درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of various online techniques (word reference, media, and vocabulary games) on reading comprehension as well as vocabulary comprehension and production. For this purpose, 60 language learners were selected and divided into three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions. In the first session of treatment, a vocabulary test was administered as the pretest of the study. During treatment, the language learners in those three groups were instructed through online vocabulary games, online media along with transcript and online word reference. At the end of the treatment, a reading comprehension test, a vocabulary comprehension, and a vocabulary production test were given as the posttests. The collected data were analyzed using three one-way ANOVA procedures. The results showed that the online media group outperformed the other groups. Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that different online tools may have differential effects on learning different aspects of language. This implies that adhering to any single online tool may not necessarily bring about desirable results. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that teachers need to make use of a combination of these tools.

In the present study, two different models of task complexity; namely, limited attentional capacity model and cognition hypothesis were examined. To this end, the manipulation of cognitive task complexity along +/- single task dimension on Iranian EFL learners’ production in terms of fluency was explored. Based on the results of the writing test of TOFEL (2004), 48 learners were selected as the participants of the study and were divided into two groups, simple task group (STG, n=24) and complex task group (CTG, n=24). The participants in the STG were given an eight-frame picture which had been arranged in the correct sequence before its administration (+ single task). The participants in the CTG were given all the eight frames which were not arranged in their correct order. These participants were required to order the frames in the right sequence first, before starting writing (- single task). Their output was encoded based on the measure of fluency. One independent sample t-tests was run.  The results indicated that the participants significantly generated more words in the complex task. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that in the Iranian context, the predictions of limited attentional capacity model were more accurate.

In this paper, we argue the effects of explicit multimodal metaphor training in developing speaking and listening skills in an EFL context. To examine the effects of using conceptual metaphors in English language classrooms and assess the metaphorical ability of EFL students, we directed two measuring instruments: pre-test and post-test for control and experimental groups in both listening and speaking skills. The pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group who were exposed to explicit multimodal metaphor training were compared with the control group's scores through this bipartite study. The outcomes of this paper can shed light on teaching and learning the multimodal language in an EFL context. The findings showed that learners who were exposed to multimodal metaphors and received explicit instruction from their teacher resulted in better scores. In other words, this paper found that explicit multimodal metaphor instructions can lead to some improvements in metaphor comprehension and production in an EFL context.

The main role and responsibility of second language writing teachers is to help learners to write with minimal errors. To do so, teachers need to provide students with appropriate types of feedback. In this research, the researchers examined the effect of post-text written corrective feedback on written grammatical accuracy of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. In the first phase, Nelson Proficiency Test was administered to 45 intermediate students studying in two different classes at Cambridge Language Institute in Sari. 35 students were selected. Then, they were randomly assigned to experimental and another groups. The research was carried out in 12 sessions. The experimental group received post-text feedback on their writing tasks while the control group received the conventional type. After collecting data, the researchers used paired and independent sample t-tests to analyze the data. The results indicated that those students who received post-text feedback outperformed the ones in the control group. It means that indirect corrective feedback is more beneficial to students than the direct one. Therefore, post-text feedback can be adopted by EFL instructors to promote students’ written grammatical ability.

The present study sought to cast light on differences in strategies of compliment responses used across Persian and American English. For this purpose, 110 participants, under three groups of Persian native speakers, American native speakers, and Persian learners of English, answered a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), followed by a semi-structured interview with the Persian learners of English to cross-check the findings of the DCTs. The collected responses from the DCTs were coded at macro and micro-levels. Moreover, a macro-level of Persian cultural schemas was used for the Persian groups. The chi-square test revealed the independent performance of the three groups. Judged by the written DCTs while performing in English, the learners’ responses displayed cases of utilizing the native Persian cultural schemas. More specifically, the English learner respondents employed different instances of ta’arof and shekaste-nafsi . Confirmed by the interview, such failures resulted from insufficient exposure to the American English culture and more importantly from their lack of instruction and awareness of cross-cultural pragmatic differences.

This study aimed to shed light on young Iranian EFL students’ oral proficiency improvement through explicit instruction of formulaic sequences (FSs). This pretest-posttest quasi experimental study was conducted in a bilingual school in Shahrekord, Iran. Accordingly, based on ACTFL OPI test, two groups of low intermediate students with age range of 11 to 12 were chosen to be assigned as control and experimental groups. The control group with 20 participants continued its regular instruction focusing on analytic grammar rules and discrete vocabulary, while the experimental group with 40 participants received explicit FSs-based instruction through readings, by adopting a teaching procedure inspired by Lewis’ prescribed strategies for lexicon instruction. After 24 sessions of instruction, the participants were interviewed again, and their oral performance was recorded and transcribed to be scored by two experienced judges. Subsequently, ANOVA results revealed the significant oral proficiency improvement of experimental group in comparison to the control group, pointing to the effectiveness of FSs instruction.

Circulation of scientific discoveries occurs in various discourse communities. Adopting an audience-oriented view of writing (Hyland, 2010) and drawing on the appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), the current study aimed to explore the evaluative strategies psychologists would use to share their specialist knowledge with scholarly and non-scholarly readers. To this end, a corpus of 38 academic research articles and 38 popularized science articles from the archive of an English international refereed journal, Current Psychology , and two English popularized magazines, Newsweek and New Scientist , were analyzed in terms of attitude resources of appraisal, namely appreciation, affect, and judgment . The results of the study revealed that palpable degrees of persuasion were achieved through including certain attitude elements in both corpora despite no statistically significant difference. The results debunked the myth of objectivity in academic discourse and disclosed the psychology experts’ appealing to persuasive tools for convincing the specialist and non-specialists of the truth value of their research outcomes. The findings carry pedagogical implications for English for the students of psychology courses. Indeed, future psychologists need to get familiar with the common discursive strategies to address their intended audience in academic and non-academic settings.

Global EFL coursebooks are used in numerous educational contexts throughout the world based on the assumption that they are the optimal source of English educational input. Their widespread use calls for a systematic analysis of these coursebooks using a framework that can reveal their defining characteristics. One such framework is the knowledge process framework, which is based on the multiliteracies pedagogy. The present study deployed this framework in an attempt to analyze seven widely taught coursebooks in the Iranian context. The findings revealed that knowledge processes of "analyzing functionally" and "applying appropriately" were more frequent in the analyzed coursebooks and the other knowledge processes were present in lower numbers. Based on the findings of the study, EFL teachers in the Iranian context are encouraged to include more activities with the knowledge processes of "analyzing critically" and "applying creatively" to address the absence of these knowledge processes while teaching the global coursebooks.

The present study intended to compare the complaint responses used by President Rouhani and President Obama in the Iranian and US news interview contexts. For this purpose, Boxer’s (1993) six types of indirect complaint responses were adopted: ‘ignorance’, ‘questions’, ‘topic switch’, ‘contradiction’, ‘joke/teasing’, ‘advice/lecture’ and ‘agreement/commiseration’. The transcripts of the live news interviews were selected from Tehran Times in Iran and ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Atlantic Daily’, and ‘National Public Radio’ all carried out in 2015. The results of quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed both universal and culture-specific responses. Whereas both nations made nearly equal use of ‘question’ response in order to make solidarity, ‘contradiction’ was used most frequently in the US interviews and ‘topic-switch’ and ‘commiseration’ were more frequent in Iranian transcripts. The findings are discussed with respect to the culture-specificity and universality and the way that news interviews deal with the political information including Iran’s nuclear negotiations.

This mixed-methods study aimed at investigating the effects of a gadget-based Internet multimedia extensive reading program on promoting language proficiency. In so doing, a pretest-posttest design was applied in the quantitative phase to comparatively analyze outcomes of three classes of college-level EFL learners (two experimental groups and one control, each including 30 university students) on how much they improved in their receptive proficiency, before and after the general English language course they were taking. The first group took the General English course along with a multimedia-based Internet extensive reading program as the study’s treatment, and the second group took a linear text (traditional) extensive reading program with their English course. The posttest scores showed that students in experimental group 1 (extensive reading using multimedia texts) outperformed both experimental group 2 (extensive reading using linear texts) and the control group. Furthermore, experimental group 2 had higher scores in comparison to the control group. As for the qualitative phase, results of the follow-up interviews and open-ended questionnaires also indicated that the learners liked, and would prefer to substitute traditional reading programs by gadget-based multimedia ones. EFL teachers may be most interested in outcomes of this study since insights may be gained regarding the extent to which Internet-based reading should enter language courses.

Corrective feedback refers to a teacher or student’s reaction to a learner’s target language production containing an actual or perceived error. The last three decades have witnessed a large amount of research on the impacts of various types of corrective feedback on students’ written production. Along the same vein, the present study seeks to explore the effectiveness of providing teachers’ metalinguistic feedback vs. peers’ collaborative feedback on students’ writing performance. In so doing, the present study adopted a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design including three upper-intermediate groups (i.e., two experimental and one control). The participants of the study were a total of 62 English as a foreign language (EFL) freshman students from two public universities in Tehran, Iran. The writing tasks utilized in the present study were adopted from IELTS writing Task 2. The results of one-way between groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that students produced significantly more lexically diverse as well as grammatically accurate language as a result of both treatments. Moreover, it was observed that collaborative peer feedback led to significantly higher lexical diversity than those of other two groups. The findings of the present study suggest that L2 teachers can opt for a combination of corrective feedback strategies to help learners improve their writing performance.