درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Formulaic language and sequence as the core characteristic of real-life language and native-like fluency, has been a subject of inquiry in recent decades. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effects of two extensive reading text types, i.e., adaptive and authentic, on Iranian EFL learners’ development of lexical bundles. To this aim, 20 intermediate EFL learners were chosen to participate in a time-series experiment, in which one class received adaptive texts as their extensive reading project, while the other experienced authentic texts of graded readers. The learners were required to read texts and write summaries, out of which the frequency and percentage of lexical bundles were extracted. The results of frequency and t-tests revealed that learners who benefited from adaptive texts were more successful in lexical bundles progress. While the other group also indicated to have improved in terms of multi-word chunks, the shift was not statistically significant. It is recommended that teachers allocate more class time to explicit and implicit instruction of lexical bundles.

Although Persian and English share many common phonemes, there are some phonological features that are present in English but absent in Persian which tend to lead to mispronunciation on the part of Persian learners of English, mostly through negative transfer. The present research assesses the efficacy of a communicative framework in improving Iranian adult EFL learners’ pronunciation of five English phonemes absent in the phonological system of Persian. Thirty EFL learners, divided into experimental and control groups, participated in the training course which lasted 22 sessions (330 minutes). The experimental group was instructed using the communicative framework for teaching pronunciation while the control group received traditional methods of pronunciation teaching. The pronunciation quality of these sounds were then assessed by four native and four non-native English teachers as well as by the PRAAT speech analysis software in the case of the vowels. Although no significant difference was detected between the experimental and control groups with regard to posttest results, a positive trend was observed in favor of the experimental group regarding specific features (e.g., formant frequencies, duration, center of gravity) of the problematic sounds.

Paradigm shift in language education has caused many countries including Iran to reshuffle their public EFL educational program. However, such a promising trend in Iran has entailed serious challenges, which necessitated this study aimed at collecting data from 70 teachers and 70 students to investigate the CLT challenges in terms of both teachers' pedagogical and assessment areas. A Partial Least Square Model (PLSM) addressed these two variables. The findings showed that the first three sub-traits of both CLT and testing knowledge have varying contributions to the main latent variables, respectively. Second, Friedman test indicated lack of compatibility between the respective dimensions as to the implementation of the program. Third, the post-hoc comparison tests revealed that teachers perceived CLT significantly lower than the three areas of CLT testing, knowledge of CLT tests and knowledge of developing CLT tests. Also, their knowledge of characteristics of CLT was significantly lower than their perceptions of CLT testing, and knowledge of CLT tests. However, their knowledge of the characteristics of CLT was not significantly different from that of developing CLT tests. Finally, their knowledge of techniques in CLT was significantly lower than their perceptions  of CLT testing, knowledge of CLT tests, and knowledge of developing CLT tests. In sum, the Iranian public EFL program still suffers from both implementation and assessment challenges necessitating remedial teacher education program.  

This study aimed to investigate the effects of Systemic Theoretical Instruction (STI), grounded in Socio-cultural Theory and proposed by Gal’perin, on developing Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of English tense-aspect system. To this end, two low-intermediate classes, including 24 and 21 language learners aged between 12-19, were taught the distinction between simple past and present perfect tense through STI and traditional method of grammar instruction. The learners sat for a pretest one week before the treatment and an immediate and delayed posttest, one and three weeks after the instruction, respectively. The tests included binary-choice and gap-filling items to evaluate the learners’ explicit knowledge of the target tense-aspect pairings and elicited imitation test items to check their implicit knowledge. The results obtained from a series of independent and paired-sample t-tests revealed a significant improvement for both groups in the immediate posttest both in terms of the entire test and its subcomponents suggesting that both types of instruction were effective in improving the learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge of the target forms in the short term. However, the significant outperformance of the STI group compared to the traditional group implied the superiority of this method. Moreover, the STI group generally outperformed the traditional group in the delayed posttest indicating the possibility of having a more lasting effect on developing learners’ knowledge when compared to the traditional method. These findings can have significant implications for teachers and materials developers in practicing the assumptions of more innovative approaches such as STI.

The current study investigated the distribution of animal terms in the Persian book of Marzbannameh and their metaphoric repetition in the users’ opinions, thoughts, and worthiness. By investigating the Persian book of Marzbannameh as one of the famous literary books which is rich of animal conceptual metaphors, a corpus of 376 animal terms in content has been chosen and analyzed. Four raters who were the Persian Literature teachers analyzed accurately the pertinent book for evaluating the available animal metaphors. And, two other raters who were the Persian Literature professors were asked to study the decisions and present the final propositions if they had different ideas about a concept. Moreover, as a supporting research method, focus groups were engaged by the Persian Literature teachers and professors to give their ideas and thoughts about the positive and negative qualities of the contained animals in the selected book. The results offered that animals are not distributed alike in this book, are used with diverse conceptualizations and stood for both positive and negative connotations. Also, it was found that the domestic animals generally have positive characteristics; however, some of them violate this rule, connoting just negative characteristics. After all, the wild animals, except for hawk, generally have negative characteristics.

Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) and Technique Feature Analysis (TFA) are two frameworks which operationalize depth of processing of a vocabulary learning task. However, there is dearth of research comparing the predictive power of the ILH and the TFA across second language (L2) vocabulary learning tasks. The present study, therefore, aimed to examine this issue across four vocabulary learning tasks (i.e., reading with glosses, keyword techniques, word card, and reading and finding the words in text) ranked differently by the ILH and the TFA. To this end, 80 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were randomly assigned to one of four tasks of learning 16 target words. The results of one-way ANOVA, LSD Post hoc tests, and multiple regression analyses showed that the TFA had a better explanatory power than the ILH in predicting vocabulary learning gains. The findings highlight the TFA as a more powerful framework.

This study was designed to investigate the effects of providing feedback in the interactive environment of wiki on improving the grammatical accuracy of Iranian EFL learners’ writing skill as well as the attitudes of Iranian EFL learners’ toward receiving feedback via wiki. To do so, 50 intermediate Iranian EFL learners, who were chosen by an OPT (Oxford Placement Test) participated in this study and they were divided into two groups, experimental and control group. Both groups were given identical writing tasks. In control group, though, the first drafts were reviewed traditionally in a pen and a paper fashion, whereas in the experimental group, they were reviewed by peers through wiki to provide feedback on the grammatical accuracy of writings. The second drafts all were reviewed by the instructor. The results revealed that using wikis to provide feedback on students’ writing can have a significantly positive effect on improving their grammatical accuracy in a writing task. Moreover, the experimental group was found to outperform the control group on the post-test indicating that there was a significant difference between the effects of providing feedback in wiki vs. providing traditional feedback on the grammatical accuracy of Iranian male and female EFL Learners. With regards to the students’ attitude toward using wiki, a majority of the learners welcomed the application of wiki for EFL writing.

M-learning is the enhanced form of e-learning that focuses on three common components i.e. place, time, and wireless device. The aim of this research is to identify the perceptions of the students regarding M-learning at Kandahar University. To this end, 191 male and female students responded to a questionnaire designed to ask their perceptions in this regard. The results from the study showed that students have positive attitudes towards M-learning and they are ready for M-learning approach in respect to using wireless devices, the Internet, and necessary applications. Additionally, they can also afford to buy the devices which support m-learning, however, half of the students ask for the providence of Internet through their respective university. Moreover, the Internet connection is also a big challenge especially for students who live in villages and areas far from cities. The study concludes with some issues for further research and some recommendations to authorities in higher education for better implementation of M-learning.

Some consider assessment in terms of a systematic way of gathering and evaluating information within educational system and particularly higher education. Since, the term ‘’assessment’’ refers and relates to administrative processes, this paper has shed light some consideration on how it can benefit the members of department and program. Program assessment ultimately emphasizes on direction for developing students learning quality and satisfaction of its central role in educational system. Thus, this study aimed to regard goals and purposes, specifically, explore new trends, techniques and procedures which play an important role in this aspect of assessment and also can have influences on outcomes of the academic units. To this end, some of the practical assessment methods were selected to be done on different fields of study in Shahrekord Azad University as well as discussing their description, strengths and weaknesses to expose whether assessments follow the rules and procedures of program assessment to reach the best consequences in assessment of academic units. 

The upheaval time of COVID-19 highlighted the importance of an effective way of teaching English to the front-line healthcare workers such as medical doctors and researchers with different digital-divide status, particularly in non-English-speaking countries because they were first-hand users of critical pandemic-related information in mostly-English articles published online by scientific journals. This study attempted to investigate the pedagogical effects of utilizing the two main User-Generated Content (UGC) platforms in E-learning, namely LMS vs. LXP, on the results of the Electronic Ministry of Health Language Examinations (E-MHLE) among Iranian English for Medical Purposes (EMP) learners across their digital-divide status (digital natives vs. digital immigrants) during the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of focus-group E-interviews were conducted to determine the reasons behind the lowest scores among the participants and to find out possible suggestions for success in high-stake E-tests. To this end, 272 EMP learners who were users of LMS and LXP were conveniently selected from a university of medical science to participate in this sequential explanatory mixed-method research. The results of descriptive and inferential statistics showed that the LXP group outperformed the LMS one in the results of E-MHLE. Moreover, the digital natives obtained higher scores than the digital immigrants in both groups but the difference was not significant in the LXP. The findings of the E-interviews were thematically analyzed and discussed. The findings of this study might offer practical and realistic benefits to the whole EMP community, particularly policymakers for the post-COVID-19 era. 

In our modern life, the introduction of new technologies and subsequent boom in satellites, television, as well as the Internet has made the world a much smaller place allowing different nations, cultures, and languages to interact more frequently. One of the biggest concerns of audiovisual translators is cultural and ideological items which taboo terms are included. This study aims at investigating the strategies applied in the translation of taboo terms, from English into Persian, in five dubbed Hollywood movies broadcast by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The original movies were compared with their dubbed Persian versions based on Sharifi and Darchinian’s (2009) strategies. The “Censorship” strategy is the topmost used strategy in the rendition of the taboos with the highest frequency (56%). The second frequent strategy is “Taboo to Taboo” which involves 19%, the third frequent strategy is “Euphemism” with 13%, and the least frequent strategy for dealing with taboos is “Taboo to Non-Taboo” which is 12%. The results of the present study show that considering ideological and cultural aspects of the society, Iranian AV translators attempted to moderate and soften the original taboo terms, which would be considered as taboo by the cultural standards of the Iranian audiences.