درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Abstract Formative assessment has been often encouraged recently as a pivot component in the methodology of evaluation but the student's view of how this affects the improvement of language learning in some countries is disregarded in a way. Therefore, the following study investigates the experiences of students (pre-service teachers) in formative assessment and the tools used for its implementation. Teaching and evaluation are based on learning outcomes and students' approach to the activities that students are liable to convey in the course of English for teachers in the Department of Education. The study analyzed students' perceptions and their approach to formative assessment utilization. The Formative Assessment appears as a dignified way to raise the quality of learning, and as a result, the students achieve their goal to pass the exam successfully and get high grades. To acquaint their perspectives, 85 students as study respondents took part in the research in which both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The quantitative research data from the questionnaire were analyzed through the SPSS platform, while the qualitative research data extracted from the focus group are presented through descriptive analysis, in the form of quotations. The findings of the questionnaires evinced the students' views on formative assessment and further, data from focus group discussions validated the reasonableness of what the students perceived in the questionnaire. Implications recommended that in addition to the tiresome work of continuously preparing during the teaching, EFL teachers are able to meet the individual needs of the students depending on the differences they have among themselves.

To date, a number of studies have investigated the use of euphemism in media to classify and analyze the euphemisms of different categories. However, these studies were mostly based on political contexts and the corpora have been limited due to the qualitative nature of the studies. Moreover, few studies have investigated the use of euphemism in countries where English is practiced as a foreign language. This study was an attempt to not only compare and contrast Iranian-published English newspapers and the New York Times thematically in terms of euphemistic expressions but also to ascertain the most frequently used ones in both.To this end,three corpora of all the sections of three journalistic materials within (2014-2019) were thoroughly examined. The data were collected using the search section of the three newspapers to look for the euphemistic expressions based on the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms as a point of reference. The results indicated that the most frequently used expression in the New York Times was ‘African American’ whereas the most frequently used expression in both Iran Daily and Tehran Times was ‘conflict’.The thematic changes between the three journalistic materials were also examined. The results revealed that the most frequently used category of euphemistic expressions in the New York Times was ‘Commerce, Banking, and Industry’, and the most frequently used category of euphemistic expression in Iran Daily and Tehran Times was similarly ‘Warfare’. The study might inform learners about a rich source of euphemistic expressions and enable them to recognize the most prevalent categories of euphemistic expressions thematically

The main purpose of this essay is to investigate the role of becoming through political and social factors among the main character’s changing identity in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. The researcher intends to depict the effects of political factors on the re-territorialization and territorialization of the main character through the framework of Deleuze’s theory. The current essay focuses on No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe to discover how becoming and transformation of identity take place throughout the novel and how the main character of the novel is going through constant change and becoming which are the result of different forces. Moreover, the researcher intends to investigate the character’s desires that result in the becoming process of identity deriving from social and capitalist factors in society. Since Deleuze and Guattari’s distinctive definition of literature investigates how minor literature is produced in the dominant narratives of major literature, it can critically assist the present research to discuss that Achebe prepares the ground for indigenous, anticolonial voices in his novel No Longer at Ease. It can be concluded that the main character of Achebe’s No Longer at Ease is in flux due to different forces, and his identity goes through constant becoming.

Sentiment analysis, as one of the text-mining techniques, has been widely used in many research areas related to public opinions. The present work seeks to examine the reception of the translations of  Louis Cha’s martial arts novels in the English and French worlds through sentiment analyses of readers’ online book reviews in popular book reviewing websites such as Amazon and Belio. The results show that the English and French versions of Louis Cha’s martial arts novels are mostly well received by readers since both English and French readers had given the highest ratings to the narrative features, plots and characterization features of the translated novels. Furthermore, between the translations in English and French, the reception level of the Anna Holmwood’s English version is higher than that of the French version by Jiann-yuh Wang. Overall, the findings of the study suggest that translations maintaining original Chinese cultural elements have been well-received in the Western community.

This study analyzed the overlap of motion lexicon, namely manner and path verbs’ frequency profiles, in English high school textbooks (9th-12th grade) and English university entrance exams (2010-2019) in Turkey through AntwordProfile r, a corpus linguistic tool. The manner verbs were sampled from Levin’s study (1993) while the path verbs were gathered from Talmy’s book (2001). The frequency of motion verbs in official teaching materials was compared with their frequency in exam materials using SPSS. The results indicate that the mismatch of motion verbs between the textbook and exam corpora is statistically significant in terms of manner verb frequency levels (p < .000). While path verbs scored, on average, higher in descriptive statistics in the textbook corpus, there was no statistical significance observed. The findings suggest that whenever the students take English exam, they may be more likely to be under a higher cognitive load and may be forced to develop the negative backwash effect since what is taught is not tested. This, consequently, raises concerns regarding the content validity of exams and other issues related to the reliability and validity of the national English exams. The findings of this study have implications for material developers and test takers.

This paper discusses cultural and cognitive factors that may affect the degree of the aptness of metaphors. A given metaphor may have different degrees of aptness across different cultures. Geographical features of the area and the role of the base concept in the lives of people are cultural aspects that may affect the degree of the aptness of a metaphor for people of a culture. A metaphor with ‘lighthouse’ as the base domain would have a higher degree of aptness for people living near the sea compared to people living far away from the sea. Folktale and religion are also important aspects of culture that may have some degree of influence on the aptness of metaphors. In summary, the cultural dimensions of the concepts that are involved in the base and target domains of a metaphor could affect the degree of the aptness of that metaphor for people of that culture. Finally, the roles of metonymic relations and semantic features in the degree of aptness are discussed.

Although there is a large body of literature on the use of connectors by EFL learners in argumentative writing, African language learner groups are not represented and most studies have adopted a cross-sectional approach. This paper seeks to analyze how frequently connectors are used on the basis of pseudo-longitudinal data from first, second, and third-year undergraduate students from the Institute for Applied Pedagogy, University of Burundi. The study adopted the corpus linguistic and quantitative approaches. The data were collected through 2 writing assignments given to students in 2019. In total, 622 essays, amounting to 306,664-word tokens, were collected. Data preparation followed three steps, namely, typing the handwritten essays, preparing the TXT files, and metadata for the corpus. The latter was searched using AntConc tool, on the basis of a comprehensive list of 95 connectors, classified into 6 categories. The tool availed frequency information, that is, how often each connector occurs in the corpus. Percentages were computed using XLS facility and are presented in tables and graphs. Results indicate that 19 connectors were frequently used by learners, the most frequent ones being those which add information followed by those expressing a result relationship. However, connectors expressing transition and summation were found to be rarely used in the corpus. Another discovery is that learners in all three years of study seem to have the same preferences in terms of connectors. Furthermore, cases of misuse such as wrong combinations and incorrect spelling, semantic, stylistic and syntactic errors were observed at all levels. The findings of this study can be useful to learners, teachers, and material designers.

In any teacher education practicum program in the Philippines, teaching demonstration is the most challenging undertaking of the student teachers during the internship program. This phenomenological study design explored the teaching demonstration experiences of student teachers reflected in their teaching journals. Data were 22 teaching journals taken from the internship portfolios produced by the Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSEd)-English graduates from a state university in the Philippines. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Eight generated themes from the teaching journals that could provide suggestions for future student teachers and other members of the discourse community concerning the teaching demonstration were drawn, which are 1. ‘The Look’ of a Student Teacher, 2. Teaching with Enthusiasm, 3. The Voice of a Student Teacher in the ESL Classroom, 4. Lesson Planning Advice, 5. Subject Matter Familiarity, 6. Instructional Materials Efficiency, 7. Tips for Classroom Management, and 8. Improving the Questioning Skill. A focus group interview with the participants, which was also analyzed using content analysis, with some of the BSEd-English graduates was also utilized to further discuss the findings. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications for the Teacher Education Institution (TEI) and the concerned members of the discourse community.

This study explored possible reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing by investigating the effects of two different test designs and scoring criteria on Iranian IELTS candidates’ obtained grades in IELTS and World Englishes (WEs) essay writing tests. To this end, first, a WEs essay writing test was preliminarily designed. Then, 17 Iranian IELTS candidates wrote two essays on the same topic, one under the IELTS test condition and one under the WEs test condition. Each of the 34 obtained essays was scored six times, three times based on IELTS scoring criteria, each time by a different rater, and then, three times based on WEs scoring criteria. The results of repeated-measures ANOVA showed that test design and scoring criteria had significant effects on essay grades. The study concludes that some of the reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing may be rooted in the test design and scoring criteria of the IELTS essay writing test, not necessarily in IELTS candidates’ weaknesses in writing. The implications of the study focus on the importance and relevance of the results to IELTS candidates, international students, and the future of assessing writing in World Englishes contexts.