درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aims at investigating the Medical students’ English language needs as the first step for designing an alternative curriculum for teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP). It also tries to examine if the needs of medical students are perceived differently by stakeholders in medical sciences. For so doing, a structured questionnaire was developed and distributed among 282 Medical Students, 12 instructors, and 15 practitioners studying and working at Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS using statistical tests of Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis. The findings indicated that medical students need to be competent enough in all four language skills, considering the demanding nature of their profession in the future. They ranked the importance of language skills like reading, writing, speaking, and listening, respectively. Besides, the results of four Kruskal-Wallis tests indicated a statistically significant difference among the responses of the three groups regarding the importance of the subcomponents of speaking and listening skills. Six follow-up post hoc analyses showed that the differences lay between medical students and practitioners. The findings are discussed and the implications for policy and practice are made.   

Although scientific forum has obliged its members to hide their presence particularly while they are discussing research outcomes to avoid personal biases, a recent trend is encouraging writers to demonstrate their identity as the author of the text through the use of first person pronouns in order to take responsibility for the content. Therefore, the present study focuses on intermediate and advanced EFL learners‘ adoption of first person pronouns so as to manifest their identity in argumentative and narrative writings. A total of 30 EFL intermediate and advanced students attending an IELTS preparation course were requested to write essays on narrative and argumentative topics. The comparison between their uses of self-mention pronouns revealed that there was not a significant difference between the use of first person pronouns which are adopted by advanced and intermediate learners in the use of pronouns in both modes of writing (argumentative and narrative essays). Moreover, by tallying first person pronouns, it is shown that advanced learners have exploited first person pronouns less than intermediate learners within narrative writings. In addition, it was found that learners used more first person pronouns in narrative writings than in argumentative ones. Findings imply that since argumentative writing requires logical reasoning, learners prefer to be cautious about the adoption of first person pronouns and revealing their presence to show their credible self. English language teachers are suggested to make language learners aware of the uses of self-mention pronouns while practicing different writing modes. Since the overuse of the personal pronouns as well as the absolute absence of the mentioned pronouns is not recommended in writing, explicit instruction concerning the use of self-mention in witting is recommended.

Despite the importance of interlanguage pragmatic rating (ILP) in the second language teaching and learning context, scant attention has been devoted to it. This study aims to investigate native EFL teachers’ major criteria in assessing the speech act of complaint produced by Iranian EFL learners. To fulfill this end, two groups of experienced native raters, including American (n=47) and British (n=30) EFL/ESL teachers, were elected for evaluating the complaint discourse completion tests (DCTs) made from video-prompts which were answered by EFL learners before. The content analysis of raters’ comments on the EFL learners’ productions revealed eleven different criteria including logical reasoning and comments, politeness, linguistic appropriacy, semantic formula, interlocutors’ relationship, register choice, formality, degree of intensity, cultural accommodations, degree of directness, and finally fluency and naturalness respectively from the most to the least frequent ones. The result of the t-test and chi-square analysis proved that British and American raters differed significantly in their degree of variations and preferences of these criteria. The results further showed that EFL learners’ responses seemed unreasonable and impolite to native raters which might be due to the different cultural norms between L1 and L2 societies and consequently encourage us to be aware of the importance of teaching sociopragmatic knowledge to the EFL learners.

The present study, following Vygotskyan Sociocultural theory in education, and inspired by Rogoff’s conceptualization (1995, 2003) of development, aimed at conceptual development of in-service EFL teachers. To this end, two Iranian EFL teachers with pseudonyms (Tara and Sara) were selected as participants of the study. The participating teachers were first taught the sociocultural concepts related to language, teaching, and learning taken from Johnson (2009) and Rogoff’s (2003) mediatory model of development in six workshops through dialogic mediation. The data for the study comprised two semi-structured interviews, and three video-recording of critical reflection of each teacher on their video-taped classroom behavior. The recordings and transcripts were analyzed using Hatch’s (2002) procedure for interpretive analysis. The results of the study showed that participating teachers, over a process of struggle with their past experiences, gradually replaced their old everyday concepts such as grammatical accuracy, correct samples, and teacher interruption with new scientific concepts such as grammatical apprenticeship, guided grammatical participation, and grammatical appropriation through assisted participation. The results of present study can be illuminating for teacher educators and teacher education programs which have aimed at changing the classroom practice of in-service teachers

The present mixed-method study sought to investigate the efficacy of using an interventionist dynamic assessment and specifically its formats namely the cake and the sandwich ones on learners’ grammatical English Tenses. In doing so, 45 advanced learners of English language at Iran Language Institute (ILI) in Shiraz, Iran were selected. They were randomly assigned to 3 groups, each including 15 participants. Two experimental groups namely the cake and the sandwich ones received the interventionist dynamic assessment test while the third group received a non-dynamic grammar test which was functioning as a control group. As the study utilized a sequential exploratory design (QUAN → qual) of mixed method approach (MMR), the quantitative part was carried out via a well-established grammar test and in the qualitative component, six informants (3 from the cake group and 3 from the sandwich group) were selected to be interviewed and their quotations were descriptively analyzed through a sociocultural perspective. The quantitative component of the study revealed the outperformance of the two experimental group over the control group. However, the two modes of delivering mediation in experimental groups had no statistically significant difference on the degree of the acquisition of grammatical English tenses by learners. The interview analysis of the negotiations also demonstrated positive viewpoints of learners about the two experimental groups. Merging the quantitative and qualitative analyses, the study found that interventionist dynamic assessment, in both modes, could have positive effects on learners’ ability to improve their acquisition of English tenses.

This study sought to compare Iranian EFL novice and expert teachers regarding their procedural knowledge in Iranian language institutes and universities. A questionnaire was developed based on the literature, the theoretical framework, and the results of a qualitative study. This questionnaire was administered to the whole sample of the study who was 200 Iranian EFL teachers from different genders and educational contexts. The participants were selected conveniently as going through random sampling was not possible. Based on the results of the exploratory factor analysis, seven factors emerged under the main category of procedural knowledge for these teachers. The findings revealed that: (a) Iranian EFL expert teachers have higher levels of procedural knowledge than Iranian EFL novice teachers (b) expert teachers have higher levels of classroom management knowledge, topic management knowledge and students involved in learning knowledge than novice teachers (c) expert teachers have the knowledge to make rapport (good emotional relationship) with their students more easily and effectively than novice teachers (d) there is not a significant difference between Iranian EFL expert teachers and Iranian EFL novice teachers due to knowledge of talk management, knowledge of strategies while teaching and knowledge of teachers’ learning strategies for learners in the classroom.