درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Pre-service teacher cognition literature abounds with the concept of change as well as proposals regarding desirable conceptual changes to be undertaken so that teacher candidates can set out their path of professional development with right beliefs. Yet, such changes would seem less likely to occur if the trainees’ thoughts, beliefs, and cognitions are not identified in the first place. This study was an attempt to identify the cognitions of EFL pre-service teachers and trace possible changes expressed by the candidates. Through a convenient sample of 64 pre-service teachers studying at three teacher training colleges in Iran, this mixed -methods exploration utilized a teacher cognition questionnaire and interview techniques. Results of the cognition questionnaire indicated that many of the candidates’ cognitions were still in need of adjustments. Also, the content analysis of the interviews revealed that the candidates’ attempts during the practicum revolved mostly around challenging debilitating beliefs, developing a sense of professional agency, managing stress, and resolving tensions between contradicting beliefs. Findings suggest that the trainees’ prior experiences as language learners exerted a very influential effect on their cognitions and also their attempts to refine those cognitions.

To better illuminate the link between scaffolding and visual aids, this quasi-experimental study attempted to scaffold an intact group of 14 intermediate-level Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners through providing graphs with the aim of enhancing their writing ability. Ensuring lack of familiarity with eight unknown words, they were scaffolded through visual images. The scaffolding process included three respective phases of contingency, fading, and transferring. As post-tests for checking the learners’ understanding of and opinion about the graph scaffolding process, a researcher-made questionnaire and a semi-structured interview followed the treatment phase. The results of the questionnaire showed that visual scaffolding aided the learners to better grasp the meaning of the target vocabularies and even some grammatical points in the materials. Moreover, the visual scaffolding helped them to produce the material in different modalities. The results also indicated all the three characteristics of scaffolding were met by the visual scaffolding. Finally, the interview results revealed the learners had favorable attitude toward visual scaffolding and considered the third phase of the scaffolding as the most challenging one. It can be concluded that the findings gave credence to the effectiveness of visual scaffolding in improving EFL students’ writing ability.

This paper reports the study undertaken on types of defense mechanisms used by Iranian EFL teachers. Furthermore, the significant differences between male and female EFL teachers at different age groups in the use of defense mechanisms are also considered. In the first phase of the study, the focus was on identification of defense mechanisms teachers generally adopt in their daily activities, while the second phase was exclusive to the deployment of defense mechanisms inside EFL classes. Accordingly, Defense Style Questionnaire was distributed among 100 EFL teachers. Next, to capture in-class atmosphere, the researchers carried out 30 semi-structured interviews with Iranian EFL teachers. All the participants (15 males and 15 females) were teaching in public schools as well as private institutes at the time of the interview. The results of the questionnaire indicated that teachers used two mature defense mechanisms, namely, anticipation (M=13.8) and rationalization (M=13), in their daily lives more than the others. Nonetheless, the results of the interview denoted the dominance of pseudo- altruistic behaviors (N=30), as a neurotic mechanism, in EFL classes. Sublimation and humor (N=29), as two mature defense mechanisms, were also frequently used. On the other hand, splitting (N=2), passive aggression (N=2), and projection (N=3), all of which are considered to be immature mechanisms, were the least-frequently used mechanisms. Moreover, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests signified no significant differences in terms of gender and age in the use of defense mechanisms among Iranian EFL teachers.

A correlational survey research design was utilized to investigate self-regulated Learning (SRL) and teacher-student interaction factors that had been realized to have contributive roles in EFL learners' academic success. A sample of 218 EFL learners (male = 102 and female = 116) was drawn with the aid of a prior sample size calculator for the structural equation models from 645 students. They were within the age range of 18-45 and were enrolled at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. The structural equation model (SEM) hypothesis testing procedure revealed that the teacher-student interaction directly and significantly influenced learners' academic accomplishments. Likewise, the obtained results indicate that the impact of the teacher-student interaction on EFL learners' academic achievement is mediated by the effects of SRL. Correspondingly, the obtained results indicate that the theorized model fits the data. The causal contribution of psychological factors, consisting of the teacher-student interaction and SRL, to EFL learners’ academic achievement was validated. The findings of this exploratory research have certain implications for classroom practice which are elaborated in detail in this paper.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how voice is realized by Iranian EFL learners in persuasive English and Persian text types. This discourse-related notion is a required criterion for writing acceptable English. However, L2 learners from cultures other than English might face problems in realizing it, or even ignore it all through their writing. In this connection, the present study attempted to discover the possible relationship between the intensity of voice and the overall quality of text. Thus, thirty university students were selected as participants. They were asked to write in both English and Persian a persuasive text within the same subject matter. Then, their writings were rated in terms of intensity of voice and the overall quality based on Jacobs’ voice intensity scale and Jacobs’ overall quality scale (1981), respectively. The analysis of their productions indicated that there is a significant relationship between voice intensity and some of its features, and overall quality; while no relationship was found between English and Persian voice intensity. Therefore, voice deserves more attention on the part of writing instructor, as it could enrich the quality of L2 learners’ written productions with more sense of naturalness and smoothness. Moreover, material designers can incorporate English writing materials with various aspects of this critical notion, in addition to other language rhetoric, for learners at appropriate language proficiency level.

Plagiarism is considered as a serious problem in academia around the world. The issue of plagiarism has recently received global inquiry in different fields of science, especially in foreign language (L2) academic writing. To meticulously assess the Iranian academics for plagiarism at both theory and practice grounds, developing an accountable instrument seemed to be inevitable. To bridge the gap, in phase 1 of the study, a conceptual framework for Iranian academics’ grasp of plagiarism and its components was designed after a thorough review of literature. In phase 2, a number of M.A. graduates and graduate students (n = 224) in six State and Islamic Azad universities in Iran were recruited to partake in piloting the newly-designed plagiarism questionnaire. After a two-step revising the inefficient items (n = 11), the final draft of the developed questionnaire with 36 items was administered with the main sample of participants (n = 288). An Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to identify the components of the instrument, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis to measure its construct validity. As a result, the final draft of the Sociocultural Plagiarism Questionnaire contained 31 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items in four components of awareness (10 items), attitude (8 items), sociocultural beliefs (8 items), and perception (5 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items), which were suggested as having fundamental contributions to the Iranian academic writers’ sensitivity to plagiarism. Findings of the study suggested that (a) the Iranian academic writers’ normative sociocultural beliefs can probably reduce their sensitivity to plagiarism, (b) while the Iranian academics might have relatively high awareness and deep perception about plagiarism, their attitude toward plagiarism seems relatively neutral or even insensitive.

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.

Developing, exploring and standardizing digital game based learning for EFL and English for Specific Purposes (ESP), requires a thorough understanding of learning context, gaming elements, ludical manners, as well as features of virtual reality in a real-life and career like setting. Unlike some traditional scientific approaches that focuses only on individual systems separately as a dipped in fashion approach, digital game requires a platform for understanding game genres, games’ use and various kind of games in order to define game design characteristics, theories of learning in digital era and to expand the characteristics and patterns of CALL application combined with linguametric perspective for digital games. It is a means and umbrella term for combined framework for multidimetional advancements, research and practices from major areas of inquiry, namely applied linguistics, psychometrics, and edumetrics of inter, supra disciplinary perspectives and emotional intelligence which gives importance to this discussion and a need to implement, develop, blend and use positive features of various digital game types in a user friendly and massively online course platform worldwide.