درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aimed to investigate the application of Group Dynamic Assessment (GDA) to writing accuracy of EFL learners and explore whether secondary interactants could benefit from interactions between mediator and primary interactants. The idea of implementing DA (Dynamic Assessment) in dyads seems unworkable since teachers are required to teach the whole class (Guk & Kellog, 2007). Moreover, Lantolf and Poehner (2004) suggest a new approach to DA that is GDA, which involves applying DA with a large number of learners rather than individuals. Following a multiple case study design and interactionist DA, the development of ten students in a class of twenty five was tracked during the eight sessions of DA program. Data were collected though written artifacts, video-recording of interactions, interview, and observation. The results indicated that GDA was an effective way of helping learners overcome their linguistic problems and there were signs of microgenetic as well as macrogenetic development within the same DA session and across sessions. The present findings provide further insight into understanding how secondary interactants benefit from the interactions between mediator and primary interactants.

Practical improvements in students’ overall success can be made if we take into account the contribution of learning environments to learners’ various attributes that would greatly affect their academic selves. This study aimed at scrutinizing the possible associations among Iranian EFL students’ perceived classroom climate, academic self-concept, learning self-regulation, and academic identity status. 420 university students were asked to fill out College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI), Academic Self-Concept (ASC) Scale, Learning Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-L), and Academic Identity Status (AIS) Questionnaire. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and based on its several goodness-of-fit criteria, the proposed model of the possible interactions of the main variables was confirmed. Furthermore, classroom climate was correlated positively with subscales of learning self-regulation and academic self-concept and negatively with academic identity status. Besides significant correlations among study variables, the final model also revealed some intra-scales associations. Multiple regression analysis also indicated some significant predictions. The findings could provide classroom instructors and university syllabus designers with implications so that they can plan the EFL environments and class activities taking into consideration students’ various academic characteristics. This involves their status of self-concept, identity, and regulation to help them achieve highly recognized long-term academic objectives.

This study investigated learning style preferences among professional translators. The purposes of the study were to (a) find the prevailing learning style among the Iranian professional translators; (b) reveal any significant difference in the translators’ learning style preferences in terms of gender; and (c) find any significant difference between individual learning style and translation competence of the male and female translators. To this end, 110 professional translators from 35 translation centers in three Southern Provinces of Iran (Fars, Hormozgan, and Bushehr) were selected through non-probability sampling. The data pertaining to learning style were collected through an adaptation of Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, and translation competence was examined through a text that the participants translated. Findings revealed that the translators’ predominant learning style was Reflector, followed by Pragmatist, Activist, and Theorist, although those preferring the Theorist style showed better performance. Furthermore, the findings did not show any significant difference between translators’ gender and learning style preferences. Finally, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference across the groups in terms of learning style preferences and translators’ translation competence. Some pedagogical implications were also discussed.

An interesting area of psycholinguistic inquiry is to discover the way morphological structures are stored in the human mind and how they are retrieved during comprehension or production of language. The current study probed into what goes on in the mind of EFL learners when processing derivational morphology and how English and Persian derivational suffixes are processed. 60 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency whose proficiency level were determined through Oxford Quick Placement Test, participated in masked priming experiments using E-prime software. Two separate priming tasks in Persian and English were conducted during the course of this study. The target words were primed in three ways: identity (careful""careful), related (care""careful) and control primes (desire""careful). Participants’ reaction times were measured by E-prime software and were fed into SPSS software for further analysis. The results indicated that Proficiency plays a role in the way derivational morphology is processed, because at lower proficiency levels more decomposition was detected while more proficient participants utilized more whole-word representation. Furthermore, Persian learners of English processing of the derived words could not be assigned strictly to decomposition or whole-word representations in the mind. What seems more plausible to assume is that highly frequent words (whether base or suffix frequency) as well as derived words with more productive suffixes are stored as whole words but lower base and morpheme frequency ones and those with suffixes having less productivity are decomposed. These findings lend further support to dual route model.

Drawing on Norton Peirce's (1995) theory of investment and Darvin and Norton's (2015) expanded the model of investment, the present study aims to research investment in second language (L2) learning among Iranian English language learners. The participants included 852 male and female English language learners belonging to different age groups and English language proficiency levels. A 42-item questionnaire, developed and validated by the present authors (forthcoming), was administered online and by hand. The results showed that Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners moderately invested to learn English language and that there were significant differences in the extent of investment between male and female participants and different language proficiency levels (low- and high-proficiency learners). Moreover, the results of the study demonstrated that there was no significant difference in the extent of investment between different age groups (teenage and adult ones). The study concludes with suggestions for future research on investment in L2 learning and a discussion of how such research can impact language education policy in EFL contexts.

This study explored both teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of teachers’ pedagogic strategies which may engender willingness to communicate (WTC) in an English as a foreign language class and the difference between their perceptions to detect how convergent or possibly how divergent these are. The project used a convenience sample of 300 students taking an intermediate English course and their teachers (N=60) in several English Language Institutes in Tabriz, Iran. The instruments included a Likert scale questionnaire on teachers’ pedagogic strategies and learners’ WTC completed by both teachers and learners. Based on the data collected from the questionnaires, it was revealed that the teachers and learners agreed on the role of teachers’ wait time in learners’ WTC but not on the other strategies such as motivating strategies, error correction strategies, and teachers’ congruence. The findings of the study have important implications for teachers in terms of reconsidering their pedagogic strategies to play their facilitating roles in engendering students’ WTC in the class. The results also have the implications for EFL teacher education in the new era of communication.

تحقیق حاضر نظریه ویگاتسکی در مورد حوزه رشد تقریبی و استعاره وی در مورد کمک تدریجی و مبانی هویت اجتماعی فرهنگی نورتون را به عنوان اساس نظری استفاده می کند. این تحقیق به بررسی دقیق مکانیسم های کمکی اجتماعی فرهنگی اتخاذ شده در مشارکت های بین دانشجویی و دانشجو و معلم می پردازد. این بررسی تغییرات رفتاری فرهنگی اجتماعی زبان آموزان و همچنین چگونگی شکل گیری هویت اجتماعی فرهنگی آنان از طریق مشارکت در نگارش راهنمایی شده را مورد مطالعه قرار می دهد. برای این منظور معیار درجه بندیلیدز برای تعیین دقیق گفتمان های کمک کننده به هویت فرهنگی اجتماعی استفاده شده است. این گفتمان ها بین 32 دانشجوی سال دوم زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی در دانشگاه شیراز صورت گرفته است که در نگارش گروهی مشارکت کرده اند. تحلیل گفتمان کمکی صورت گرفته در این مشارکت ها اطلاعات مفیدی را در رابطه با چگونکیشکل گیری هویت اجتماعی فرهنگیزبان آموزان آشکار می سازد. نتایج این تحقیق به طور ویژه حاکی از آن است که گفتمان های صورت گرفته بین زبان آموزان و معلم که ازابزارهای زبانی بهره برده انداساسی ترین نقش را در شکل گیری هویتی جدید و رسیدن به استقلال یعنی تکامل هویت اجتماعی فرهنگی ایفامی کند که برخی از این ابزارها عبارتند از: رفتارهای عمدی و هدفمند، توجه مشترک، مشارکت عاطفی، چرخ ارتباطی، واکنش وابسته، رفتار میان-فردی، و استفاده از زبان اول در تکالیف نگارشی مشترک.

The effect of assessment types (self, peer, and teacher) on the EFL writing strategies development was examined in this study. Sixty upper-intermediate EFL learners at Qazvin Islamic university in four groups (one control and three experimental groups) were studied. One-way ANOVA checked homogeneity of the groups prior to the treatments and, then, the participants’ records and diaries were employed to gather data. Explanatory and descriptive analyses were implemented to analyze and classify the strategies the EFL learners picked up. This provided the type, frequency, and percentage of the strategies the participants mostly employed. The results revealed that the experimental groups, namely, self-assessment group, peer assessment group, and teacher assessment group employed more cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies than the control group. Affective strategies were more appealing to the control group. Focusing on the diction of the words, concentrating on the complex structures used by different writers, and making use of the structures the participants became interested in or found suitable were the most frequently referred to strategies. Teaching strategies the participants more picked up in this study might enhance EFL learners’ writing development at TEFL centers.