درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Language learners have frequently been classified according to individual difference variables such as aptitude, personality, cognitive style, and motivation. However, a language teacher’s view seems to have been missing from such classifications. This exploratory research investigated whether and by which criteria Iranian EFL teachers classify their students. Based on preliminary interviews with 29 high-expertise Iranian EFL teachers, 21 criteria were identified and included in a questionnaire that was completed by 175 Iranian EFL teachers. The respondents almost unanimously agreed that they did classify their students according to their understanding of the character type, behavior patterns, and achievement patterns of their students. Then they rated the 21 criteria on a scale from 0 to 4 according to how important each classification criterion was for them. Factor analysis of questionnaire responses revealed six major classification criteria. Subsequently, in a case study, 26 EFL students in a typical Iranian high school class were asked to rate their classmates according to the six major criteria. Only five of the criteria were found to predict English achievement and Grade Point Average (GPA). A cluster analysis of the students’ peer ratings using the five criteria generated three clusters. An ANOVA revealed that the three clusters were accurately differentiated not only on the clustering criteria but also on the two non-clustering variables: EFL Achievement and GPA.

Many types of research are carried out in the field of ELT. Therefore, different types of studies are performed by post-graduate students, teachers, professors, and researchers. However, the main concern of the present article is that whether the post-graduate students, teachers, and professors have the necessary knowledge on three important research points: validity, reliability, and ethics. To this end, this article discusses these three issues and sheds some light on them. In fact, validity is concerned with the correctness of inferences according to the results and instruments. Meanwhile, reliability deals with the quality and consistency of the data collection procedures. In order to calculate the reliability of the data, Cohen Kappa’s inter-rater agreement is presented and explained by means of a vivid example. Finally, ethics is an area of moral philosophy concerning the rules by which behavior needs to be directed. Finally, some means and ways of increasing and enhancing the validity, reliability, and ethics of the research are introduced and elaborated on. By providing comprehensive details and vivid examples, this article can be useful and helpful to post-graduate students, teachers, professors, and researchers in carrying out research and ensuring and quarantining their data, data collection procedures, and instruments.

Rhetorical structure is helpful in improving how the writers maintain cohesion in their writings. This study examines how the Iraqi writers maintain cohesion in the text by analyzing the various rhetorical moves in Azzaman, an online Iraqi newspaper. To this purpose, twelve opinion articles from Azzaman Iraqi newspaper, published from January 2013 to June 2013 were analyzed. The findings revealed a common rhetorical pattern: the introduction section, the intermediate section, and the coda section (conclusion stage). All these were frequently used, but the use of intermediate section (solution stage) and coda section (moral stage) were less frequently-used in comparison with the introduction section. The findings of this study reflect the way Iraqis write opinion articles in English newspapers, and generally show that the use of similar patterns in the rhetorical structure mirrors the writing of second language writers’ writing to convey information to second language readers.

The present study was primarily aimed at investigating how Processing instruction would affect the Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical knowledge and how the effectiveness of this method would be modulated by the learners’ individual differences in grammatical sensitivity. To this end, three senior intact high school classes were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group. Each of the experimental groups was treated with one operationalization of Processing instruction, namely, full PI (n=24), and Structured input (n=24) while the control group (n=20) received traditional output-based instruction (TI) on the English passive structure over three weekly sessions. The results illustrated that Processing instruction was more effective than TI since it improved learners’ both interpretation and production while TI only could improve learners’ production. Additionally, the results demonstrated that the positive impact of Processing instruction was not affected by the learners’ differences in grammatical sensitivity. All in all, this suggests that as long as a grammatical structure is affected by an underlying processing problem, Processing instruction is possibly a more effective pedagogical option compared to traditional output-based instruction. Furthermore, Processing instruction seems to work for all learners irrespective of their differences in terms of grammatical sensitivity.

This study aimed at investigating the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ reading strategy use and Emotional Intelligence (EI) as well as exploring the most frequently-used reading strategies which can facilitate the process of reading comprehension. To this end, a group of 60 was selected out of 274 university learners majoring in TEFL and English Translation. Based on English Proficiency Test and Bar-On’s (1997) EI Test, they were divided into two groups (high and low EI). Then, the needed data were gathered by employing a Reading Strategy Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed via SPSS software, version 22. The results of the study revealed that EI level was positively associated with Reading Strategy Use (r=0.623, p<0.01). Also, the results of independent samples t-test were indicative of the fact that the degree of usage of meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies by the high EI group was greater than that of the low EI group, while with respect to the test-taking strategies, this degree of usage was weaker in the former than in the latter. In addition, cognitive strategy, as the most frequent one, was observed to be a facilitative strategy for reading comprehension. It was, therefore, concluded that the importance of reading strategies should be taken into account in improving the reading skill and other areas of language learning and teaching. The findings of the can be helpful for material development, testing and teaching methodologies.

Writing is one of the four skills of language learning, especially, one of the skills of practical communication in a communicative approach. The purpose of this research is to evaluate and analyze writing activities of the writing sections of secondary high school English textbooks, grades 10th, 11th and 12th, so-called vision 1, 2, 3. The theoretical framework of this research, a descriptive-analytical and qualitative method, was based on Kern's (2007) and Harmer’s (2004) model and continuum of writing activities. The writing activities of these vision books were divided into three major categories of controlled, guided and free writing and fifteen more sub-categories. The exercises and activities of the writing section of these six-volume English textbooks, so-called vision 1,2,3 were counted on and the average and percentage of each category were calculated based on Kern’s (2002) and Harmer’s (2004) model and continuum of writing. The findings of this research indicate that the categories of controlled writing and copying, the first item of Kern’s continuum, are the dominant writing tasks in these books. Activities concerning the guided, and especially the free writing activities in these books are rarely seen or they have not been much carefully regarded. In the communicative approach, regarding the goods and the existing requirements, the teaching of writing is generally concerned with free writing tasks. Therefore, to enhance and promote practical communication skills as an aim of a communicative approach, free writing skills are inevitable. The findings of this research point out that English teachers can reinforce and enhance their students’ practical communication abilities in their classes by using freestyle exercises and hence, cover the shortcomings of the books.

The present study aimed to examine the effects of an educational technology called smart learning pen (i.e., iPen) as an ICT tool on young Iranian male and female EFL learners' speaking accuracy and fluency. A group of 180 young (6-9 years old) male and female learners with no previous formal education in English were randomly assigned into three different conditions: those who used the iPen in class and at home (IPC), at home only (IPH), and those who did not use the iPen at all (NIP). As gender was an independent variable, each condition had male and female groups. To address the research questions, the participants' performance on the oral sub-test of the posttest was put into analysis. The two-way ANOVA run on the effect of the independent variables (iPen and gender) and their interaction on the participants' speaking accuracy, and fluency revealed that using iPen helped the IPC and IPH participants significantly outperform the NIP group in terms of both accuracy and fluency. However, such an analysis did not show any significant effect for gender, nor did it show any significant effect when the interaction of gender and other variables was taken into account. The study has practical implications for policymakers, language teachers as well as software, hardware, and mobile phone application developers.

Teacher training programs in Iran have undergone extensive investigations and modifications since the establishment of educational institutions. This interest in teacher education has emerged from the innovative approaches to teaching suggested by the trends and findings of the time. Regarding the importance of curriculum evaluation in the EFL teacher education, this study mainly focused on the adequacy and effectiveness of the latest EFL pre-service teacher education curriculum through the eyes of the key stakeholders. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used in the study. The participants of the study were 227 teachers, teacher educators, and senior student teachers. The data were gathered through a 35-item Likert scale questionnaire on the curriculum courses with stated objectives for each course and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that the latest curriculum was adequately laid out and positively evaluated by the participants in terms of pedagogic and linguistic competence although there were some shortcomings and slight differences in the participants' perceptions. There were some slight perceptual differences among the participants. The findings of this study may provide some helpful suggestions for promoting the latest EFL pre-service teacher education curriculum.

Development of science and academic knowledge has led to changes in academic language and transfer of information and knowledge. In this regard, the present study is an attempt to investigate lexico-grammaticality in academic abstracts and their full research papers in Linguistics, Chemistry and Electrical engineering papers published during 1991-2015 in academic journals from a diachronic perspective through quantitative research design. The focus of this paper is on transitivity, mood and theme analysis in the corpus according to Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics model. So, all the attempts are to find the changes in abstracts and research papers of these disciplines and how they are to be positioned in different linguistic contexts over time. The results revealed that research papers employ the spectrum of possible lexical realization quite differently as compared to general English, especially concerning the use of specific lexical items. Also, the results of chi-squares of each discipline showed that there are significant differences between papers over time at .05 level of significance (.000< .05) with regard to the transitivity, mood, and theme. 

Studies on the generic structure of thesis and dissertation acknowledgments have resulted in some influential models such as Hyland’s (2004) and Al-Ali’s (2010) models. Few studies, if any, have investigated the generic structure of acknowledgments in books. Therefore, the present study was an attempt to find out whether the acknowledgments of books follow an organizational pattern. To this end, 200 books (100 written by native and 100 by non-native speakers of English) which included acknowledgements section, from a mass of 1000 books, were considered. The data were analyzed with reference to Hyland’s (2004) scheme. The results obtained from the analysis of the acknowledgments written by both native and non-native writers of English revealed that the overall structure of the acknowledgements section of the books follows an organizational pattern which is a combination of two models: Hyland’s (2004) scheme (all moves and steps), Al-Ali’s (2010) model (Praising and Thanking God Step and Signing off Move) and two new moves: Copyright Move and Commenting Move. The findings suggest that a full appreciation of this organizational pattern can help writers to enjoy this unique space for thanking all those who have contributed to completion of their work and academic identity formation.

This study was conducted with the purpose of examining Persian speakers’ article acquisition and use with reference to Ionin, Ko and Wexler’s (2004) model, which is based on the prediction of Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) that EFL learners of [-article] languages, like Persian, make erroneous article use in [+definite, -specific] and [-definite, +specific] contexts. From among the students of an Iranian university, 90 participants were randomly selected and divided into three groups based on their proficiency levels (elementary, intermediate and advanced). They completed a forced-choice elicitation task, consisting of 20 dialogues, similar to Ionin et al.’s (2004) questionnaire. It was hypothesized that as proficiency level increases, the accuracy level increases, while article misuse and omission decrease. The overall results suggested that the performance of the participants of the study, even the advanced group, was below the ceiling level (90% accuracy observed in native and near-native speakers). Moreover, as the level of proficiency increased, the accuracy level of article use increased and omission error decreased, but article misuse showed no significant decrease. It was concluded that low performance of Persian speakers is due to the lack of correspondence between Persian and English determiner phrase (DP) structures and lack of adequate input.