درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study was conducted to explore the impact of integrating an evaluation cycle (Newly-developed Task Cycle) into Willis's task-based model on the improvement of Iranian medical students’ reading comprehension. In this quasi-treatment study, 60 medical students were selected through convenience sampling from Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, Jahrom, Iran, and assigned to two groups of Willis and NDTC. The control group (Willis group) received the procedures of the task-based cycle proposed by Willis, and the treatment group (NTDC group) received the procedures of NDTC designed by the researchers of this study. Each group participated in 12 sessions with a focus on reading comprehension, which met twice a week for 90 minutes. Prior to starting the treatment, a pre-test was administered. Also, one week after the last session, a post-test was administered. The post-test scores were compared with pre-test scores in each group and finally with each other. The results obtained from the statistical analysis of the collected data revealed that while both frameworks were effective in improving the learners’ reading skills, NDTC had a greater impact in this respect. The findings of the study have beneficial implications for teachers, researchers, and educational managers, should NDTC be infiltrated into teaching methods. 

English coursebooks used in vocational secondary schools should accommodate the engineering students’ needs for their future profession. It is essential to reveal company trainers’ and engineers’ perception of the English coursebook used at school to know whether the English coursebook meets students’ needs for their future profession or not. Therefore, in this study, we investigated company trainers’ and engineers’ perception of the English coursebook that is used at vocational secondary schools based on the social semiotic perspective. We distributed open-ended questionnaires and conducted in-depth interviews to both engineers and engineering company trainers as professionals about the topics and registers provided in the English coursebook. The results of data analysis revealed that the topics and registers in the coursebook are not relevant with what students need for their future profession as engineers. In fact, both engineers and company trainers believed that the English coursebook should provide topics and registers related to the engineering field. Thus, we hope that the findings of this article would positively contribute to the development of English materials and coursebooks for vocational secondary school level.

The present research aimed to conceptualize the construct of Teacher Assessment Identity (TAI) by designing and validating a questionnaire in the Iranian EFL context. In so doing, a tentative scale with 96 items was piloted on 340 novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (EFA, CFA). The results of the analyses led to the removal of 33 items, leaving the questionnaire with 61 items on a five-point Likert scale. Moreover, the results revealed that the construct of TAI has 12 factors including assessment “knowledge”, “beliefs”, “attitudes”, “skills and confidence”, “practices”, “use assurance”, “feedback”, “rubric/criteria”, “consistency and consequence”, “grading/scoring”, “question-types”, and “roles”. Likewise, the convergent validity and reliability of the instrument to measure the construct of concern was statistically confirmed (p>.05). The findings have various implications for EFL teachers, teacher trainers, course designers, and language researchers by raising their awareness of assessment identity and its underlying components.

This case study examined the adaptivity of learning transfer from an English for general academic purposes course to different disciplinary writing contexts. Data were collected at the end of one academic semester from 7 students of engineering disciplines enrolled in the writing course. Their EGAP writing course lasted for 16 weeks over which they were taught The St. Martin's Handbook, 6th Edition. The participants’ disciplinary writings together with interview transcripts served as the data sources for the extraction of adaptive transfers and also the processes of realizing the transfers. Adaptive transfers were identified by participants. Findings indicated that learning outcomes can transfer adaptively through a variety of processes to accommodate to the new writing demands. The results showed that the participants could adapt their learning along two broad dimensions of transfer, ‘idea generation’ (IG) and ‘text construction’ (TC) with the former involving ‘explication’ and ‘integration’ of knowledge and the latter achieved at macro and micro level. Within these adaptive transfers, we found a range of writing issues pursued including ‘goals, topics, logics, propositions, integrity, disciplinarity, linearity, paragraphing and linguistic resources’. Furthermore, the findings displayed two broad categories of ‘higher order’ and ‘lower order’ processes employed for the realization of adaptive transfers. While higher order processes operated through ‘transformative and evaluative’ mechanisms, the lower order processes involved two categories of ‘avoidance and affordance’, with the former as an attempt to refrain from going wrong and the latter as an effort to generate adaptivity. The findings for L2 writing are theoretically discussed.

This study assessed the effect of using English songs on Iranian pre-school students’ speaking proficiency in Kerman. The study was conducted at Novin pre-school, in total, fifty pre-school students aged 5-6 participated in the study. At the beginning of the study, a pre-test of speaking was administered to the participants of the study. Then, they were assigned into two groups, 25 students were in the control group and 25 students were in the experimental group. English songs were used to expand the students' speaking proficiency in the experimental group and the participants of the control group utilized conventional methods of teaching speaking skills. After the treatment, a speaking post-test was administered to the participants of both groups to assess the effect of treatments on their speaking ability. The results were analyzed using the independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test. The results of the study indicated that English songs had a significant effect on the speaking ability of Iranian pre-school students in Kerman. Finally, the findings of the study assist the pre-school instructors to attract their students to learn a foreign language by using a song-based strategy.

Writing is considered one of the most difficult skills in EFL/ESL. Thus, meticulous recognition and classification of students’ errors in certain contexts is a worthwhile endeavor which provides us with both diagnostic and prognostic power. Accordingly, a total of 430 students in 15 English writing classes held during 12 consecutive semesters in a private university in central Taiwan were the subjects of this study. They composed 5703 essays which were rated and coded by the authors. Adopting and modifying the error taxonomy proposed by Zheng & Park (2013), the authors classified a sum of 63460 errors into four main groups with their subsequent subcategories. This study revealed that the highest problematic areas for Taiwanese university students were ‘misformation’ with 51.55% of the whole including errors in tenses, parts of speech, prepositions, subject/verb agreements, and run-on sentences. Then, ‘omission’ errors ranked second with 21.30% including errors in articles, plural suffix-s, and relative pronouns. Finally, the third and fourth error types were ‘others’ with 15.13% including spelling, capitalization, and wrong vocabulary, and ‘addition’ with 12.01% containing errors in articles, unnecessary words, and conjunctions. This study provides numerous genuine samples from the students’ compositions being annotated based on the applied error taxonomy. Thus, the data presented in this study can provide researchers with a practical framework for future studies in error analysis, as well as pedagogical implications in the field.

Research on the characteristics of effective EFL teachers integrates many constructs, which are treated independently in most cases. Consequently, the present study aims to explore the perspectives of teacher educators, teachers, and learners with regards to teacher effectiveness as an attempt to reduce the mismatches. To meet this aim, 34 teacher educators, 39 teachers, and 161 learners engaged in the context of university and language institute were selected on the basis of convenience and criterion sampling to respond to the 30 items on a 5- point Likert- scale questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised of items related to subject matter knowledge, teachers’ personal and interpersonal aspects, and approaches to language teaching. While the English questionnaire was distributed among the teacher educators and teachers, the Persian version of the questionnaire was handed over to the learners in the institute to be returned within a week’s time. Moreover, the questionnaire was available online to enrich the data collected. The ANOVA results indicated that the perceptions of teacher educators and teachers were quite similar, but were significantly different from the perspectives of the learners. Additionally, based on MANOVA analysis, it was revealed that the differences existed mostly in the category of ‘subject matter,’ whereas there was a strong agreement regarding ‘personal and interpersonal features’ of effective EFL teachers. The findings of the study may be fruitful for EFL curriculum developers, administrators, teacher educators, teachers and language learners.

Learner attitudes towards a target language and its speakers as well as the use to which the language is put is fundamental in defining levels of success for the learning of that language. Ghana is dominated by several indigenous local languages. However, the official language as a medium of instruction in schools in Ghana is English language. Notwithstanding the use of English language as both official language and medium of instruction in our schools, disciplines specialize in the study of Ghanaian languages as a programme of study at the tertiary level. The study investigated the attitude that Ghanaian students have towards the study of Ghanaian indigenous languages and the motivational factors for the study of these languages at University of Cape Coast. Using a quantitative approach, the study employed 100 questionnaires which were administered to 50 Ghanaian language students and 50 non-Ghanaian language students in the University of Cape Coast. First, the analysis showed that students have positive attitudes towards the study of Ghanaian indigenous languages. Second, students have instrumental reasons for the study of the language. The findings of the study have implications for theory and policy makers.

Forty general English teachers at the university level attended three supervisory sessions. The qualitative data were collected through a triangulation of various techniques, including: pre/post-supervision semi-structured interviews, classroom observation checklists, reflective journals, field notes, and transcriptions of audio-recorded data from supervisory meetings. Thematic analysis was used to identify recurring themes at each layer of the onion model. The Chi-square analysis revealed a significant difference between teachers’ attitudes and strategies before and after the supervisory meetings. The results demonstrated that teachers experienced a process of growth with a developmental trajectory from the outer layers to the inner layers of the onion model fostering the core qualities of self-confidence, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and autonomy. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that the supervisor played a significant role in teachers’ development by using supervisory strategies such as: empathetic listening and accepting the problems, empowerment by activating core qualities, giving attention to inner obstacles, giving balanced attention to cognition, emotion, and motivation, and help to get autonomy in core reflection. The findings support making deliberate efforts to establish regular supervisory practicum meetings as part of academic professional culture, and the core reflection approach as a valuable strategy.