درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

In translation, choosing appropriate equivalent is essential to convey the right message from source-text to target-text, and one of the issues that may have a determinative role in appropriate equivalent choice is the semantic prosody (SP) behavior of words and the relation existing between the SP of a word and semantic senses (i.e. negativity, positivity or neutrality) of its collocations in the context. This research explored the impact of Iranian translator trainees' semantic prosody knowledge on the appropriate selection of equivalents in translation. The probable influence of proficiency level or fields of study on the appropriate selection of equivalents with respect to SP was concentrated as well. To fulfill the aims of the study, a translation test including a number of near-synonym pairs with different SPs was administered among participants with different fields of study as well as different proficiency levels. Findings were analyzed based on Sinclair's (1996) hypothesis of SP as well as Stubbs' (1995) model of SP classification. The study showed where there is more than one equivalent of a word in another language, having the knowledge and being aware of the conditions of semantic prosody is necessary to select the appropriate, accurate equivalents and thus to convey the exact message from a source text to the target one. The results also revealed that proficiency level and field of study among language learners can have an influence on choosing appropriate equivalents with respect to SP. The findings of the present study can be beneficial for the instructors and learners in both fields of translation and Teaching English as a Foreign Language to improve equivalent choice appropriateness. Also, this study by highlighting the essential role of semantic prosody in selecting appropriate equivalents can be beneficial to dictionary compilers to include semantic prosody behaviors in the definition and information of words.

Despite their substantial role in natural discourse, idioms often intimidate EFL students. Therefore, finding effective ways of mitigating students’ frustration has been a fundamental consideration in language teaching. Mnemonics, as associative memory tools, are largely acknowledged to be instrumental in reducing the cognitive load involved in language learning, particularly in learning lexical items. This study was conducted to explore the effects of linguistic, verbal, and visual mnemonics on empowering language learners in the recall and recognition of English idioms. Two-hundred seventy intermediate-level EFL learners preparing themselves for IELTS took part in this study. The participants were in nine groups of 30 members each. They were divided into three main groups, each of which was taught idioms using one of the above-mentioned mnemonics. The MANOVA procedure was used to analyze the collected data. The results revealed statistically significant differences among these instructional strategies in case of recall, with linguistic mnemonics being the most influential. The findings of the study can have theoretical implications for researchers in that they can shed light on some of the dark corners of the field and spark interest for further research. The findings can also have some pedagogical implications for teaching programs, curriculum developers, educational policymakers, teachers, and language learners. Developing a clearer understanding of how these mnemonics influence idiom learning can help the stakeholders make more informed decisions about how to treat idioms.

In recent years, the personal characteristics and attitudes of teachers have attracted the attention of various scholars. The teacher’s immunity level is one of the newly proposed concepts in this area. The present study aimed at exploring the difference between the immunity level of the Iranian EFL teachers at language centers and public schools. In order to achieve this objective, one hundred EFL teachers teaching in public schools (N = 50) and language centers (N = 50), in Isfahan, were selected through convenience sampling to participate in this study. Then, the Teachers’ Immunity Level questionnaire was administered to them, and they were interviewed as well.  The obtained results revealed that teachers working in public schools have higher levels of immunity compared to the ones working in language centers. This finding can have some implications for the decision-makers in the Iranian Ministry of Education to provide adequate amenities to improve teachers’ immunity in language centers.

The complexity of self-regulatory strategies has been challenging to educational researchers who seek to find proper interventions that benefit students and teachers. This study has employed the Self-Regulatory Strategy Development (SRSD) model of instruction to help students monitor, evaluate and revise their writing. SRSD would be beneficial for adult students with learning disabilities in the procedure of essay writing. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a cognitive-behavioral dysregulation is a consequence of deficits in self-regulatory process. Many students with learning disorders such as ADHD have trouble in the mechanics and process of writing. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of SRSD on the essay writing of EFL undergraduate students. This study tried to evaluate the effects of SRSD intervention on the essay writing of ADHD and NON-ADHD students. To fulfill the mentioned objectives, 126 EFL undergraduate students who enrolled in essay writing course at Tehran Azad University participated in this study. The results indicated that SRSD instruction had a significant effect on the essay writing of the EFL undergraduate students. Likewise, ADHD students could achieve a significant improvement after receiving SRSD intervention. چکیده: پیچیدگی روش های خود تنظیمی برای محققین حوزه آموزش معمولا چالش برانگیز بوده است و آنها همیشه سعی در یافتن روش مناسبی برای دانشجویان و اساتید در این زمینه داشته اند. این تحقیق از روش "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" برای کمک به دانشجویان در زمینه های مشاهده، ارزیابی و تجدیدنظر بهره برده است. "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" برای دانشجویانی که در زمینه نگارش مشکل دارند مفید خواهد بود. "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" به عنوان یک نابهنجاری شناختی- رفتاری، که درنتیجه اختلال درفرایند خود تنظیمی بوجود می آید، مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. بسیاری از دانشجویان که در یادگیری دچار مشکل هستند برای مثال آنهایی که "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" دارند در روند و مراحل مقاله نویس با مشکلاتی روبرو هستند. هدف این تحقیق بررسی تاثیرات "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" بر توانایی نگارش دانشجویان کارشناسی زبان انگلیسی (زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان بیگانه) بوده است. این تحقیق به منظور ارزیابی تاثیرات بکارگیری روش "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" بر نگارش دانشجویانی که مشکل "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" داشتند و دانشجویانی که این مشکل را نداشتند انجام شد. به این منظور 126 دانشجوی کارشناسی زبان انگلیسی (زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان بیگانه) که درس مقاله نویسی را در دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی میگذراندند در این تحقیق شرکت کردند. نتایج نشان داد که روش آموزشی "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" بر توانایی مقاله نویسی دانشجویان تاثیر قابل توجهی داشت. همچنین دانشجویانی که مشکل "اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه" را داشتند بعد از بکارگیری "استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی" پیشرفت قابل ملاحظه ای داشتند.  کلید واژه ها: اختلال بیش فعالی کمبود توجه – خود تنظیمی – استراتژی های ایجاد خود تنظیمی – مقاله نویسی.  

This study attempts to investigate the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development of Iranian EFL learners cross-sectionally when making requests in different situations. To this end, 103 university students in three proficiency levels of pre-intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced were asked to write three discourse completion tests (DCTs) of requests in different situations with various social and power relation demands and 20% of them were interviewed about their DCTs. The analyses of these written and verbal reports suggested that parallel with proficiency there was a movement from directness to conventional indirectness and an expansion of the repertoire of both external and internal modification devices. Even though all the participants expressed their awareness of the sociopragmatic requirements of different request situations in their verbal reports, increasing proficiency led to the application of this awareness in practice. That is, advanced learners were more successful to differentiate among the situations both sociopragmatically and pragmalinguistically. The results are discussed in light of previous research and available developmental patterns.

The purpose of the present research is to investigate the perceptual learning style preferences of 131 learners who studied Persian as a second language (from 17 nationalities) in Iran and 97 learners of Persian as a foreign Language in 28 other countries, taking into account predominant perceptual learning style preferences and demographic variables including age, gender, etc. for the first time. The Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) was administered. The descriptive statistics of the learning styles preferences showed that tactile, kinesthetic and auditory are respectively the first three learning style preferences among the learners of Persian as a second language, while the other learners of Persian as a foreign language preferred kinesthetic, tactile and auditory learning styles. The data analysis showed that there were no significant differences between the style scores of the two groups. Also, the findings revealed a significant difference in preference between foreign and second language learners of Persian using group styles. Foreign Persian language learners exhibited a high preference for the group learning style. In addition, the correlation was significant between geographic region (to be or not to be Asian) and different learning styles.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of oral and written contextualization of collocation teaching on the learning and long-term retention of semantically semitransparent collocations by Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 65 students were selected from a cohort of students who were studying English at an English language institute in Sanandaj, Iran. They were randomly divided into two groups based on whether they would receive oral and written contextualization. Then, each group was further subdivided into two groups based on whether they would receive instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, yielding two experimental groups each including 16 learners as the Written Practice Group plus and minus instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, two experimental groups as the Oral Practice Group plus and minus instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, including 16 and 17 learners, respectively. Their initial general English proficiency was measured through the Preliminary English Test (PET), and they were pretested on semitransparent collocations through a researcher-made collocation test. Finally, two equivalent researcher-made collocation tests were used to measure the participants’ learning and retention on the immediate and delayed posttests. The results of two-way ANOVAs revealed that the oral group outperformed the written group on the immediate and delayed posttests and the plus transparency instruction groups in each modality (oral and written) group outperformed the minus transparency instruction groups. The interpretations of the findings and their pedagogical implications have been discussed.

The present study was an attempt to explore the effect of clinical supervision on EFL teachers’ level of burnout. For this purpose, a total number of 80 male and female EFL teachers within the age range of 26 and 47 who were working at a language school in Tehran participated in this study. Forty teachers in the experimental group underwent a clinical supervision program which comprised the three steps of pre-observation conference, observation, and post-observation feedback conference while the other 40 teachers who were in the control group were subjected to the conventional supervision program of the language school. The program for both groups spanned a total period of 12 weeks. Prior to the program, the Maslach Burnout Inventory questionnaire (MBI) was used to measure the level of all of the teachers’ burnout as the pretest and again at the end of study, both groups took the MBI questionnaire as the posttest. The analysis of the test scores using a test of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that the clinical supervision program had lowered significantly the participants’ burnout. As a result of this study, the researchers suggest that ELT establishments take into consideration the practice of clinical supervision to enhance their teachers’ performance.

This study investigated the effect of Narrow Reading (NR) on learning mid-frequency words. Vocabulary Size Test (VST) designed by Nation and Beglar (2007) was administered as the first pre-test to 196 students, from among whom 91 students whose vocabulary size ranged between 2100- 3500-word families, , became the target of this study and were randomly classified into four groups. Then another pretest administered was a modified version of Wesche and Paribakht’s Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) which assessed how well they knew twenty vocabularies derived from the expository and narrative texts. After thirty sessions for direct instruction, VKS was repeated immediately as a posttest to assess vocabulary learning while a month later, VKS was taken as a delayed posttest to assess vocabulary retention. To address research questions, a mixed design factorial ANOVA was conducted. The findings revealed that while the theme was fixed, reading expository texts rather than narrative ones led to the growth in vocabulary knowledge. In addition, the group that read narratives forgot most of the mid-frequency words in the retention phase. As opposed to multi-author texts, reading texts written by one author resulted in a better vocabulary achievement in both learning and retention phases. It was also revealed that there was no interaction between genre and author. In other words, the author was as influential in learning mid-frequency words among expository texts as it was in narrative ones. Finally, it was concluded that NR has a positive effect on learning mid-frequency words.

The present study was aimed at investigating intermediate Iranian EFL learners’ feedback preferences on their L2 writing and examining the possible differences between learners with entity and incremental language mindsets with respect to their feedback preferences. To this end, 150 EFL learners were recruited from several language institutes in Isfahan, Iran, and their language proficiency level was measured through a proficiency test. The learners were then given the Language Mindsets Questionnaire and the Feedback Preferences Scale to fill out. Frequency counts, mean scores, and chi-square for independence were employed to analyze the collected data. The results of the study indicated that teacher-student conferencing, self-correction, peer correction, and correction using prompts were the types of feedback that the learners preferred to receive, and the difference between entity and incremental mindset holders reached statistical significance for teacher correction with comments, self-correction, and teacher-student conferencing. Regarding the strategies the learners utilized to handle feedback, the two groups of learners were significantly different just in terms of asking for teacher explanation. Finally, thinking prompts received priority in the following order, L1/L2, word, and rule, while goal and fit were not favored by the learners; thinking prompt did not turn out to cause significantly different preferences in the EFL learners with entity or incremental mindsets. The significance of the obtained results are discussed and the implications of the study are then proffered

This study focuses on complexity matching and lexical matching to investigate speech convergence in the conversations of bilingual Persian-English speakers in three language conditions namely Persian, English, and mixed in the context of lingua receptiva as an attempt to investigate such matching mechanisms between a Latin-based language and a non-Latin-based language. Complexity matching investigates convergence in terms of the hierarchical temporal structure of human speech while lexical matching explores convergence in terms of the frequency occurrence of the matched lemmas. For this purpose, 14 master’s students from the Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz majoring in English language conversed with one another in dyadic groups in three language conditions each of which had its own topic namely movies, music, and books. In complexity matching, Allan Factor analysis in terms of multiscale clustering of onset events was considered. In lexical matching, the focus was on the distribution of all lemmas and matched lemmas and the possible correlation between the two. The results revealed a gradual increase in Allan Factor log-log plots in relation to the longer timescales that correspond with discourse patterns for complexity matching. For lexical matching, the positive correlation between all lemmas and matched lemmas (r<sub>s = .607) suggested that as participants talked to each other more, they unconsciously tried to match their psychological perceptions with each other more. This suggests that speech convergence is vigorous in both bilingual and monolingual interactions.

Most studies on Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) have focused either on ESL or EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices. However, it is still not known how teachers who teach second or foreign languages other than English will provide information on the learners’ written language production. To bridge the gap in the literature, this current study reports on an interview study investigating nine university lecturers’ beliefs and their actual practices about WCF on an assignment done by the third-year exchange student of Thai as a foreign language (TFL). Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through feedback tasks and semi-structured interviews. The findings indicated that there was alignment between teachers’ beliefs of their WCF practice and their actual practice in terms of types of WCF and feedback techniques. However, the amount of feedback provided and the teachers’ time constraint, not the level of students’ ability as they thought, appeared to be the reasons for these misalignments of TFL teachers’ beliefs and practices

New approaches and methods to language learning and teaching have drawn the attention of many researchers. This study aimed at investigating the role of Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes towards the value components of the Partnership Approach (PA) on motivating their active engagement in the learning process. A descriptive research method (survey study) was used, and 72 male and female Iranian EFL students whose ages ranged from 18 to 26 were randomly selected to participate in the study. They were asked to respond to a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire addressing the objectives of the study, and then 30 of the participants were randomly interviewed to reveal the possible consonance with the questionnaire outcomes. The study was conducted at Islamic Azad University (IAU), Najafabad Branch. The findings indicated that although both male and female participants showed significantly positive attitudes towards the value components of the PA, except for the inclusivity value, female participants held significantly higher positive attitudes. The highest motivational value from both male and female participants’ point of view was for the challenge value component. However, reciprocity and inclusivity were the value components with the lowest motivational values from the male and female participants’ point of view, respectively. Focusing on the importance of the psychological factors in education, the findings of the study may encourage both education policy-makers and practitioners in the field to think more critically, and make more reasonable decisions for their policy and practice.

This study investigated a new blended approach for enhancing vocabulary achievement. To this end, the project used a convenience sample of 50 intermediate EFL learners ranging from 19-35 years of age from three intact classes studying English translation at university. They were randomly assigned to two groups of 25 students each. In the experimental group, the treatment consisted of providing photos/cartoons related to the sessions’ course of instruction on Instagram, with the learners discussing and exploring the meaning of vocabularies via peer scaffolding using metacognitive strategies. The control group followed the syllabus and assigned homework according to the class program. To investigate the vocabulary achievement of the participants, a piloted multiple-choice vocabulary posttest was administered. The results that were analyzed through independent samples T-test revealed that the blended approach could significantly affect the performance of the experimental group. This study has implications not only for teachers, researchers, and syllabus designers but also for EFL learners with unpacking the notion of metacognition and peer scaffolding, proposing an integrated framework that illustrates how it may pervade the teaching-learning process as an educational goal. The implication of this study supports student responsibility, a student-centered classroom, and higher levels of cognition.