درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The study examined the impact of high school English teachers’ awareness of pedagogical competence on student learning. A psychometric measurement instrument of English language teachers’ pedagogical competence (ELTPC) was first developed through factor analysis with 320 high school teachers in Guilan, northern Iran. Based on the developed instrument, 36 teachers were divided into two groups of aware and unaware teachers of pedagogical competence (PC) according to Contrasting Groups Method. Then, 160 high school third graders received instruction from the aware and unaware teachers for 7 weeks. Finally, a survey regarding the teachers’ implementation of pedagogical competence in classrooms was conducted with 30 students. The findings showed that the students in the aware teacher group outperformed the students in the unaware group of teachers. Although based on the survey results, the aware teachers were reported to act better with regard to the students’ learning achievements, they were not reported as highly practicing the pedagogical competence. The findings can be practically used by teachers, teacher educators, and education administrators.

The article deals with some “generic” features of Russian literature. The works of Russian thinkers are permeated by the idea of Russian writers’ exclusive fate, which consists in these writers’ discovering their own selves. Their artistic quest was aimed at comprehending the spiritual substance of a human being within themselves. Russian artistic school also implies the period of growth, the development of Russian national culture, its historical and cultural character, and according to N.Ya. Danilevsky and A.S. Khomiakov, it was convinced that our writers should take in the European heritage, but they should not limit their works to it. One should embrace works of different schools and become a free artist. The central and the most intense questions to consider for each thinker are those of Russian artists’ worldview, their spiritual and creative act (their unique “artistry”), the subject matter, lyricism, the artistic word, and particular types of creative works. It is not a coincidence that in their articles they have dwelled on the European (Catholic and Protestant) lifestyles and that of the Old Testament. They concluded that the Russian artistic type is characterized by “completeness and integrity of mind”, maturity and manhood, unparalleled sincerity, simplicity and directness in treating the subject matter, and artistic ingenuousness.

This study investigated the impact of interaction and output modality on vocabulary learning and retention of EFL learners. To investigate the impact of Interaction, solitary (n =69) and collaborative (n =62) groups served as experimental and No Interaction No Output (n =26) as control group. To address the effect of modality, spoken (n =39) and written (n =31) modalities served as experimental and No output modality (n =26) as control group. The study was done in 8 weeks. The groups read passages with target words highlighted. Solitary and collaborative groups reconstructed the passages individually or in dyads. The spoken and written modality groups reconstructed them in the respective modality. Then, pretest, immediate, and delayed posttests were administered. The ANOVA results showed that the collaborative group outperformed the other groups and spoken modality outperformed the written modality group focusing on interaction and modality separately. The 2×2×2 ANOVA results showed significant main effects for time, interaction, and output modality. An ‘interaction’ effect was found between time and interaction, time and modality, and modality and Interaction. The ‘interaction’ between time, Interaction, and modality was insignificant. The findings have implications for language teachers, syllabus designers, and language testing experts.

The present study is a methodological synthesis aiming to evaluate the adherence of Iranian L2 papers to the study quality standards. Ten Iranian journals were selected based on the latest ranking of Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology (MSRT), and all experimental papers (N = 367) published from their beginnings were explored for study quality with regards to sampling, design, statistical tests, reporting practices and data sharing, and visual presentation. In the evaluation of the papers, the protocols proposed by Gass and Plonsky (2011) and Pagout and Plonsky (2017) were moderated and some recent issues proposed by APA’s (2018) Journal Article Reporting Standards and some scholars (e.g., Hu & Plonsky, 2019; Khany & Tazik, 2019; Larson-Hall, 2017) were added. The results showed that while there were issues, like acceptable sample size, use of pre-testing, reporting descriptive and inferential statistics, and ensuring the reliability of instruments, that were acceptably adhered to quality standards, problematic areas existed in all five facets of quality, and the majority of them stayed constant or changed slightly over time. The shortcomings caused by such lack of adherence are discussed to identify the challenges in the way of improving the papers’ quality. Although the results are obtained from a specific context, the implications may be generalizable to other contexts where English is taught and researched as a foreign language .

This study investigates the role structural priming plays in production of passive structures among Iranian EFL learners. In order to answer the research question, which asked whether structural priming effects result in an increase in the production of the target structure (i.e., passive structures), 60 Iranian EFL learners participated in the study. After taking the placement test, they were divided into four experimental and control groups, namely Experimental High-Proficiency, Experimental Mid-Proficiency, Control High-Proficiency, and Control Mid-Proficiency. Participants then took part in picture description sessions the results of which were subjected to a 2 x 2 analysis of variance. The results of the experiment showed that priming resulted in increased production of the target structure in question by experimental groups as compared with production by control groups. In addition, the results indicated that EFL level of proficiency made a significant difference in production of the target structures. It is believed that structural priming can be employed as an alternative technique for presenting certain grammatical structures

Argument maps as schematic representations of arguments and their logical and evidential relationships are effective diagrams for instruction in education as well as in L2 development. However, their use for teaching L2 writing in EFL contexts has not been adequately studied. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of argument mapping instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ writing achievement and writing components, including grammar, coherence, cohesion, and task accomplishment in expository and descriptive essays. The participants were 60 intermediate EFL learners at Fadak language institute in Tehran. The selected participants were randomly divided into two groups: an experimental and a control group, each including 30 participants. Materials, coursebooks, and the teacher were the same for the study groups. However, the participants in the experimental group received specific instruction about the use of argument maps before and during their writing. After 10 sessions of treatment, the learners in the two groups were asked to write a descriptive and an expository paragraph. The paragraphs were rated by two raters and the final score was the average of the scores given by the two raters. The results of the data analysis revealed that argument mapping strategies had significant improvement impact on expository and descriptive writing tasks and could improve participants’ writing in terms of grammar, coherence, cohesion, and task achievement. However, argument mapping was not beneficial in improving the vocabulary of study participants’ writing. Findings of the study suggest that EFL language instructors and learners can use argument maps for teaching descriptive and expository writing.

Teaching grammar has always created some challenges for EFL teachers. Therefore, this study explored the effect of four scaffolding strategies as contextualizing, modeling, metacognitive scaffolding, and bridging on Iranian EFL students’ grammatical knowledge. Moreover, this study examined Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes towards scaffolding strategies. To fulfil the purpose of this study, 40 language learners were chosen based on convenience sampling as the participants of this study. They were both males and females between 20 to 30 years old divided into two groups as the control and experimental groups. After assuring the homogeneity of the students in terms of their English proficiency in general and grammatical knowledge in particular, a parallel achievement test was administered to both groups as the pre-test. Following that, as the treatment, scaffolding strategies were applied for the experimental group to teach grammar and a traditional way of teaching grammar for the control group. After running the classes, a parallel achievement test was administered to both control and experimental groups as the posttest. The data analysis revealed that the experimental group that received scaffolding strategies significantly outperformed in the grammar part compared to the control group which received a conventional way of teaching grammar. It is believed that utilizing scaffolding strategies can motivate learners and facilitate the tough task of grammar learning and thereby make teachers aware of their ability to obtain success in their teaching process.

Foreign language learners tend to avoid phonological difficulties and simply transfer sounds whether from their L1 or any pre-existing L2. Phonological awareness (PA) gives students an active role in understanding their own potential in improving pronunciation through several methods. However, such methods are likely to be restricted to only passive learning methods, such as repetition, reading and lectures. In this study, 118 Japanese students of Spanish were tested in their articulation ability of the Spanish liquid [r] segment; the students were divided into two groups: the control group (GA), composed by 59 students, which did not undergo any special PA training, and the PA trained group (GB), composed as well by 59 students, which underwent only one PA intervention. The articulatory accuracy rate of GA for such segment after their first year of language acquisition was 27.16, while for GB it was 72.54 after the PA intervention. The improvement of GB after the PA intervention was highly significant in regard to the learners’ phonological accuracy (p < 0.001)