درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Abstract Addressing the limitations and criticisms of cloze tests, Klein-Braley and Raatz suggested a modified version of the cloze test called the C-test where the ‘C’ stands for cloze. They introduced the C-test as a better representation of the reduced-redundancy principle. In C-tests, several shorter texts involving a larger number of items completed within a shorter amount of time while cloze tests usually consist of one or two longer texts with less items. This study reports on the results of a research program carried out to validate the C-test amongst Afghan EFL learners. One hundred advanced English majors were administered two different language tests namely a language proficiency test (composed of listening, reading, and writing) and a C-test composed of four different texts to measure the overall language ability of the participants. Various analyses were to measure the validity and reliability of the C-test. The results of the study confirmed that the C-test is a reliable and valid test which can be used as a general English language proficiency test among Afghan students of English as a foreign language.

This study aimed at identifying the most frequent test-taking strategies used by successful Iranian male and female university entrance exam EFL applicants. To this end, 150 English major male and female freshman students who got admission to three reputable state universities of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran were selected conveniently and purposively. The model used in this study was developed by Barati (2005) consisting of planning, monitoring, evaluation, and test-wiseness strategies. After selecting the participants, the modified questionnaire developed based on Barati’s test-taking strategy taxonomy was distributed among the participants. Based on the analysis of results, it was revealed that the EFL learners made frequent use of planning, monitoring, evaluation, and test-wiseness strategies, but only the level of use of planning and monitoring strategies reached statistical significance. Moreover, male and female EFL learners were only significantly different in their use of evaluation strategies, but in terms of using planning, monitoring, and test-wiseness strategies, males and females were not significantly different from one another. The findings of the study bear useful implications for EFL learners, teachers, materials designers, and test constructors.

Considéré comme noyau de la phrase, le verbe fait l’objet d’étude de cet article. Pour circonscrire le champ de recherche, nous avons cerné quatre catégories de verbes dont introducteurs, synonymes, ceux construits avec préfixes et les verbes polysémiques pour les examiner sur le plan sémantico-lexical et voir leurs effets en traduction. Nous voulons savoir comment il faut réagir devant chaque catégorie pour trouver un équivalent convenable selon le contexte. Un corpus constitué des extraits d’un livre de jeunesse, ainsi que les phrases en langue persane élaborés à notre initiative et leur traduction en français nous ont permis d’effectuer notre étude. Les résultats de ce tour d’horizon verbal basé sur les exemples analysés nous montrent l’immense richesse des verbes français et leur raffinement lexical, de sorte que pour un moindre geste ou une légère nuance dans un acte, un verbe vient en aide pour compléter la phrase sur le plan sémantique.

La description joue un rôle fondamental dans l’œuvre des écrivains réalistes. Ces derniers pensent effectivement que la multiplication des détails renforce « l’effet de réel » existant dans un texte donné. La description aura donc pour fonction de décrire des milieux, des faits et de représenter la réalité. Le roman dit " réaliste " est en quelque sorte, un passage de l'oralité à la visualité à travers, entre autres, les descriptions minutieuses et souvent détaillées. Ainsi, la description est-elle l’un des mécanismes par lesquels le roman traditionnel produit l'illusion de la réalité. Chez le narrateur de ce genre de roman, tous les détails sont importants, même les détails apparemment insignifiants et inutiles, car ils rendent du moins l’histoire vraisemblable et crédible. Ayant un effet de réel, les descriptions réalistes affectent la fiction. Autrement dit, elles sont là pour « faire vrai ». Ainsi, la description est le mode d'expression privilégié du romancier réaliste et l’un des mécanismes par lesquels le roman traditionnel produit l'illusion de la réalité. Au XX e siècle, Queneau, l’écrivain adhéré au mouvement surréaliste, met ce genre de description en jeu et en parodie. Dans cet article, nous nous demanderons comment Queneau, cofondateur de l’Oulipo, met en question les descriptions réalistes qui étaient jusque-là toujours chargées du souci de la réalité. Les descriptions données par Queneau sont souvent destructrices; loin d’aider le lecteur à imaginer les personnages et les choses, elles en retardent les images.

The presented study examined the effect of applying software technology, (i.e., WhiteSmoke Writing Software (TM 2020), on the improvement of EFL learners' writing skills. To do so, 55 EFL learners ranged in age from 20 to 22 who were studying English as a Foreign Language in Bahar Institute of Higher Education, Iran were invited to participate in the research. During the study, the participants who were already studying Passages coursebook were informed that for 7 weeks the class orientation and focus will change to writing instruction, which was most welcome by them. One class was considered as an experimental group of 26 students, while the other one was a control group of 29 students. Based on the prior completion of the course, all were considered intermediate. Control group students worked conventionally on the book and received feedback on their performance from the teacher while the learners in the experimental group worked with WhiteSmoke Writing Software which is the most comprehensive grammar checker. At the end of the study, the comparison of the pretest and posttest demonstrated that the participants in the experimental group outperformed the control group subjects at a 0.05 significant level. The outcomes of the current study approved that the application of software technology in the classroom context was treasured. Also, the utilization of software made the learners be in charge of their own learning process, which can be a great advantage on the part of online teaching and learning.

This quantitative study aimed to investigate the combined effects of two types of strategic planning, namely collaborative and teacher-led planning conditions and task complexity on Iranian intermediate language learners' oral production in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To achieve this purpose, 90 EFL learners were selected through convenience sampling from a language institute in Shiraz, Iran, and randomly assigned to two control and four experimental groups. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design in the form of pretest, treatment, and posttest. In the first step, all participants took part in a speaking pretest in which they were required to narrate a story based on a series of picture description tasks. While the experimental groups underwent 10 treatment sessions of picture description task performance along with two planning types i.e., teacher-led and collaborative planning conditions, the control groups were not allowed to plan the task performance. In the last session, the language learners took a posttest whose results were compared with those of the pretest. The findings revealed that the language learners in the collaborative planning groups outperformed the other groups in terms of both fluency and complexity. Further, teacher-led groups did better than the other groups in terms of accuracy. This study carries crucial implications for EFL teachers, material developers, syllabus designers, and speaking skill examiners.