درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

: The purpose of the current attitudinal study is to investigate the attitudes and opinions of language teachers toward the implemented ELT program resulted from the Fundamental Reform Document of Education in the Iranian Ministry of Education. Three items were investigated: Teacher’s Practice, Teacher Training Courses, and Materials. Following the rigorous and systematic procedure, the quantitative approach was applied and the 5-Likert scale with 30 items was used so as to determine the issues mentioned before. First the items were extracted based on the FRDOE and, thereafter, the primary questionnaire was developed and after ensuring of its validity and reliability the final version was obtained. Then, after ensuring its practicality, the questionnaire was distributed among 240 language teachers. The results showed that the ELT based on the new program had inconsistency in a number of respects with policies approved by the policy-makers. The findings showed that the lack of agency of the language teachers is the main reason for the failure of the new program and it is recommended that language teachers’ contribution should be taken into account before-, while- and after administrating and implementing the new program in ELT program in the future.

Poetry translation deals with many difficulties as translators need to consider socio-cultural, linguistic, dialect, and aesthetic aspects. The poetry translation involves the interpretation of the real meaning of the main text and creates a readable and enjoyable poem in target language as a literary text. Thus, to address such an important aspect, translators have to consider language standardization and signals to the audience. The <em>do-baytis</em> of Baba Tahir written in <em>Fahlavyiat, </em>have specific dialect and aesthetic features in rhyme and meter. This research analyzed the strategies used in two translations of the traditional Iranian couplets - an English prose by Heron-Allen (1902) and a back-translation of English poetry based on Heron-Allen prose by Curtis Brenton (1902). The analysis was grounded on domestication and foreignization. The results show that the dialect was standardized and foreignized through paratextual references. Upon sharing the results with a group of Iranian EFL students in a translanguaging task, it was revealed that they have limited awareness regarding the translation of literary works from Persian to English.  The findings can raise the awareness of professional translators, translator educators, translation students and teachers and those involved in literary translation. 

Considering the challenges inherent in learning and teaching of summary writing in EFL/ ESL settings, it is crucial to look into various instructional techniques thoroughly. This study investigated the relative effectiveness of three summary writing techniques: Sequence map, answering question, and 3-2-1 technique. To this end, 60 language learners from an English language institute in Ahvaz participated in the study. Before implementing the instructional techniques, a pre-test was administered to gauge the participants' fundamental knowledge of L2 summary writing. Three experimental groups were instructed through the already-mentioned techniques for ten weeks while the control group was given no such treatment. Finally, a post-test was administered to ascertain the effectiveness of such techniques in improving EFL learners' summary writing. The TOEFL-iBT scoring rubric was adopted to score the summaries holistically.  Paired sample t-test and ANOVA were run to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the sequence map group outperformed the other three groups in terms of the written summaries. The study further implies that the employment of graphical or spatial representation of textual concepts reduces the complexity and ambiguity of the presented information.

Allusions in literary texts are among the elements which can cause intercultural misunderstanding. In this study, the translation of the  allusions of two narrative poems selected from Nizami’s The seven Images (Haft Gonbad) were studied. To this end, the frequent types of implicit allusions were extracted from the poems: The Black Dome and The White Dome . Next, the original text was compared with its English translations to identify whether these allusive meanings were found and transferred in their translations. To achieve this goal, Leppihalm’s (1997) model of translation strategies for key-phrase (KP) allusions was employed. The findings indicated that the most frequent strategy selected by the translators is literal translation. Rendering the poems into English literally, the translators ignored the implicit meanings underlying the allusions. The findings can have implications for translating literary texts.

The present study was conducted to further improve the practice of written corrective feedback by integrating the two known feedback types (i.e. direct corrective feedback and metalinguistic explanation). With this aim, a sample of sixty-nine high-intermediate Iranian EFL learners was assigned into different feedback groups. While the first and second groups received direct and metalinguistic explanation feedback, respectively, the third group received an integration of both. Results showed that all three types of feedback improved the learners’ accuracy, though with different degrees of success. However, the results of the delayed post-tests revealed that only the integration of Direct Corrective Feedback (DCF) with Metalinguistic Explanation (ME) had the most sustainable effect on the learners' accurate use of the articles in the long run. It is discussed that the integration of DCF and ME can enhance the corrective effect of the feedback and reduce the defects which have been associated with the practice.

It is one of the major areas of interest within the field of educational research to examine the role of teachers, their professional accomplishment and influential factors affecting or inhibiting the practice; of which, the study of teacher identity has taken on fundamental property. Thus, the present study explored different aspects of a language teacher identity which led to the development of the theoretical framework of Holistic Identity of Language Teachers (HILT) based on the grounded theory. The data were collected in semi-structured individual interviews from 64 teachers in Iran. Employing a version of Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) coding paradigm, emerged a framework of a set of categories in terms of ‘process’ (i.e., becoming a teacher) as well as the grounding categories of ‘Persona Grata’ and ‘Public Persona’, resulted in the core category of ‘Teacherality’, along with three categories of ‘Navigating Strategies’, ‘Conditional Contributors’, and ‘Contextual Patterns’. The final consequence of the framework is ‘Actual Teaching Approach’, referring to the eventual phenomenon of the evolutionary continuum of being a holistic language teacher. The most obvious finding of the study refers to the emergent as well as evolutionary nature of HILT. Following the interplay between self and society in emergence of HILT, the schema was proposed to round up all revealed and unnoticed aspects of language teacher identity which can be implemented operationally to redefine, highlight, and activate its unprecedented role in an Iranian context.

A lot of studies have been done in the developed countries due to the importance of job satisfaction; however, only a limited number of studies have been conducted on English teachers' job satisfaction in Iran. Therefore, this study has been designed to recognize the amount of job satisfaction among Iranian EFL teachers regarding their gender, academic degree, and major. To do this end, both qualitative and quantitative research methods, a questionnaire, and a structured interview were utilized. To collect data, a validated questionnaire which was developed by Karavas (2010) administered to a sample of 53 males and females English teachers, teaching in different institutes, at private schools, and at universities in Genaveh Port, Bushehr Province. After gathering the questionnaires, all of the teachers were interviewed. The study findings provided the evidence that females were more satisfied than males. Moreover, the results indicated that the participants with BA/BSc significantly had higher job satisfaction than the participants with MA/MSc degree. But the comparison between the other groups did not reveal any significant difference. Furthermore, the findings clearly demonstrated that there is no significant difference between teachers' job satisfaction and their major. The results of the interview revealed that Iranian EFL teachers satisfied with their jobs because they like teaching, and the most important reason of all teachers' job dissatisfaction is their low salary.

The popularity of integrating technology in language instruction and its fundamental effect on the language learning dimensions has been widely acknowledged whereas learners’ motivation and attitude are expected to be improved in a web-based Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environment. Therefore, this paper aimed to investigate the Iranian EFL learners’ motivation to learn English and attitude in a CALL environment. The participants of this study were 120 intermediate EFL learners from two private English language institutes in Isfahan, Iran. They were divided into two equal groups; one experimental group (EG) and one control group (CG). Then, a motivation questionnaire pretest was administered out to check the participants’ motivation at the beginning of the course. As the treatment, the EG learners were taught through CALL-based instruction and the CG learners were taught traditionally. After the treatment, a posttest of motivation and an attitude questionnaire were administered. The outcomes indicated that the CALL-based instruction promoted the participants’ motivation as checked by the Motivation Questionnaire. Moreover, as measured by a 20-item A-CALL attitude questionnaire, it was discovered that the learners in the EG had positive attitudes toward using CALL-based instruction. In light of the findings, a number of conclusions are obtained and several implications are put forward.

Since the early development of interest in the interpersonal dimensions of academic communication in the 1980s, the analytic potentials of the concept of metadiscourse have motivated a large number of investigations. Although these analytic potentials have facilitated the study of diverse academic genres, there has always been a risk of detachment of textual analyses form the contextual origins and motivations. In some cases, this detachment has been so observable that the true discoursal nature of the interpersonal dimensions of academic communication has been reduced to classifications of a large number of pure textual properties. As a reaction to this reductionist trend, the present article provides a preliminary framework within which the contextual origins of metadiscourse features can be understood. It is suggested that if the findings of metadiscourse research are meant to be interpreted in meaningful ways, they should be contextualized within such process-oriented frameworks.