درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

With the current availability of state-of-the-art technology, particularly the Internet, people have expanded their channels of communication. This has similarly led to many people utilizing technology to learn second/foreign languages. Nevertheless, many current computer-assisted language learning (CALL) programs still appear to be lacking in interactivity and what is termed social presence, which is in turn an obstacle to the learners assuming active roles in their online experience of L2 learning. Consequently, the existing CALL programs do not seem to have updated themselves from the obsolete behavioristic and communicative genres to reach for the integrative one to yield optimum interactivity. The present study has attempted to cast light on the prospect of creating an online learning community that could optimize the patterns of interaction among the students and the teacher with the intention of creating online social presence. Using a qualitative research based on grounded theory, the researchers attempted to collect and analyze the data vis-à-vis the participants’ feedback on the research questions that were cyclically obtained from 42 English students of the first researcher’s weblog through 41 semi-structured interviews at the end of each virtual class on Skype and Discord over one year. The results suggested that content-based instruction (CBI) in which the students can opt for and create the content of the course through engaging in asynchronous activities and performing peer-assessment in the comment forms and discussion boards before practicing negotiation of meaning in each synchronous class could maximize the level of student-student interactivity and social presence among the L2 learners.

In this study, we attempt to bring to light various organisational and implementational clashes relevant to the conceptualisation of language policies at national level, and the planning of local practices with regard to degree programmes, language journals and conferences in Iranian higher education. We also prove that in its current status, the ELT syllabus in Iran, both at national and local levels, is a mixture of English Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Applied Linguistics (a hotchpotch), which suffers from ‘regulatory barriers’. The paper asks for an in-depth language policy and planning (LPP) that would clarify the blurred boundaries between ELT, Applied Linguistics, and Linguistics in Iranian higher education. This paper recommends that there should be a change regarding language-in-education policy and planning in Iran; a change that would be able to address both theoretical and applied language problems at national and local levels. The attempt should begin with organising a clear and comprehensive language planning with regard to language programmes. This would mean carefully determining the scope and boundaries of the fields as ELT, Applied Linguistics, and Linguistics in the higher educational context. The subsequent challenge is to fix the problematic implementation of language programmes at the local level, considering language journals, conferences, and syllabuses. The findings presented in this work are useful for language policymakers to regulate language-in-education policy and planning in Iran.

This study investigated the accuracy of scores assigned by self-, peer-, and teacher assessors over time. Thirty-three English majors who were taking paragraph development course at Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan and two instructors who had been teaching essay writing for at least two years at university, participated in the study. After receiving instructions on paragraph development, participants were trained for a session on how to rate the paragraphs. For three sessions the students were given topics to write about and were asked to rate their own and one of their peers’ papers for mechanics, grammar and choice of words, content development, and organization. The teachers also rated the paragraphs according to the same criteria. Multifaceted Rasch measurement was employed to analyze the data. The results showed different patterns of performance for the subjects rated by different raters at the beginning of the experiment. However, rater bias showed significant decrease across time. The results of the study have useful implications for language teachers especially in portfolio assessment where self and peer assessment provide invaluable help.

This study is to determine how bilingualism could influence the list of Persian basic color terms and their order. Using a monolingual Persian and a bilingual Kurd sample students, and a color list task, it is assumed that bilingualism could change the ordering of the non-basic color terms in the second language, but not the basic ones. Another assumption is that, the old usual methods for obtaining mean position and saliency, based on Sutrop (2001) would not determine the BCTs in Persian. The data suggest that Persian has 6 BCTs; Qermez, Âbi, Sabz, Zard, Siyâh, and Sefid. The BCTs are retrieved by monolinguals much faster than bilinguals. Mean Position and frequency in school and university students had differences in number supporting the hypothesis that staying for more than two years in a bilingual environment and L2 use frequency are the two effective factors in BCTs order.

در ٢٠سال اخیر ترویج آموزش مستقل یکی از دغدغه های طراحان دوره های آموزشی و برنامه ریزان درسی بوده که به لحاظ ایدئولوژیک و روانشناسی نافذ شمرده می شود. با این وجود تخمین آمادگی زبان آموزان برای تغییر به سمت آموزش مستقل قبل از اعمال تغییرات از اهمیت ویژه ای برخوردار می باشد. بنابر این هدف پژوهش کنونی مطالعه ی الگوهای استقلال در میان زبان آموزان ایرانی بوده است. بر اساس تجزیه ی عاملی نتایج پرسشنامه ی میزان استقلال زبان آموزان، مشخص گردید که ٣ عامل زمینه ی رفتار مستقل زبان آموزان را توصیف می کرد. مقاله ی کنونی این ٣ فاکتور را به طور جداگانه تحلیل کرده و در نتیجه تاکید بر استفاده از این ٣ فاکتور در طراحی دروس مبتنی بر آموزش مستقل می نماید.

This study was an attempt to evaluate the undergraduate TEFL program at Farhangian University. The university specializes in educating prospective teachers and the program is important since it is expected to equip the student teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary for qualified teachers. Hence, in this study, measures were taken to investigate the merits and demerits of the implemented TEFL program and explore the domains in which the program needs to be improved. The study assessed the program from the perspectives of 220 student teachers, 32 teacher educators, and 12 heads of departments and experts including the university deans, deputies, and research and teaching staff, through using three instruments, i.e. questionnaires, interviews, and observations in a mixed methods design .The findings indicated that the TEFL program did not address some educational and administrative needs as the participants believed that they were not enriched with the necessary skills, the practice of the learned theories, problem solving, critical thinking, flexibility, and innovation. Furthermore, this study demonstrated several theory- practice gaps in the curriculum.