درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study sought to evaluate the usefulness and desirability of the English textbooks for Iranian second grade students in senior high school, Vision 2. To this end, the extent to which the textbooks materials satisfy the prescribed curriculum was explored based on Littlejohn’s (2011) evaluative framework. Employing stratified random sampling, a total of 12 private and public senior high schools (six girl students and six boy students) were selected randomly among all the schools located in the six education districts in Isfahan. To select the teacher participants, a convenience sampling method was employed and those who agreed to be surveyed took part in the study. The 20 teachers who participated in this study have been teaching Vision 2 since the beginning of 2017 fall. The process of the content analysis deals with a deeply analytical content evaluation based on a framework containing different parts (objective description analysis, subjective analysis, subjective inference) done by a teacher committee. The results revealed that there is a need to adapt the materials to the target situation of use. Such adaptation needs to cover both design- and publication-oriented aspects of the materials. As a practical implication, the findings may urge the developers of the textbooks to launch a modification project relying upon the results of the systematic phase, therefore, it may enrich English teaching and learning material in Iranian high schools.

این مقاله به مقایسه ساختار مدخل های فرهنگ ها و ساختار معنایی کلمات در مجموعه واژگانی ذهنی انسان می پردازد. ساختار مدخل را می توان به عنوان یک ساختار سلسله مراتبی کلمات چندمعنایی که بر اساس تجزیه و تحلیل متون تهیه شده است، بررسی کرد. این ساختار سلسله مراتبی در فرهنگ های گوناگون به اشکال مختلفی تجلی یافته است؛ ولی معانی گوناگون مربوط به یک کلمه چندمعنایی دارای سلسله مراتب قرارگیری ویژه خود هستند. تعیین این معانی به میزان کاربرد گویشوران بستگی دارد و معمولاً با سلسله مراتب موجود در فرهنگ های لغت مطابقت ندارد. بر پایه معانی و تصورات همگانی از کلمه форма برای پنج گروه اجتماعی نشان داده شده است که تعداد معانی پرکاربرد و سلسله مراتب آنها در مجموعه واژگان ذهنی برای گروه های اجتماعی گوناگون متفاوت است.

Using a mixed methods design, the present study attempted to identify the factors influencing Iranian untrained EFL raters in rating group oral discussion tasks. To fulfil this aim, 16 language learners of varying proficiency levels were selected and randomly assigned to groups of four and performed a group discussion task. Thirty two untrained raters were also selected based on their volunteer participations. They listened to the audio files of the group discussions and assigned a score of one to six to each language learners based on their own judgments. They also provided comments on each language learners’ performance pointing to why they assigned such scores. The researchers had an interview with the raters after the rating session as well. The quantitative phase investigated whether linguistic features of accuracy, fluency, complexity and amount of talk were attended to by the raters in terms of having any relationship to the scores the raters assigned. Speech rate as an index of fluency and amount of talk turned out to be significantly correlated with the scores. Of more importance was the qualitative phase with the aim of identifying other factors that may account for the scores. The comments provided by the raters on each score and the interviews were codified based on Content Analysis (CA) approach. It was found that the raters attend not only to the linguistic features in rating oral group discussions, but they are also sensitive to the interactional features like the roles the participants take in groups tasks and the overall interaction patterns of the groups. The findings of this study may shed light on group oral assessment in terms of training the raters rating group oral tests and developing rating scales specific for group oral assessment.

The present study examines the role of gender in reading comprehension of short stories taught through awareness-raising among Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, twelve male and eighteen female learners with lower intermediate English proficiency were selected as the research sample. Next, they were randomly divided into two fifteen-member groups (i.e., a control group and an experimental group). The control group followed the conventional methods and the experimental group was taught the same short stories using awareness-raising activities. Consequently, an independent sample t-test was run. The obtained results indicate the experimental group demonstrates a better performance than the control one. According to the means, the female learners in both groups outperformed the male ones.