.The data were tabulated, and frequencies and percentages were conducted by SPSS program. The findings indicate that the majority of CS in the classroom is highly purposeful, and related to pedagogical goals. Also, the research found that pedagogical functions were more frequently fulfilled through CS compared to social functions. The findings of this research suggest that code switching is a necessary tool for teachers due to a number of pedagogical considerations in ET classrooms and can give teachers a clue to have a better understanding of student code switching in ELT classrooms and use CS in the direction of teaching and effective learning.

Materials evaluation studies have constantly demonstrated that there is no one fixed procedure for conducting textbook evaluation studies. Instead, the criteria must be selected according to the needs and objectives of the context in which evaluation takes place. The speaking skill as part of the communicative competence has been emphasized as an important objective in language teaching. The present study explored the core units of spoken grammar inherent in four widely-used ELT textbooks following McCarthy and Carter’s (2002) classification. A coding scheme was developed to make it possible for the researchers to use the classification in codifying the data. The data were then analyzed to detect the units of spoken grammar inherent in the target textbooks. Results from codification of dialogues and transcripts of audio recordings showed that the units of spoken grammar are not evenly distributed in these ELT textbooks. In addition, a significant difference was found between the textbooks in their inclusion of different categories of the spoken grammar.

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.

مطالعات پیشین نشان می دهد که بازخورد اصلاحی در عملکرد زبان آموزان تأثیر مثبتی دارد. پژوهش شبه-آزمایشی حاضر بر آن است تاثیر بازخورد اصلاحی بر نوشتار خود باز خورد دهندگان و دریافت کنندگان بازخورد اصلاحی را بسنجد. برای نیل به این هدف، 45 زبان آموز در 3 کلاس نگارش بازخورد دهندگان، دریافت کنندگان بازخورد و گروه گواه گمارده شدند. گروه اول آزمایشی، بر کاربرد ناصحیح حروف تعریف a/an، the و همچنین زمان گذشته در نوشته های دریافت کنندگان، بازخورد اصلاحی دادند. گروه دوم، باز خوردها را مرور کردند و در نوشته های بعدی خود بکار گرفتند و گروه سوم هیچ بازخورد اصلاحی ندادند و دریافت نکردند. پس از 4 هفته، پس آزمون بلافصل و 2 هفته بعد از آن پس آزمون تاخیری اجرا گردید. تحلیل داده های حاصل از پس آزمون های بلافصل و تاخیری حاکی از آن بود که گروه باز خورد دهندگان عملکرد بهتری نسبت به گروه دریافت کنندگان بازخورد اصلاحی داشتند. همچنین نتایج نشان داد که عملکرد هر دو گروه آزمایشی در استفاده از ساختارهای مورد هدف به صورت معنی داری بهتر از گروه گواه بود

The current study aimed at investigating the academic learning needs of Iranian undergraduate students of English Language and Literature from the perspective of 320 stakeholders including undergraduate students (n=252), graduates (n=51), English literature instructors (n=7), and language instructors (n=10). To this aim, atriangulation of the most important data collection instruments of needs analysis (i.e., questionnaires, class observations, and semistructured interviews) was adopted for data collection at eight different Iranian state universities. The results of data analysis revealed that the above-mentioned students are not adequately equipped with learning and communication strategies during their academic and preacademic studies. The results of the current study may promise implications for the provision of some extracurricular EFL courses at the tertiary and senior high school levels in order to enhance students’ sociocultural and strategic competence based on the shared decision-making process among different stakeholders in the course design community

Although decades of research have well elaborated on teacher professional development, we still do not have a thorough picture about what teacher professional development could entail and what components it consists of. The present study aims to develop and validate a teacher professional development scale in an Iranian English foreign language context. An initial tentative model with 130 items was piloted and tested through exploratory and confirmatory data analyses on a sample of 400 EFL teachers. This level resulted in the removal of 28 items in our sample loaded, resulting in a final 102 teacher professional development inventory. The developed inventory measures the extent to which EFL teachers are professionally developed and makes teachers aware of multiple characteristics of professionally developed teachers. These competencies are essential components of teacher professional development, enabling the teachers to utilize them in everyday teaching and learning practices in the classroom settings which, as a result, leads to student achievement. As teachers fulfill important professional roles, they need valid instruments to assess their day-to-day functioning in the class. With the instrument developed and validated in the current research, we, in fact, allow language teachers to assess their extent of professional development in different pedagogical contexts.

Concerns over the phony nature of textbooks and artificiality of their contents in reflecting authentic language have been raised by a number of researchers. It has been argued that many language teaching programs result in the failure of learners of English to successfully communicate in the target language. The problem with these programs is that there is no general agreement about the success of these materials in developing the pragmatic competence necessary for interlocutors’ mutually intelligible communication[D1] . Hence, this study explored communicated requests for nonverbal/verbal goods and services (RNGS/RVGS) in the dialogues of 5 textbooks and 8 English movies. The utterances of the textbooks and movies were evaluated on six criteria deriving from research on speech act theory, politeness, and conversation analysis. These included whether the textbooks discussed second pair parts, the forms of requests, the context of request occurrence, the nature of the devices through which the requests are mitigated, and multi-turn request forms. The results of the analysis revealed that, except for re-requests and dispreferred responses of RNGS,textbooks’ strategies including forms, face, contexts of RVGS, and strategies of RNGSwere not realized through adequate examples compared to their variants in movies.Most importantly,except for bald on record, internal mitigators of RVGS, external mitigators, and direct and indirect forms of RNGS, the other request strategies in the textbooks showed less variety than those of their counterparts in the movies. Internally mitigated RVGS were the onlystrategies variouslyexploited in the textbooks.The findings revealed that textbook designers should improve their instructional materials by incorporatingmore accurate samples of communicated requests in their future textbooks.

The present study was aimed at examining concerns about the social effects of EFL learning, a challenging area of research which has not been discussed sufficiently. It tried to investigate the relationship between EFL learning and national identity. In addition, attempt was made to find a relationship between language motivation types and national identity. Furthermore, the role of two demographic variables, gender and age was examined. To this end, a sample consisting of 350 undergraduates studying at Allameh Tabataba'i University in Tehran took part in the study. A questionnaire on national identity and another one on language motivation types followed by an interview were the instruments used. The questionnaires had already been developed. However, there were some major modifications for the former which consisted of 30 items measuring national identity for all participants. The latter contained 42 items measuring language motivation types for only EFL learners. The Regression analysis, independent samples t-tests and a one-way ANOVA were run. The results revealed that claims over the harmful social effects of EFL learning were not arguably significant and it was found that among the eight language motivation types, going abroad and social responsibility were correlated with national identity. Furthermore, gender and age indicated significant differences among the participants' tendencies. The findings indicated that the social concerns about EFL learning are too pessimistic. So, materials developers, syllabus designers and teachers might consider the potentiality of some social elementsand demographic variables for the development of EFL learning.

The present study aims to investigate the probable relationship between self-regulated strategies and home cultural attachment among Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To achieve the purpose of this study, 90 EFL upper intermediate and advanced levels students (both male and female) were selected according to convenience sampling from different language institutes in Mashhad, Iran. They were asked to complete the 'Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire' and the 'Home Cultural Attachment Scale'. In order to achieve anonymity, each participant was also given a written consent form which elaborated the confidentiality of the obtained data. The findings based on correlation, demonstrate the theoretical expectation of a link between self-regulation and home cultural attachment. In addition, the result of the findings indicated that among the components of self-regulated strategies, 'self-regulation' and 'self-efficacy' have the highest correlations with students' home cultural attachment. Subsequent data from step-wise regression showed that among sub-components of self-regulation, regulation is the best predictor of learners' home cultural attachment. The implications of the research are further discussed with reference to earlier findings.