درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Nowadays there are several challenges for English teachers as well as researchers regarding how to teach foreign language pronunciation more effectively. The current study aimed to explore the effect of computer-assisted pronunciation teaching (CAPT) on Persian monolinguals and Turkmen- Persian and also Baloch- Persian bilinguals’ pronunciation considering production and perception. A sample of 48 female mono and bilingual 7th-grade students participated in this study and made the experimental and comparison groups. All the participants took the Oxford Placement Test and accordingly were in the beginner level of English language proficiency (95.83% of the participants’ scores ranged from 0 to 15). The experimental group experienced a technology-based instruction while the comparison group benefited from traditional listen and repeat method of pronunciation teaching. Two Two-way between-group ANOVAs were used to define the influence of CAPT on pronunciation production and perception of the mono and bilingual participants. The results of the study indicated that CAPT had a significant effect on pronunciation production while pronunciation perception was comparatively more enhanced through the traditional method. Regarding mono and bilingualism, it was also found that bilinguals significantly outperformed monolinguals in pronunciation production in both groups while there was no significant difference between them in pronunciation perception. There were also no interaction effects for pronunciation perception or production scores. The results generally showed that CAPT can be beneficial specifically when it is used along with traditional methods at schools in beginner levels.

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. 

Drawing on the assumptions of socio-cognitive linguistics, focusing on the effective role of interaction in terms of reducing the cognitive burden in the process of learning, this quasi-experimental study aimed at investigating the effect of the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) usage on the learning and retention of non-congruent collocations among 60 homogenized Iranian EFL learners, aged 18 to 24 years old. To this end, the sample selection procedure yielded two intact groups: the experimental group (N=30) who experienced learning collocations through the IWB and the control group (N=30) who learned them through the use of conventional board. The t-test results of the comparison between the two groups on both the immediate and delayed post-tests indicate that the experimental group outperformed the control group, suggesting the effectiveness of the IWB for the purpose of learning (Sig. value = 0.01; Eta squared = 0.10) and retention (Sig. value = 0.04; Eta squared = 0.06) of non-congruent collocations, thus providing support for the interactive function of instructional materials, such as IWB. The procedure and promising findings may provide insights for considering the integration of IWB into Iranian EFL learning settings.

The present study attempted to investigate the impact of cooperation versus collaboration on college students` reading ability. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 90 participants were chosen from among 140 by means of administering the Nelson Proficiency Test. They were divided into three groups: cooperative group, collaborative group, and control group. A fifty-item multiple-choice reading vocabulary test was developed, validated, and used as the pretest. The results of the one-way ANOVA showed that there was no significant difference among the groups. Then after a number of cooperative and collaborative strategies used as the treatment in this study in six sessions of ninety minutes for each experimental group class, (control group without treatment) the posttest, which resembled the pretest in many respects, was administered to the three groups. The results of one-way ANOVA and Scheffee Test showed that the cooperative and collaborative groups worked better than the control group, and the collaborative one performed best.

Although most researchers have recently considered the role of test-taking strategies as one of the most vital factors in test taking process, it has been ignored by most EFL teachers in educational and academic settings including Iran. Because of the importance of test-taking strategies in EFL learners’ performance in tests, this research was set out to examine what strategies Iranian EFL test takers employed in reading comprehension tests. Furthermore, the present paper aimed at finding any possible relationship between test-taking strategies and test takers’ performance on reading comprehension tests. Discovering the best predictors of EFL reading test performance among several categories of test-taking strategies was also investigated. To this end, 135 EFL students were chosen based on their availability. All of the students were female, majoring in different fields of study. Three kinds of materials including multiple-choice reading comprehension tests, a questionnaire, and interviews were utilized to investigate the research questions. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Correlation, and stepwise regression. The results showed a significant, positive, but low correlation between the students’ total reading score and planning and also monitoring strategies. Furthermore, planning strategy proved to be a predictor of English reading comprehension test.

The aim of this study was to find the appropriate type of translation of English brand names Iranian consumers prefer, i.e. phonetic, semantic and phonosemantic types of translation. Also, it was aimed at examining the type of font size Iranian consumers tends to see on packages of English products. To this end, the distinction between male and female participants as well as the participants’ level of proficiency was considered as two key factors. Six fictitious brand names were created and the 55 selected participants (43 females and 12 males with upper-intermediate, intermediate and pre-intermediate English proficiency levels) were asked to fill a questionnaire related to the goals of the research. Statistical analyses were then done. The results revealed that Iranian consumers, with different levels of proficiency, tended to use phonetic translation. Also, it was revealed that females with different proficiency levels tended to see English brand names larger than their Persian translations in terms of font size, whereas male participants did the reverse. The findings were discussed in connection with translation and marketing.