درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This contrastive study was conducted to contrastively analyze English and Farsi newspaper opinion columns in terms of the frequency of different types of stance markers.60 newspaper opinion columns (30 written in English and 30 written in Farsi) from 10 wide spread newspapers published in the United States and Iran in 2015 were analyzed. Hyland’s (2005) model of stance markers (hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention) was used as the framework of analysis.The findings revealed that hedges and self-mentions used by English columnists were considerably more frequent than those employed by the Farsi columnists. In contrast, Farsi columnists used large number of boosters and attitude markers. Although, attitude markers were in the last position of sub-categories of stance markers in both corpora.Generally, it could be concluded that the similarities and differences among columnists could be related to the cultural and linguistic preferences of the writers in languages. This study could be beneficial for EFL students and teachers in understanding intercultural linguistic problems in language use, and could be used to lead to creative reading and writing in journalism and ESP courses.

In the fast-changing modern world of today, learners need global skills for life-long learning and effective communication. Among these skills are intercultural competence and critical thinking. Although teachers have acknowledged the importance of the inclusion of global skills in their actual teaching procedures, they still need more concrete methodology and tangible pedagogical frameworks to incorporate these skills into their teachings. This study has been an attempt to propose a framework based on the constructivist approach to activate critical thinking and, in turn, develop critical cultural awareness and intercultural skills in EFL learners. To achieve this aim, a qualitative study was designed; an intercultural syllabus was developed and implemented through the constructivist approach in an academic semester. The related data were then collected through the participants’ reflective worksheets and interviews. The content analysis of the data indicated that the constructivist approach and the intercultural syllabus were effective in assisting the participants in applying critical thinking strategies and developing critical cultural awareness and intercultural skills of discovery and interaction, interpreting and relating, and evaluation. Meanwhile, the results of the self-report evaluation survey indicated that the participants evaluated most of the aspects of the intercultural experience positively. The findings of the current study have implications for instructors, materials developers, and educational stakeholders who support developing intercultural awareness and skills in learners.

The transformational approach (Freire, 1998) can be achieved through critical pedagogy. The present study describes the development and validation of a questionnaire to access critical pedagogy for evaluating teachers’ perceptions of critical pedagogy in two different contexts i.e. public and private schools. This study used a mixed-method design. In the qualitative phase, 15 experienced high school teachers from public and private schools in Sabzevar, Iran, participated in a semi-structured interview. Based on the result of the constructivist grounded work and the literature review, the main constructs of critical pedagogy were described. Then, an eight-construct operationalization of language teaching was presented, describing the fundamental principles of language teaching from the point of view of critical pedagogy. In the quantitative phase, 180 valid questionnaires, obtained from 59 males and 121 females, were used to run the Confirmatory Factor Analysis using the software LISREL 8.5. This resulted in a 70-item, five-point Likert-scale instrument with satisfactory construct validity which was based on the 21 constructs of critical pedagogy. As a validated measurement, the Critical Pedagogy Questionnaire can be highly useful for the researchers and designers in the field of ELT, English teachers, and instructors to evaluate the perception of their learners on critical pedagogy.

This study was an attempt to investigate the comparative impact of Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) and Think-Pair-Share (TPS) on EFL learners’ listening. Accordingly, 60 female EFL learners selected from a larger group of 90 learners based on their performance on a sample piloted Preliminary English Test (PET) who studied at a language school in Tehran were randomly divided into two experimental groups. Both groups demonstrated homogeneity in terms of their listening at the outset. The same content was taught to both groups during 15 sessions with one experimental group undergoing STAD while TPS was used in the other group. At the end of the treatment, another sample PET listening section was administered to both groups. The result of the independent samples t-test run on the participants’ mean scores on the posttest revealed that the TPS group significantly outperformed those in the STAD group. These findings have certain implications which are discussed at length in the paper.

This study reports psychometric properties and derivation of norms for a Persian version of the Multiple Intelligence Developmental Assessment Scales (MIDAS) for Adults. After examining and confirming equivalency between English and Persian versions, translated and validated by Saeidi, Ostovar, Shearer, and Asghari Jafarabadi (2015), the scale was administered to a sample (N = 2146), including students, undergraduates, graduates, and adults from different provinces in Iran. The participants were at least 19 years old and above (M = 29.40, SD = 2.26). Out of 2146 samples, 1103 females and 1043 were males. To examine the validity and reliability properties of the scale, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, Cronbach Alpha (α) reliability correlation coefficients, and corrected item-total correlations were employed. Exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation identified eight principal components, which accounted for 67.21% of the variance for 115 items. The internal consistency coefficient (α = .92; ranging from 0.89 to 0.93) was also very high. The confirmatory analysis generally replicated the original conceptualization of the MIDAS. According to the results, the Persian-MIDAS-adults questionnaire has good psychometric properties in the research community and can be safely used as a valid tool to assess MI in Iran.

The study intended to examine the effects of Telegram on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary knowledge and the attitude of them towards vocabulary learning. To this end, a group of 100 Iranian advanced EFL learners participated in an experimental design project. The participants were selected after they took the Oxford Quick Placement Test and they were divided into experimental and control groups. The participants of both groups had a three-week vocabulary instruction. The treatment was similar for both groups except for exercises done after the class. The participants in the experimental group were asked to fill out an attitudinal questionnaire after the treatment. Then, a vocabulary test was administered among the participants of both groups. Results of the independent-samples t-test run on the collected data indicated that participants of the experimental group outperformed those of the control group. The findings of the attitudinal questionnaire showed that the participants had positive attitude toward using Telegram. The conclusion drawn is that those in the experimental group were free in using the online group to interact with each other. Within this framework, learners in the experimental group indicated that they enjoyed this instruction as it was fun to embark on new technological learning methods

Pienemann (1998, 2015) put forward Processability Theory to enlighten why language learners follow definite developmental paths. The aim of the present study was to run a comparative investigation into the difficulty order of different grammatical structures for male and female Iranian EFL learners predicted by Processability Theory. 185 Iranian university students took part in this study. They received a Demographic Questionnaire and a Validated Researcher-Made Grammar Test designed based on the stages of Processability Theory. Item Response Theory (IRT) Rasch Modeling was used to analyze the collected data. Results pertained to the research questions revealed that the stages predicted by Processability Theory do not account for the Iranian male/female EFL learners. Another major finding emerged from the data was that the difficulty level of different grammatical structures presented by Pienneman in PT doesn’t match the difficulty order obtained in this study by male/female EFL respondents. All things considered, results of the study provided a reliable counterevidence for the assumptions of the theory.

Textbooks considered as one of the most important genres of academic writings would guarantee effective teaching and learning in EFL/ESL courses. Since textbooks are gaining more and more importance, the knowledge of their rhetorical organization that provides learners and teachers with efficient use of their content seems necessary. This article describes the rhetorical organization of the textbook genre based on Parodi’s three-tiered framework consisting of macro-move, move, and steps, which provides a detailed description of a textbook as an extended and lengthy genre. This study aims to rhetorically investigate four ESP textbooks written for undergraduate university programs for accounting students that were developed and published by Payam-e Nour University (PNU), as one of the largest universities in Iran. In order to fulfill the goals, the article aims to investigate the changes made over time in terms of move analysis between two series, each include introductory and advanced ESP textbooks, as well as explicate moves, steps, and their communicative purposes with their accompanying examples. The results aiming at enhancing learners’ and teachers’ perspective toward this genre provide a vivid picture of different rhetorical parts associated with various communicative purposes.