درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study set out to investigate the effect of a newly-developed model of writing instruction in comparison with Swalesian genre approach, and the traditionally-favored product-oriented approach on Academic Writing Motivation of Iranian EFL learners. The devised model was called System-Nested, Genre-Oriented, Structurally-Mediated Model of Writing Instruction. Next, with a quasi-experimental design, three groups of learners received writing instruction via traditionally-favored product-oriented approach (N = 8), Swales’ genre-based approach (N = 8), and the newly-developed model (N = 7). The participants received an academic writing motivation questionnaire prior and subsequent to their treatments as pretest and posttest. The results of ANCOVA revealed that the participants in the newly developed model group outperformed the other two groups on the posttest of writing motivation. Additionally, the learners in the Swalesian genre approach group performed significantly better than those in the product-oriented approach group. Language teachers are encouraged to incorporate the system-nested, genre-oriented, structurally-mediated model of writing instruction or other genre-based models to improve learners’ academic writing motivation.

Intercultural communication is concerned with communication across cultures. Since cultures as well as languages differ from one another in significant ways, speakers conceptualize the world around them in different ways. These cultural conceptualizations form part of the collective cognition of a speech community or cultural group. This paper is an attempt to delineate some cultural schemas in Persian cultural conceptualization which are quite prevalent in Iranian culture and language which may crop up in everyday conversations. For this purpose, cultural schemas of 'maram', 'marefat', and 'gheyrat' are selected based on their frequent use in Persian language and Iranian culture. These schemas are elaborated and some implications for L2 learning are suggested.

In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and bilingual language classrooms, code-switching is widespread among teacher-student and student-student interactions; however, there seem to be few or no studies tracking the perceptions and practices of EFL learners toward code-switching. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the perceptions and practices of high and low achievers toward teacher code-switching with focus on the possible limitations and benefits that it might have in language classrooms. For this purpose, the researchers used a qualitative design in the form of grounded theory. Accordingly, 11 high and 13 low achievers were interviewed individually and in focus groups. Further, the elicited responses were transcribed and codified using Straus and Corbin’s (1998) constant comparative method. In addition, for the purpose of validation, real observations of 10 university classes in different English courses were made.  The findings revealed 4 major themes and 26 categories for high and low achievers. Consequently, the findings implicated that code-switching was an advantageous tool at the disposal of English teachers.

Kumaravadivelue’s (2012) language teacher education for a global society known as KARDS has gathered little momentum in the context of Iran due to scarcity of studies on it. To fill this gap, the present research investigated Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions of KARDS with regard to variables including teaching context, gender, and teaching experience. To this end, a KARDS questionnaire was designed, constructed, and validated by the researchers, and the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the validity of the questionnaire. Later, it was administered to 400 English teachers in Tehran. Then, 20 participants volunteered for follow-up interviews, and their verbatim interview transcripts were content analyzed. The results of descriptive statistics and MANOVA indicated that teachers’ perceptions were positive for the majority of items except theorization, observation of colleagues’ classes, and needs analysis done by outsiders, and there were significant differences in teachers’ perceptions of KARDS with regard to their teaching context, gender, and teaching experience. Also, the qualitative investigation of teachers’ perceptions confirmed the findings of the quantitative part.

Problem-based Learning (PBL) as one of the newest teaching methods in the area of language teaching in second and foreign contexts, has been used by teachers in the last two decades in different institutes. In the current study, attempts were made to find out the effect of the two PBL subcategories, i.e. Hybrid Problem-based Learning (H-PBL) and Pure Problem-based Learning (PPBL) in comparison to a traditional lecture-based method, on Iranian EFL university learners’ speaking skill and their self-confidence, by implementing these two methods in the EFL classroom using eight teacher-made real-world problems. To this purpose, 56 undergraduate participants of Payam Noor university (PNU) in Abadan, Iran, were randomly selected, divided into a control group and two treatment HPBL and PPBL groups. The statistical analysis of the obtained results of the participants’ pretest-posttest scores, through one-way ANCOVA and Man-Whitney U test, revealed that the treatment groups outperformed the control group in speaking skill and self-confidence The findings of the study might bear implications for teachers and university curriculum designers to take more proper approaches towards the instructing university participants.

Since its inception in 1949, over 1,500 studies have investigated the validity of the GRE General Test to predict its performance criteria in higher education (Klieger, Bridgeman, Tannenbaum, & Cline, 2016). The present review paper sought to examine the predictive validity of the GRE General Test. Factors affecting the predictive validity (e.g., range restriction, compensatory selection, criterion unreliability, substantive and artifactual moderators, bias in testing, coaching effects, socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and a host of other intervening factors such as motivation, communication skills, etc.) have been discussed. A brief overview of GRE revised General Test format is also presented. After an account of the related review of the literature, a critical commentary on the predictive validity of the GRE General Test has been discussed with an emphasis on the role of criterion unreliability and SES factor effects. Keywords: Predictive validity, Graduate Record Examination (GRE), criterion unreliability, range restriction, compensatory selection

This study is aimed at (1) examining the preferred English learning styles among secondary school students; (2) exploring the mismatches in teachers’ English teaching styles and students’ learning style preferences. A quantitative approach was used to seek answers to the research questions. The sample of this research involved 204 students and 5 teachers of English from 5 different secondary schools in Vientiane Capital, Lao PDR. All student and teacher participants were invited to rate their agreement levels on a five-point rating scale, towards Reid’s (1995) six learning style preferences. The data collected were analyzed based on descriptive statistics. The findings reveal that student participants had more than one preferred learning styles. They preferred Kinesthetic, Group, and Audio learning styles in their English classes. For them, learning through doing, learning and working together with classmates, doing or resolving challenging tasks as well as listening to teachers and someone’s instructions through interaction made them learn more effectively. The study also finds that mismatches in styles between teachers’ teaching styles and students’ learning style preferences do exist in four out of the five sampled schools. Teachers are more oriented to Visual styles. For instance, they favor writing things on board, asking students to read from textbooks, provide activities that make students read rather than listen to instructions, while students are likely not to prefer the Visual learning style.

Television can be considered a rich, helpful, and valuable source to expose L2 learners to huge amounts of comprehensible input so that they can improve their L2 knowledge and, in particular, their L2 vocabulary knowledge. This study aimed to discover how effective sustainable and extensive TV viewing can be in L2 vocabulary learning, considering the language of the on-screen text (L1 or L2) and instruction type (preteaching L2 items or not). Eighty L2 learners (58 female and 22 male), who had an intermediate English proficiency and were divided into four groups, participated in the intervention over an academic term in a language institute. Participants viewed 14 episodes of a TV series under four experimental conditions: (1) captions and preteaching, (2) captions without preteaching, (3) subtitles and preteaching, and (4) subtitles without preteaching. A pre/posttest design to examine the gains regarding both L2 vocabulary meaning and form was adopted. Results suggested that extensive exposure to TV series positively affected the participants’ L2 vocabulary learning, both in terms of meaning and form. Participants exposed to L2 captions outperformed those who had received L1 subtitles, concerning both L2 vocabulary meaning and form. Finally, the analyses showed that, overall, the groups that had undergone preteaching performed better, regardless of the language of the on-screen texts.