درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The aim of the present paper is to study the status of the short vowels /i/ and /u/ in five selected Iranian Balochi dialects. These dialects are spoken in Sistan (SI), Saravan (SA), Khash (KH), Iranshahr (IR), and Chabahar (CH) regions located in province Sistan va Baluchestan in the southeast of Iran. This study investigates whether these two vowels have the same qualities as the short /i/ and /u/ do in the Common Balochi inventory (i, iː, u, uː, a, aː, eː, oː). The Common Balochi inventory is the vowel system represented generally for Balochi language, which is a North-Western Iranian language, a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian family. The data for this survey are gathered from villages, rural areas, and cities in these regions in the forms of free speech and verbal elicitation from more than 20 literate and non-literate male and female language consultants, 2 males and 2 females for each dialect. The investigation reveals that the short /i/ and /u/ show strong tendencies towards a lower position. This study suggests phonemic systems in which the short /i/ is modified to short /e/ in all dialects, but /u/ is modified to /o/ only in SI, SA, and CH; the lowering of the short /u/ to short /o/ in KH and IR may still be in the transition stage. It is possible that Persian, as the dominant language has had its influence on these dialects causing a lowering tendency in the two vowels under study.

  This paper investigates the use of ‘lexical bundles’ in two broad corpora of journalistic writing. The aim of this study is to compare the use of lexical bundles in the two domains, one consisted of newspaper articles written in English and published in England and the other one comprised of newspaper articles written in Persian from Iranian publications. For this purpose, the frequency of occurrence and distribution of different functional taxonomies of lexical bundles across the subject matter were investigated. More than 2.5 million words of different English and Persian-produced online newspapers were collected and they were identified by the help of two computer programs, then their functionswere analyzed. Consistent with similar research on lexical bundles, the analysis indicates that most bundles perform a referential function in journalistic register. These findings may be particularly useful to translators and also EFL practitioners, as they seem to give new insights into the development of learner language.  

Intercultural communication is concerned with communication across cultures. Since cultures as well as languages differ from one another in significant ways, speakers conceptualize the world around them in different ways. These cultural conceptualizations form part of the collective cognition of a speech community or cultural group. This paper is an attempt to delineate some cultural schemas in Persian cultural conceptualization which are quite prevalent in Iranian culture and language which may crop up in everyday conversations. For this purpose, cultural schemas of 'maram', 'marefat', and 'gheyrat' are selected based on their frequent use in Persian language and Iranian culture. These schemas are elaborated and some implications for L2 learning are suggested.

In response to the increasing interest in and need for a practical brief measure in language testing, this study explored the properties of an offline short-form test (OSF) versus a conventional lengthy test. From the total of 98 vocabulary items pooled from the Iranian National University Entrance Exams, 60 items were selected for the conventional test (CT). To build the OSF, we created an item bank by examining the item response theory (IRT) parameter estimates. Data for the IRT calibration included the responses of 774,258 examinees. Upon the results of the item calibration, 43 items with the highest discrimination power and minimal guessing values from different levels of ability were selected for the item bank. Then, using the responses of 253 EFL learners, we compared the measurement properties of the OSF scores with those of the CT scores in terms of the score precision, score comparability, and consistency of classification decisions. The results revealed that although the OSF generally did not achieve the same level of measurement precision as the CT, it still achieved a desired level of precision while lessening the negative effects of a lengthy test. The results also signified an excellent degree of correspondence between OSF and CT scores and classification results. In all, findings suggest that OSF can stand as a reasonable alternative for a longer test, especially when conditions dictate that a very short test be used.

به دنبال تحقیقات سویلز (1981) در بررسی نوع ساختاری، پژوهش های متعددی در بخش های مختلف مقالات علمی در زبان ها و حوزه های مختلف صورت گرفته، ولی توجه اندکی به چکیده ی مقالات حوزه ی ادبیات به زبان فارسی شده است. همچنین ادعای لورس (2004)در مورد تناظر دو نوع چکیده با مدل های متفاوت، و مارتین (2003) در مورد تاثیر عوامل اجتماعی-فرهنگی بر سبک نوشتار نیاز به بررسی داشت. به همین منظور، 90 چکیده ی مقالات انگلیسی و فارسی در زمینه ی ادبیات، نوشته شده توسط نویسندگان انگلیسی و فارسی زبان، بر اساس مدل های IMRD و CARS بررسی شد. نتایج این بررسی نشان داد که نخست، نویسندگان مقالات حوزه ی ادبیات عموما بر«مقدمه» و «نتایج» تاکید می کنند، «روش» و«بحث» را نادیده می گیرند، و خلاء موجود در پژوهش های قبل را ذکر نمی کنند؛ دوم، با وجود ناکارآمدی هر دو مدل، چکیده ی مقالات ادبیات عموما با مدل CARS بیشتر از IMRD سازگاری دارند. و سوم، چکیده های انگلیسی نوشته شده توسط نویسندگان فارسی با هنجارهای مقالات فارسی و بین المللی تفاوت دارند و دارای هنجار خاص خود می باشند. این پژوهش همچنین به بحث درباره ی موارد ناکارآمدی دو مدل در توصیف چکیده ها می پردازد و نهایتا راهکارهایی در زمینه ی آموزش زبان انگلیسی، خصوصا مهارت نگارش، ارائه می دهد.

A community of practice may shape and reshape the identity of members of the community through providing them with situated learning or learning environment. This study, therefore, is to clarify the salient learning-based features of the language teaching community of practice that might formulate the identity of language teachers. To this end, the study examined how learning situations in two communities of practice (English and Arabic) developed the professional identity of language teachers. The results of the semi-structure interviews with 5 language teachers highlighted some differences between English and Arabic language teaching communities of practice in terms of the situated learning activities they provide for language teachers to develop their professional identity. Furthermore, since the community of practice can be considered a potential curriculum that may be learned by newcomers with legitimate peripheral access, it would be considered as a main source of identity formation of both English and Arabic language teachers. The findings of the study can be used to better understand the nature of being a professional language teacher in non-native contexts. They have implications for novice and experienced language teachers as well as for teacher educators to review the content of the teacher training courses

The study aims at focusing on the relationship between motivation, culture, and success in foreign language learning in globalizing world. Many studies have been done to examine the relationship between them. The studies showed that culture can play a motivating role in language learning success. Considering Gardner's instrumental and integrative motivation, a learner with a high degree of integrative motivation is likely to make more efforts to form bonds with people of the target culture. To conduct the survey 48 students of Ardestan Azad University were chosen. Some activities and techniques were taken to promote their multicultural competence. In the first session a brief explanation was given to the students along with some questionnaires regarding cultural issues to answer. During 16 weeks of the semester students were taught and monitored through class discussions, essay writings etc. The goal of the activities was to encourage and estimate their respect, tolerance and empathy to people of different cultures. In the last session a questionnaire designed by the researcher was used to collect data. It was composed of three sections: 1) 11 statements about cultural issues to be rated with a likert scale of agreement (based on the Bennett's intercultural communicative model). 2) 10 rating questions (considering Byram& Risager's multidimensional model of ICC).  3) 5 open questions about their belief and behavior to elaborate on. The results showed that respect for others, adaptation and integration with people of target culture were the highest rated among others. An unexpected result was that there was no significant relationship between students' lesson scores and their attitude toward foreign language culture. This can be justified by globalization process by which "people of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society". Therefore learners who belong to a global English-speaking culture are ready to suspend disbelief about others and adopt new cultural aspects while respecting and maintaining their own culture.