درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The extent to which teachers’ written corrective feedback (WCF) is conducive to ESL learners’ improvement has been discussed since Truscott’s claim in 1996. The mentioned debate continues because there has been lots of contrastive research studies with different results. This paper presents the results of a 2-month study of the effectiveness of WCF to 65 low intermediate Iranian learners. In the first phase, the students were divided into two groups of hedged group and control group, which received uncoded feedback. The learners produced 8 pieces of writing (Nelson Test was given to students to homogenize the groups). The first piece of writing was considered as the pretest and the 8th piece of their writing was considered as their posttest. Independent and paired sample t test were used to analyse the data statistically. The result of comparing the mean performance of the two groups in posttest indicated that the probability value was less than .05 (p = .000 < .05) which means that the mean performance of the two sets of scores in post test is significantly different and the hedged form feedback group has outperformed the one who received uncoded feedback.

Developing L2 learners' intercultural sensitivity and reflective thinking is essential for second language learning. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the impact of photovoice on intercultural sensitivity and reflective thinking. To this end, a sample of 48 intermediate EFL learners was recruited from an English language institute in Isfahan, Iran and placed into a photovoice group (PG) and a control group (CG) using a quasi-experimental design. An Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) was employed as a pretest and posttest. The collected data were analyzed by running a two-way MANCOVA. The results indicated a significant improvement of the PG regarding reaching the higher levels of intercultural sensitivity and the PG's female participants outperformed their male counterparts in gaining higher scores in three dimensions of the ISS. The students' writings accompanied the taken photos were also coded by two raters. The results revealed that photovoice resulted in higher levels of reflective thinking. To explore the photovoice participants' attitudes, a semi-structured interview was conducted. The emerging codes indicated that the participants had positive attitudes towards the photovoice project. Thus, the photovoice method could give the EFL learners an opportunity to raise the levels intercultural sensitivity and reflective thinking.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the probable differences between narratives as rehearsed by EFL language learners of two different English proficiencies. It aimed to find out how narrative elements ( abstract , orientation , main action , results , and coda ) are recounted differently by EFL language learners of different English proficiencies. To this end, 250 personal oral narratives were recorded through classroom discussions and interviews. Two hundred participants were asked to narrate a personal story in the classroom, and the other 50 were interviewed. The analysis focused on narratives structure to discover how knowledge of target language might affect the way language learners construct English narratives. The collected data were interpreted according to Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) and Labov’s (1972) analytical models. The results revealed that upper-intermediate language learners reported more organized, chronological, logical, and to the point stories than pre-intermediate ones. The difference was in orientation , main action , and result parts. Neither group of language learners expressed the abstract and coda sections.

In line with the technological advancement during the last few decades, virtual learning has been addressed more widely, which affected English language teaching and learning as well. Since Covid 19 pandemic, which has resulted in the long-lasting closure of educational settings worldwide, virtual learning as the alternative of traditional education has been developed unprecedentedly. An option for virtual learning specifically for language teaching is teaching on the phone which has been mostly neglected in educational research. The aim of this study was to analyse the lived experience of 16 adult English language learners who experienced learning English through one-to-one, audio call sessions. Due to the pandemic, semi-structured interviews were conducted on the phone, which were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed with a phenomenological approach. Many times revisions of the statements driven from the transcriptions resulted in six themes namely: a) learning on-the-phone as a new, satisfying experience, b) advantages, and c) disadvantages of one-to-one audio sessions, d) the participants’ preferences, e) the requisites of on-the-phone-learning, and f) the expectations of on-the-phone teacher, According to the result of this study, some educational recommendations for improving on-the-phone teaching are: covering four language skills through developing individualised lesson plans based on each learner’s needs and English language proficiency level; holding group video sessions along with one-to-one audio sessions; and using the facilities of messengers like WhatsApp to send audio, video and textual files to learners based on their needs and learning objectives.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between EFL learners’ anxiety and writing complexity. For the purpose of the study, 70 female learners, between 17 and 24 years old (mean=20) from Najm language school in Tehran participated in the study. The participants’ level of anxiety was measured using Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope’s Anxiety Questionnaire (1986) and their writing complexity was measured through writing a narrative text based on their course book. The results revealed that there was a significant positive correlation between anxiety and writing complexity (p=.00). In addition, the results of examining the predictability of writing complexity by anxiety showed that anxiety significantly predicted writing complexity (F(1, 68)=16.67, p<.01). The results of this study have implications for students, teachers, and all those involved in the area of teaching and learning.

La langue persane fait partie des langues dont le groupe consonantique finale de la syllabe CVCC est soumise à certaines contraintes du point de vue de la succession des sons. Le présent article se fixe, comme objectif, d’étudier les emprunts lexicaux qui, dans les groupes consonantiques en position finale, comprennent une consonne labiale non appartenant au persan contemporain mais qui y ont trouvé leur place. Pour ce faire, toutes les syllabes en CVCC ayant une consonne labiale en position de C 1 ou C 2 seront étudiées. Elles seront ensuite comparées en fonction de leur statut (lexique pur ou empreint) dans la langue. Seront ainsi étudiés la fréquence d’occurrence de chaque consonne, tous les ordres possibles de leur apparition ainsi que l’ordre de leur succession. Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le cadre des recherches descriptives et analytiques basées sur des données statistiques. Le dictionnaire Mochiri comprenant 40.000 entrées, a été utilisé comme source principale pour l’extraction des données de cette recherche. L’article est présenté dans le cadre théorique des principes de phonématique et du principe de l’ordre (de la succession) des phonèmes en fonction de leur degré de sonorité. Les résultats de cette recherche montrent que le lexique purement persan a un comportement totalement différent du lexique emprunté en ce qui concerne le type de succession dans le groupe consonantique, l’ordre de la succession sonnante et la sélection du noyau de la syllabe. En persan pur, la consonne /f/ en tant que premier élément constitutif du groupe consonantique et la consonne /m/ en tant que deuxième membre de ce groupe, sont les plus fréquemment employées, parmi les consonnes labiales.

To analyze and evaluate textbooks, researchers have either proposed scales and checklists to be filled by teachers and learners or conducted qualitative investigations of the match between SLA theories and textbook activities. This study, however, employs the microstructural approach of schema theory to scrutinize the reading passages of “Mosaic 1 Reading”. To this end, 17 passages of the textbook were randomly chosen and their constituting words were explored as semantic, syntactic, and parasyntactic schemata. The passages were also analyzed in terms of their readability indices. The results showed that they consist of 3722 schema types, 2979 (80%) of which are semantic in nature. Although the textbook aims at “academic success” at English language “proficiency levels”, it provides no objective definition of what they stand for. In terms of readability, however, the passages vary in difficulty from grade three in primary school to college level. Further, the textbook is discussed in terms of its constituting schemata and suitability to the Iranian context and suggestions are made for future research. The findings of this study have important implications for language teaching, testing and materials development. They show that language proficiency must be defined in terms of schema types and the bulk of class time must be spent on teaching semantic schemata rather than syntactic and parasyntactic ones. Similarly, for testing the reading comprehension of these passages, the number and type of test items must be based on the percentage of semantic and syntactic schema types and subjective criteria such as teachers’ intuition or experience must be avoided both in teaching and testing the comprehension of passages.

In every field of teaching and learning, there are some factors that have an important role in both teachers’ and students’ performance. Two of these effective psychological factors in the context of education include self-efficacy and burnout. This research was conducted to examine the statistical relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout levels in the universities and schools of Iran. The data collection instruments were two questionnaires, ‘Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale’ and ‘Maslach Burnout Inventory’. The participants included 152 randomly selected teachers working in universities and schools. After data collection, the SPSS software was applied to convert the obtained data into numerical and interpretable data. To quantify the statistical relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout levels, correlational analysis was used. Results indicated, there was negative correlation between teachers’ self efficacy and burnout levels. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis was conducted to estimate the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout better, which indicated that teachers’ self efficacy was a negative predictor of their burnout.

To produce an adequate translation, language students are required to learn varieties of language features including syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Considering the curriculum language learners are face with, one can claim that almost all language students in Iran are taught these features in their academic settings including linguistic courses. Yet, there are some aspects of language which are disregarded in course books and syllabi and ignored by language teachers. Thus, language learners find it a formidable task to deal with these shrugged off aspects of their curricula. Genre of language is among these invisible features which have challenged translation students in translating specific texts. News reports is one of these genres that Iranian media translators, in spite of enjoying technical competence in language, are not familiar with knowledge and rhetorical conventions of it. So, the current is conducted to investigate the familiarity of these translators with genre features of news discourse and examine the effect of raising genre awareness on developing the quality of translation. To this aim, fourteen translation students studying translation for media purpose were selected through convenient sampling who were given some news reports to translate. Using Baker’s taxonomy (1992) and House’s quality assessment model (1997), the quality of their translations were assessed before genre awareness raising session and after it. The findings showed that the quality of translation ameliorated meaningfully after the instruction, indicating the importance of genre knowledge in linguistic competence. These findings have implications for syllabus designers and EAP and ESP teachers and students. 

در این مقاله، اصل صرفه جویی در گفتار به عنوان یک قانون جهان شمول در زبان شناسی تجزیه و تحلیل می شود. صرفه جویی در مصرف انرژی به هنگام گفتار معمولاً در مواردی عینیت پیدا می کند که گوینده ناگزیر است دو واحد زبانی نامتقارن با هم را در گفتار خود به کار گیرد. موضوع اصلی بحث در این مقاله، پدیده زبانی تلفیق است که به وضوح در گروه زبان های هند و اروپایی و به ویژه در زبان های روسی و انگلیسی دیده می شود. نگارنده در این پژوهش مانند بسیاری از زبان شناسان بر این باور است که وجود دوگانگی نامتقارن در نشانه های زبانی، موجب پیشرفت و پویایی نظام زبان می شود. پدیده تلفیق به عنوان نتیجه و نمادی از کارکرد اصل صرفه جویی در گفتار، در ساختارهای نحوی همه زبان های دنیا یک اصل تأثیرگذار است. بر اساس نتایج به دست آمده، گویندگان استفاده از پدیده زبانی، تلفیق واحدهای زبانی با یکدیگر را بهترین شیوه برای صرفه جویی در مصرف انرژی و زمان گفتار می دانند. این واحدهای زبانی ممکن است از نظر معنایی به طور همزمان با نهاد و گزاره در زنجیره گفتار مرتبط باشند و از نظر مورفولوژیکی نیز ساختمانی شبیه ترکیب و گروه واژه داشته باشند.

The present study is an attempt to investigate the relationship between cohesive readability of expository texts and reading comprehension in EFL students with different proficiency levels. One hundred students formed the participant of this study. They were undergraduate students majoring in English at University of Isfahan. To collect the relevant data, participants were divided into three groups of low proficient, intermediate and high proficient based on their scores on an OPT proficiency test. A series of expository reading comprehension tests were prepared and their cohesive readability was measured through related programs. They were divided into two groups of authentic and manipulated texts, with the cohesive readability of manipulated texts reduced. The participants answered the related tests in one session. As a result of data analysis, the findings indicated that manipulation, i.e. cohesive readability reduction has a direct impact on the students' performance in reading expository texts. It was further revealed that text manipulation, i.e. reduction of cohesive readability, was more influential on the intermediate group, i.e. positive relationship between the students’ proficiency level and their reading comprehension of expository texts with different cohesive readability levels. 

Abstract: So far, the roles and responsibilities of teachers have undergone massive changes and teachers have been inundated with constant transition and workload. Consequently, the boundaries between work and home have been blurred and teachers are highly required to devote more and more time to their work. Such high expectations contribute to high stress which, in turn, leads to teachers’ occupational burnout. Despite a plethora of research which has investigated the relationship between burnout and various teachers’ variables, less is known about how Iranian English teachers at both public high schools and private language institutes perceive the sources and consequences of burnout in their work-lives. To bridge the gap, a phenomenological mixed-methods research was conducted. Questionnaires, interviews, and observations were used for data collection. First, the Maslach Burnout Inventory was distributed to identify burned out English teachers. Afterward, 62 burned-out English teachers (23 school and 29 institute teachers) were invited for interviews. To triangulate the data, classroom observations were also conducted. Results revealed that although school and institute teachers reported lots of similar sources and consequences for their stress and burnout, several substantial differences were observed due to the varying contexts. Moreover, it was found that both contextual and personal factors led to English teachers’ stress and burnout.

The objectives of the present study were threefold: First, it sought to investigate difficulties Iranian EFL high school learners face to understand English idioms. Second, it attempted to explore intermediate EFL learners’ language learning strategy preferences to comprehend idioms. Third, it aimed to examine whether there was a significant difference between successful and less successful students' strategy use in idiom comprehension. To this end, 200 Iranian male and female students of the three grades of different senior high schools in Qom, Iran, were selected through convenience sampling. They responded to a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire (Alhaysony, 2017), investigating the challenges of idiom comprehension. Afterwards, they took the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Ninety-eight of them were selected as intermediate learners. Third, they took a multiple-choice test on idiom comprehension, developed by the researcher, and responded to the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1990). Descriptive statistics, frequencies and means, and a one-sample t-test were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that the participants complained that idioms were challenging mainly because they were not taught well in class and were not part of the course syllabi. They also revealed that successful learners in understanding idioms used all six categories of strategies in the high and medium levels. They employed metacognitive strategies the most (M= 3.88), but affective strategies the least (M= 2.84). The results of the t-test suggested significant differences between successful and less successful learners' strategy use. The results provide insights into the challenges and strategies of English idiom comprehension.

Textbooks in ELT perform different functions since their content can serve different purposes. Particularly, the content of textbooks can affect learners’ views to a great deal. Accordingly, designing ELT textbooks can generate much disagreement. Thus, textbook content is considered important and demands critical evaluation. This study explored the representation of national identity in the English Vision textbook series for Iranian senior high schools. For this aim, corpus analysis and content analysis were carried out, respectively, aimed at providing a description of the terms associated with nationalities, and describing aspects of national identity represented in the textbooks. The data in the corpus analysis phase were collected through obtaining frequencies of reference to nations and in the content analysis phase by means of a researcher-made checklist. Results revealed that Iranian identity is the most frequent aspect, for which 13 categories of reference were observed. Similarly, six major themes were found regarding aspects of national identity. This study offers implications for Iranian education policy-makers, textbook designers, and education practitioners.