درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study aims at scrutinizing the inference complexity level (henceforth ICL) of test items of the Iranian State University TEFL Ph.D. entrance exam (ISUTPEE) from 2010 to 2017 through the lens of Kintsch's construction-integration theory (C-I) (Kintsch, 1988, 1998). Though there is ample research on inferencing in the field of reading comprehension, the existing literature reveals a serious gap in relation to inferencing complexity of test items in high-stakes exams that exert profound effects on the academic achievements of the individuals. Inferencing is examined in this study to explore the ICL of the test items of the Special Knowledge Test (SKT) according to three levels of memory representations of Kintsch's model: the surface model, the textbase, and the situation model. To this end, the test items for eight consecutive years of the ISUTPEE were examined in relation to the three distinct kinds of mental representations. To ensure the reliability of coding by the researchers, two other specialist coders assessed the ICL of 33% of the items. The intraclass correlation among the three sets of codes was 0.91. The results of the study showed that a large number of questions, accounting for more than 80% of the items, merely activate the surface and the textbase model of information representations in memory. Furthermore, the ICL for each of the four parts of SKT was examined. This analytical study carries a stark warning regarding a deficiency of systematic attention to ICL in the development of test items.

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) assume different roles amongst which is leadership. To lead effectively, they need to possess some significant awareness of the language in order to adequately respond to learners’ needs. One domain of awareness is the ability to distinguish between structurally similar, yet semantically different structures. This study set out to assess ESL teachers’ level of semantic awareness in view of establishing their readiness to meet learners’ needs within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The Follow-up Explanatory Research Design was used. Data on the cognitions of ESL teachers were elicited from a questionnaire survey while a test was used to quantify ESL teachers’ language awareness levels in the domain of semantics. The quantitative data from the test were analyzed using frequencies and simple percentages while the qualitative data were analyzed using the framework of Content Analyses. The findings reveal that though ESL teachers overestimate the level of their knowledge base in components that have a bearing on semantics awareness, a majority of them do not wield beyond a fundamental level of awareness as concerns applying that knowledge to differentiate the meanings of structurally similar pairs of sentences. It is therefore crucial for English language pre-service and in-service teacher training to seek ways of enhancing the professional knowledge base of ESL teachers especially in domains that are critical to establishing differences between pairs of sentences that tend to be similar.

Nous nous intéressons dans cette recherche à la portée de l’effet modérateur de l’intelligence émotionnelle dans la relation de l’intelligence multiple avec l’apprentissage du FLE. Nous nous occupons, en particulier, de la façon dont cette intelligence affecte le processus d’apprentissage en gérant les émotions des apprenants et leur motivation à apprendre. En nous appuyant sur le modèle de l’intelligence multiple de Gardner (1997) ainsi que les théories de Goleman (2000) concernant l'intelligence émotionnelle, nous nous proposons comme hypothèse que l’intelligence émotionnelle pourrait modifier l’impact des composantes de l’intelligence multiple sur l’apprentissage du français. Notre objectif est donc d'abord de mesurer le niveau de l'importance des intelligences multiples dans l'apprentissage du français et puis d'étudier la façon dont l’intelligence émotionnelle soutient ces dernières dans leur tâche. Une enquête de nature descriptive où la collecte des données suivait la méthodologie du sondage était menée au sein d'une université iranienne. Elle nous a permis d'affirmer que les intelligences interpersonnelle, visuelle-spatiale et musicale des apprenants iraniens du FLE contribuent à un meilleur apprentissage.

Tahar Djaout, auteur, poète et journaliste algérien, aborde dans ses écrits la violence qui persiste dans son pays dans la période allant de l’arrivée du Colonisateur à l’époque postcoloniale. Chez Djaout, la question qui se pose c'est que l'œuvre qui est  naturellement polyphonique, à la croisée du fictif et factuel, d'une diversité de domaines, de langues et d'expressions (orale/écrite), à quel point pourrait éclaircir les problèmes de violence, d'identité, d'interculturel et de linguistique et à la fois a ttirer son interlocuteur. Pour pouvoir arriver à une synthèse de la mise en scène de la violence dans son œuvre, nous nous sommes essentiellement penchée sur trois de ses écrits :  L es Vigiles ,  L'Exproprié  et  Le Dernier été de la raison  qui se situent plutôt dans le cadre du roman, chevauchant entre le factuel et le fictif. En analysant les discours dans les romans précités, nous allons déduire qu’en associant le fond à la forme, Djaout parvient à montrer la violence qui secoue son pays .

World literature is replete with many texts that depict the imperialists using hypocritical language as an oppressive device for intimidating their subjects. The oppressors pretended to be the civilizers by inculcating the idea of “Benevolent Colonization” into the minds of the oppressed. In this paper, the researchers investigate how situational and linguistic contexts affect the meanings of utterances in George Orwell’s selected novels. It is aimed to remove the gaps in the multicultural world by scrutinizing the power of language pragmatically. The methodology is qualitative based on Grice’s theory of implicature. The novels under investigation both violate and adhere to the four maxims of Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature. The findings of the paper indicate that language can be used as a suppressive weapon for supporting imperialist objectives or hamper satisfactory human relations, and that positive gifts of imperialism come with the caveat that they are being achieved at the cost of exploiting the oppressed.

Reading passages act as the locus of comprehensible input in the English language teaching materials and are mostly followed by a host of activities to ensure the learners’ comprehension. The current study aimed to carry out a comparative evaluation of Vision 3 and Learning to Read (i.e., English for Pre-university Students) in terms of the reading sections. To this end, Freeman’s taxonomy of reading comprehension questions was used. To enrich the quantitative data, thirty-two English teachers were also interviewed. The results revealed the prevalence of Language questions in both textbooks. However, the least common types of questions were Affect and Content in the old and new textbook, respectively. The results of Chi-square tests unfolded a significant difference between the two textbooks in terms of three categories of questions. The analysis of the teachers’ responses corroborated the findings of the quantitative phase. The teachers seemed satisfied with the inclusion of more Affect questions in Vision 3; nevertheless, they believed that the new English textbook needed to be revised in terms of the quantity and quality of reading texts and tasks in order to shape and expand the students’ reading comprehension skills. The findings carry pedagogical implications for the materials developers and English teachers.

Teachers usually teach according to how brains naturally learn. In this way, not only do their learners learn, retain, and recall quickly, but also the teaching becomes more joyful. Increased attention to the worthwhile role of the mind in learning/teaching in recent times Due to the lack of a valid scale for estimating teachers' awareness of brain-friendly teaching, the current study intended to construct and validate a 54-item brain-friendly teaching inventory by the implementation of the Rasch model. The test was administered to 200 Iranian EFL teachers from different educational contexts. The results revealed that all the 54 items of the scale had a good fit to the Rasch model. Infit and outfit values were within the acceptable range which indicates unidimensionality of the scale. Furthermore, it is asserted that the inventory enjoyed suitable reliability. This demonstrates that the Brain-Friendly Teaching Inventory is valid and can be applied as a scale for assessing the teachers' awareness of brain-friendly teaching.

The use of storytelling on students’ first language literacy and development were extended to foreign/second language learning, and a large number of researchers interested in the field attempted to use storytelling and story reading strategies in teaching oral language skills to foreign/second language learners. Despite the existence of a number of studies on the impact of storytelling on English language skills, the number of studies on the impact of storytelling and story reading approaches on pre- intermediate EFL learners’ oral language production and comprehension seems to be scanty. To do so, a quasi- experimental study was employed. Ninety Iranian language learners, from 6 intact classes (each consisting of 15), were divided to three sub-groups: storytelling, story reading and conventional groups. To one group, stories were told, one group only read the stories, and the third group received no stories. The data were collected through researcher developed oral language production and comprehension tests. One-way-ANOVA test and three independent samples-tests based on Bonferroni test were employed to analyze the data and locate the sources of the differences. Findings revealed that storytelling outperformed story reading groups on both production and comprehension tests. Story reading group outperformed the conventional group. It can be concluded telling and reading stories are effective techniques for improving EFL learners’ oral language production and recognition.

The present descriptive study aimed at investigating the human and machine Persian translations of The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini, and comparing the applied translation strategies in the translated texts for culture-specific items (CSI). To this end, based on Newmark’s (1988) category, the applied strategies were identified in the two translations and compared. The obtained results showed that Naturalization and Transposition strategies were the most frequently-used strategies by both human translators and machine translation. The results also showed that machine translation could not present a comprehensible translation due to overuse of these strategies (75%). It was further revealed that the spirit of the original text was not lost in the translated versions due to the closeness of Iranian and Afghan cultures. In fact, the translated versions kept the real beauty and creativity of the original work. However, the remorseful theme of the source text was kept intact to a great extent in the human translation of the novel, while machine translation lost it. Thus, the general impression is that culture-specific terms make it difficult for the machine translation to achieve complete word-for-word and semantic equivalence, and that the human translator must have a broad knowledge of the literature and traditions of both the source and target languages.