درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

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.

Researchers stated that learning and applying certain set of lexical bundles of native lecturers by non-native lecturers would help students improve their proficiency through incidental vocabulary input. The present study shed light on the lexical bundles in hard science lectures used by Native and Non-native lecturers in international universities with the main purpose of analyzing the structural and functional similarities and differences in their usage. The secondary purpose was to finalize and present a list of explored lexical bundles employed by Native lecturers in these lectures which could be helpful for students and also Non-Native lecturers. The corpus of this study consists of five and a half hours of three different native university lecturers’ lectures and about five and a half hours of three different non-native university lecturers’ lectures who were teaching hard science (nuclear physics and electronic engineering). The data were analyzed using n-gram tool in lextutor.ca website which is a free online software to analyze the lexical bundles of more than two corpora and compare them. Functional and structural analysis gave the following results. Findings showed that lexical richness of both Native and Non-Native lecturers was not good enough to expose students to rich environments to help them improve their English proficiency. In light of structural classification, the results revealed that dependent clause fragments in addition to verb structure phrases were the most widespread and Noun phrase + of-phrase fragments were the least employed structures of the identified lexical bundles in the lectures of Non-Native and Native lecturers. In terms of structural analysis, it was concluded that stance bundles were the most frequent function bundles used by both groups. Therefore, there were both similarities and differences in the structural and functional classifications of lexical bundles in the lectures of native and non-native lecturers.

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.

Responsibility has always been one of the major concerns of teachers and those who are involved in the teaching-learning process. This is the way, since, if the sense of responsibility is improved and maintained in teachers, almost any other aspect of the teaching and learning environment would be considered safe. Therefore, the researchers tried to look for the possible relation between language teachers’ sense of responsibility and their professional identity. Thus, a group of 100 EFL teachers from language schools and different universities took part in the study. Two questionnaires that were previously proved to be valid and reliable were used as the instruments in this study. Regression was applied for the analysis of the data and the results indicated that there was a significant relationship between teachers’ professional identity and their responsibility. More specifically, it was revealed that there was a strong and positive relationship between teachers’ responsibility and motivation as one of the indicators of teachers’ professional sense of identity.

This study was an attempt to explore the process of professional identity construction of 49 male and female pre-service English language teachers of Isfahan Farhangian university Through a Vygotskian sociocultural lens. Since the construction of identity can be considered both personally and socially (Beachup & Thomas, 2009; Beijaard et al., 2004), this study took a social constructivism and Vygotskian sociocultural approach as its theoretical basis. This mixed method study was conducted through reflective journals, semi-structured interviews, and a five items Likert-type questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS ver.19 and ANOVA for comparing the means of the quantitative data. Thematic analysis was used for analyzing the qualitative data. The results showed that the construction of student-teachers’ professional identity is a dynamic and unstable process which is affected by different factors such as personal and sociocultural factors, self-image, learning environment, and practicum experiences and mentor teachers. The results of the current study can be used by educational policy makers, teacher educators, and evaluators for making better decisions about teachers to make educational progress.

    Munday asserts that there exist particular norms belonging to each specific time. In other words, each era is of distinguishing norms; sometimes, transgressing these norms results in unsatisfactory outcomes. On this account, translators ought to apply appropriate norms in each era in the act of translation. The present study aimed to investigate the application of Toury’s initial norms in two different translations of The Catcher in the Rye before and after the Islamic Revolution. Firstly, the study investigated the orientation of adequacy and acceptability in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary translations. Then, it questioned the appropriateness of the applied norms in these two translations to each era. Accordingly, the results revealed that in the pre-Islamic Revolution translation, acceptability greatly predominated over adequacy; quite the contrary, in the post-Islamic Revolution rendering, adequacy chiefly prevailed over acceptability.      

The importance of incorporating graduate students' needs into academic writing courses has established a good reputation in EAP/ESP research. In addition, writing and publishing research articles (RA) is a universally established benchmark for students' academic flourish. The present study examines the status quo of academic writing courses in graduate programs to determine the extent academic writing needs of Applied Linguistics students, mainly RA writing needs, are addressed and practiced in the course. Drawing insights from the literature on academic writing, we developed two similar interview protocols for graduate students and course instructors to capture these key stakeholders' retrospective views on the course. We found that the course mainly focuses on proposal/thesis writing, not regarded as a critical need based on students' perspectives. Moreover, both students and instructors echoed the importance of RA writing as a significant area to be covered while emphasizing the need to integrate RA genre literacy into classroom practices. In this paper, we call for the reconsideration of students' primary needs in designing and running graduate writing programs and suggest that RA writing with a genre-based orientation become an instrumental component of academic writing courses in English as an Additional Language context (EAL).

Previous evidence suggests that teachers’ practices are invariably inconsistent with their beliefs. Different factors have been cited as responsible for such a lack of correspondence. To advance the accumulated scholarship, the current study examined the correspondence/non-correspondence between English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ cognitive and behavioral manifestations of pedagogical beliefs and the extent that teacher grit, as a personal variable, impacts the connection between these two manifestations. An initial group of 70 EFL teachers responded to L2 Teacher Grit Scale and Pedagogical Beliefs Questionnaire. Based on their performance on the Grit Scale, two sub-groups of fifteen teachers (with high and low levels of teacher grit) were selected to examine the alignment/non-alignment of their pedagogical beliefs and practices. Two instructional sessions per teacher were observed by means of an observation checklist designed based on the Pedagogical Beliefs Questionnaire. Comparisons across the teachers showed that whereas the two groups valued pedagogical beliefs roughly equally, only the teachers with high grit levels showed strong evidence of correspondence between their beliefs and actual instructional practices. Based on the findings, it can be implied that teacher grit can serve a prominent role in the correlation between EFL teachers' self-reported pedagogical beliefs and their actual practices.

Theory and practice are two sides of one coin, and the way they are perceived adds to its practice. This holds true regarding teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) literacy status and its implementation. To shed more light on these issues in the Iranian EFL setting, t his study was designed to pursue a three-fold purpose: the status quo of the Iranian EFL teachers' TPACK literacy, the contribution of TPACK literacy, and perception developments in the light of TPACK intervention. For the intervention purpose, TPACK workshops were implemented with 15 teachers through employing the TPACK framework and the learning by doing method. The results of chi-square data analysis showed statistically significant differences between the participants’ TPACK literacy before and after TPACK workshops and also positive contributions of the intervention. Moreover, it was observed that participants’ perceptions towards TPACK literacy developed in the light of TPACK workshops. Thereby, the study develops a new perspective and provides empirical evidence to investigate incorporating technology and knowledge into teaching English and Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in Iran. Also, the theoretical and pedagogical recommendations for future research and practice are provided.

With the increasing importance of Language Assessment Literacy in recent years, identifying the assessment literacy components in different contexts becomes essential to ensure that language teacher professional development is on the right path, thus providing students with proper evaluation. This paper describes a research project in which an adapted version of Fulcher's (2012) Language Assessment Literacy Survey was delivered via the Internet in an attempt to characterize the levels of assessment knowledge of English language teachers in Syria. Three hundred and thirty Syrian English language teachers participated in the study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to the data obtained from the constructed-response item, and qualitative data analysis procedures were applied to the open-response items. The results indicated that Language Assessment Literacy in the Syrian context mainly comprises four factors: social impact of tests; test prepping and administration; test design, development, and interpretation; and evaluating language tests. On the other hand, the content analysis applied to the responses given by Syrian English teachers to the open-response questions indicated failings in both theoretical and practical assessment literacy in Syria's education scene, particularly the former, calling for an immediate change in teachers' preparatory courses in Syria. It is hoped that the study results can help language teacher education programs specify EFL teachers' academic assessment goals and enhance the nature of future language assessment programs, particularly in Syria; it can further provide a basis for comparison with other contexts and countries, thus contributing to a cross-cultural understanding of language assessment literacy.

Considering one of the earliest calls for applying pragmatics in the second language, Kasper and Rose’s (2002) study “Is Pragmatic Teachable?”, pragmatic features have been analyzed during the last 20 years in EFL/ESL contexts. The amalgamation of studies has been conducted on many speech acts around the world within the two decades, among which apology is considered as the second most-appreciated speech act in Iran. The aim of the current meta-analysis is twofold: first, to unravel the overall effectiveness of the instruction in an Iranian EFL context on the speech act of apology, and second, to explore whether treatment types and research designs moderate this effectiveness. To this end, out of a total number of 31 studies, 12 papers were chosen based on the exclusion and inclusion criteria, which were coded for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the instruction of apology is effective for this speech act, and it documented a medium effect size. Furthermore, it was found that research design is a good predictor for this effectiveness, and the quasi-experimental group displayed a large (g = 2.39) and positive effect. Although treatment types (e.g., explicit & non-explicit) produced medium and large effect sizes, they are not a suitable predictor for the overall effectiveness of instruction on the aforementioned speech act. The study concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies.

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.

The effect of assessment types (self, peer, and teacher) on the EFL writing strategies development was examined in this study. Sixty upper-intermediate EFL learners at Qazvin Islamic university in four groups (one control and three experimental groups) were studied. One-way ANOVA checked homogeneity of the groups prior to the treatments and, then, the participants’ records and diaries were employed to gather data. Explanatory and descriptive analyses were implemented to analyze and classify the strategies the EFL learners picked up. This provided the type, frequency, and percentage of the strategies the participants mostly employed. The results revealed that the experimental groups, namely, self-assessment group, peer assessment group, and teacher assessment group employed more cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies than the control group. Affective strategies were more appealing to the control group. Focusing on the diction of the words, concentrating on the complex structures used by different writers, and making use of the structures the participants became interested in or found suitable were the most frequently referred to strategies. Teaching strategies the participants more picked up in this study might enhance EFL learners’ writing development at TEFL centers.

Motivation in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses is an issue of utmost importance. Expanding specialized vocabulary is one of the objectives defined by ESP stakeholders. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of vocabulary enrichment through close integration of reading and writing tasks in promoting advanced English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) learners’ motivation and attitudes. To this end, fifteen civil engineers were selected through convenience sampling. Following an eight-session course centered around technical vocabulary using reading and writing tasks, questionnaires were used as pretest and posttest based on Attitudinal/Motivation Test Battery (ATMTB), to measure nine types of motivation. Nine paired samples t-tests were conducted to determine whether there was a mean difference in the questionnaire results across time from pretest to posttest. The results demonstrated significant increase in all types of motivation following the integration of reading and writing tasks, excluding intrinsic motivation considering self-confidence. It was shown that there is a close relation between ESP learners’ motivation and the amount of vocabulary they learn. The results proposed certain practical strategies in order for ESP/EOP material developers and teachers to fulfill the objectives and aims of these needs-based courses.

The current study examined the Iranian EFL teachers’ and students’ perceptions about Communication Strategies Teachability. The study was conducted with 20 teachers and 110 students from universities and private language Institutes in Tabriz, Iran. The literature regarding the teachability of communication strategies (CSs) has been far from conclusive. Some researchers reject the possibility of CSs instruction while many empirical studies support their teachability. Taking a mixed method design, the present study used a language proficiency test, a questionnaire and an interview for data collection. In the quantitative phase, the participants’ responses to questionnaire before and after a 12-week period of teaching CSs were statistically compared. The analysis of the quantitative data obtained from the questionnaire through Paired-samples t-test indicated that the students’ perceptions towards the usefulness of CSs grew significantly more positive after their instruction. The qualitative analysis of the interview data collected from the teachers indicated that most teachers found CSs useful and possible to teach. It was also found that these strategies improved capability of English language learners to speak and enhaned their conciousness of CSs. This study could offer pedagogical implications for both teachers and students and pave the way for further studies in the field.

Corrective feedback refers to a teacher or student’s reaction to a learner’s target language production containing an actual or perceived error. The last three decades have witnessed a large amount of research on the impacts of various types of corrective feedback on students’ written production. Along the same vein, the present study seeks to explore the effectiveness of providing teachers’ metalinguistic feedback vs. peers’ collaborative feedback on students’ writing performance. In so doing, the present study adopted a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design including three upper-intermediate groups (i.e., two experimental and one control). The participants of the study were a total of 62 English as a foreign language (EFL) freshman students from two public universities in Tehran, Iran. The writing tasks utilized in the present study were adopted from IELTS writing Task 2. The results of one-way between groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that students produced significantly more lexically diverse as well as grammatically accurate language as a result of both treatments. Moreover, it was observed that collaborative peer feedback led to significantly higher lexical diversity than those of other two groups. The findings of the present study suggest that L2 teachers can opt for a combination of corrective feedback strategies to help learners improve their writing performance.