درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aimed at investigating the relationship between Willingness to Communicate and EFL learners’ Communication Apprehension, Self-perceived Communicative Competence, Self-regulation, Need for Closure, Tolerance of Ambiguity as well as Aggression. The participants of this study were 300 (197 female and 103 male) Iranian EFL learners of English language institutes in Isfahan. To fulfill the purpose of the study, participants were asked to answer seven questionnaires on Willingness to Communicate (WTC), Communication Apprehension (CA), Self-perceived Communicative Competence (SPCC), Self-regulation (SR), Need for Closure (NFC), Tolerance of Ambiguity (TA) and Aggression (Agg). The results of Structural Equation Modeling confirmed previous studies on the relationship between EFL learners’ WTC and SPCC as well as CA asserting that WTC was positively correlated with SPCC and negatively with CA. It was also found that WTC positively correlated with TA. However, the findings revealed no relationship between WTC and SR, NFC and Agg. This study had implications for EFL learners and teachers regarding the factors influencing WTC in language classrooms.

Plagiarism is considered as a serious problem in academia around the world. The issue of plagiarism has recently received global inquiry in different fields of science, especially in foreign language (L2) academic writing. To meticulously assess the Iranian academics for plagiarism at both theory and practice grounds, developing an accountable instrument seemed to be inevitable. To bridge the gap, in phase 1 of the study, a conceptual framework for Iranian academics’ grasp of plagiarism and its components was designed after a thorough review of literature. In phase 2, a number of M.A. graduates and graduate students (n = 224) in six State and Islamic Azad universities in Iran were recruited to partake in piloting the newly-designed plagiarism questionnaire. After a two-step revising the inefficient items (n = 11), the final draft of the developed questionnaire with 36 items was administered with the main sample of participants (n = 288). An Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to identify the components of the instrument, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis to measure its construct validity. As a result, the final draft of the Sociocultural Plagiarism Questionnaire contained 31 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items in four components of awareness (10 items), attitude (8 items), sociocultural beliefs (8 items), and perception (5 Likert-point and 5 multiple choice items), which were suggested as having fundamental contributions to the Iranian academic writers’ sensitivity to plagiarism. Findings of the study suggested that (a) the Iranian academic writers’ normative sociocultural beliefs can probably reduce their sensitivity to plagiarism, (b) while the Iranian academics might have relatively high awareness and deep perception about plagiarism, their attitude toward plagiarism seems relatively neutral or even insensitive.

In regard to recent revolution in the education domain, English Language Teaching (ELT) assigns a sociopolitical dimension to itself in the light of Critical Pedagogy. The present study, in line with the recent educational revolution, aimed to investigate the effectiveness of critical thinking on improving EFL learners’ productive skills. The statistical population consisted of 164 pre-intermediate attendees of EFL in an English Language Institute in the city of Babol selected for taking an Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The participants were 80 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL students within 10-20-year range, enrolled in Shokouh English language institute in Babol, who were randomly divided into two experimental and two control groups of (N=20) for each group during summer 2018 through the non-probability sampling design. Then, IELTS pre-intermediate speaking and writing tests were taken as the pre-test to make sure that they have failed to have a previous knowledge of objective structures. Unlike the control group, the participants in the experimental group were told to apply critical thinking instructions in learning speaking and writing skills. After intervention, the same pretest was taken to the participants in both groups as the posttest to determine the result of gaining the medical aid. Independent and paired sample t-tests were run to answer the research questions. The results indicated that critical thinking is highly contributive in learning productive skills. The findings of this study can be applied in methodological issues.

تحقیق حاضر تلاشی است برای ارزیابی مجموعه کتاب های پراسپکت و ویژن (کتاب های زبان انگلیسی دوره اول و دوره دوم دبیرستان) با توجه به سه عنصر اصلی منظورشناسی؛ نشانگرهای ادب ورزی، کنش های کلامی و نقش های زبانی. به همین منظور تمامی مکالمات (۱۷۲ مکالمه) این شش کتاب مورد بررسی و تحلیل دقیق جهت پاسخگویی به موارد ذیل قرار گرفت: پربسامد ترین نشانگرهای ادب ورزی؛ رایج ترین کنش های کلامی وپربسامدترین نقش های زبانی به کار رفته در کتاب های پراسپکت و ویژن نتایج این تحقیق نشان داد که نشانگرهای ادب و نشانگرهای اقدامی پربسامد ترین نشانگرهای ادب ورزی هستند. کنش های کلامیِ نمایندگی و بخشنامه ای پربسامدترین کنش های کلامی هستند. و همچنیمن نقش زبانیِ اطلاعاتی، پرتکرار ترین نقش زبانی به کار گرفته شده در این مجموعه کتاب ها هستند. از سوی دیگر عدم استفاده و یا استفاده محدود از برخی از عناصر منظور شناسی به عنوان نقص در این مجموعه ها شناخته شد. همچنین بر اساس نتایج حاصل از این مطالعه مشخص شد که توزیع مولفه های منظورشناسی به صورت مساوی در مکالمات هر دو سری کتاب ها صورت نپذیرفته است و هیچ ارتباطی میان سطح این کتاب ها و میزان استفاده از این مولفه ها وجود ندارد. و در نهایت، راه کارها و پیشنهاداتی به مسئولین تهیه و تدوین منابع درسی جهت به کارگیری عناصر منظورشناسی در کتاب های درسی زبان انگلیسی و تحقق اهداف آموزشی ارائه شد.