درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This article intended to investigate whether the gender-preferential linguistic elements found by Argomon, Koppel, Fine and Shimoni (2003) show the same gender-linked frequencies in applied linguistics research papers written by non-native speakers of English. In so doing, a sample of 32 articles from different journals was collected and the proportion of the targeted features to the whole number of words was calculated. The results indicated that, although the gender-linked patterns of use for many of those features were also observed in our sample, the difference between men and women in the frequency of using those elements was not statistically significant. This non-significant difference shows that either the confinements of genre or those of using a second language or both are keeping L2 writers from expressing their gender to its fullest capacity in the texts they produce.

"ارتباط زبانی در یک فضای تعاملی ایجاد می گردد و در آن حداقل دو نفر تبادل نظر می کنند. صحبت کردن گوینده و درک سخنان وی توسط شنونده به عوامل زیادی از جمله شناخت زبان مورد نظر و قواعد و آداب ارتباطی و فرهنگی آن بستگی دارد. نویسنده این مقاله با دنبال کردن هدفی آموزشی، در نظر دارد تا چگونگی برقراری ارتباط زبانی را در یک کلاس زبان خارجی بررسی کند. این مطالعه اجمالی به خوانندگان امکان مشاهده محاسبن و معایب (اگر در بعضی موارد وجود داشته باشد) فعالیت های مختلف در کلاس های زبان را خواهد داد. مقاله حاضر با چند پیشنهاد که حاصل تجربه نویسنده آن است جهت ارتقا سطح بیان شفاهی زبان آموزان جوان ایرانی به پایان می رسد.

Among the major issues raised by classroom SLA researchers is the debate on the degree to which teacher’s or learner’s attention should be directed to linguistic features. However, one of the relevant variables in corrective feedback studies which seem to be less operationalized is the differential impact of different types of feedback on the accuracy of the oral performance of the participants. The merits of recasts as one type of feedback commonly used in the classroom have turned to be a controversial issue. The present study examined the impact of recasts in comparison to no-recast on the syntactic accuracy of Iranian EFL university students’ oral discourse. One hundred and nine male and female students majoring in English Language Translation at Islamic Azad University (Central Tehran Branch) took part in the study. The participants were attending the listening and speaking classes. Ten sessions were devoted to the treatment of the experimental group (n=54) who received recasts as feedback to syntactic errors. The control group (n=55), received no recast. A posttest was administered in the 12th session. The teachers introduced a topic and the participants were required to talk about it in 60 seconds. A total of 6540 seconds of the participants’ oral performance were observed and recorded. Analysis of individual participants’ oral data revealed that the recast group outperformed the no-recast group. In other words, recasts were effective in reducing the frequency of syntactic errors of participants’ oral discourse.

Task-based learning and teaching in the realm of teaching young learners is still considered an adventure since very few experimental studies to date have tackled its applicability in that age group. The present research was an attempt to find out whether using task-based reading activities has any impact on the development of text comprehension in Iranian young learners studying English as a foreign language at the beginner level. Two groups of 25 students, aged 11 to 13, were the participants of the study. Through a reading pretest, it was ensured that the two groups were at the same level and belonged to the same population in terms of the reading skill. Having instructed the experimental group with four task types and the control group with classical reading activities, the researcher compared the reading performance of the two groups through a t-test which, not surprisingly, manifested the better performance of the experimental group. A follow-up reading test also showed that the experimental group still enjoyed a higher level of reading skill after one month. Furthermore, the scores gained from the four task types were compared and it was concluded that the students performed better in tasks which involved creativity and gave them the experience of playing.

Communication strategies (CSs) are systematic attempts by language learners to encode or decode meaning in a target language in situations where the appropriate target language rules have not been formed. Based on this view, communication strategies can be seen as compensatory means for making up for linguistic deficiencies of second or foreign language learners. Within the conceptual framework outlined, this paper is a report on a research conducted at Azarbaijan Teachers Education University on the students majoring in English Language and Literature. The main aim was to seek a relationship between the subjects’ use of communication strategies in solving communication problems and their proficiency levels in English as a foreign language. The data was collected by means of one-to-one interviews with the participants, and were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results indicated that the frequency of communication strategies applied by the participants varied according to their proficiency levels, i.e. low proficient learners tended to employ more communication strategies in comparison with high and moderate ones. The type of communication strategies employed also varied according to their oral proficiency level. It was revealed that high level participants employed more L2-based communication strategies where the low proficient learners used more L1-based ones.

A standard correction for random guessing (cfg) formula on multiple-choice and Yes/Noexaminations was examined retrospectively in the scores of the intermediate female EFL learners in an English language school. The correctionwas a weighting formula for points awarded for correct answers,incorrect answers, and unanswered questions so that the expectedvalue of the increase in test score due to guessing was zero. The researcher compared uncorrected and corrected scores on examinationsusing multiple-choice and Yes/No formats. These short-answer formats eliminatedor at least greatly reduced the potential for guessing the correctanswer. The expectation for students to improve their grade by guessingon multiple-choice and Yes/No format examinations is well known. The researcher examined a method for correcting for random guessing (cfg) " no knowledge" on multiple- choice and Yes/No vocabulary examinations by comparing application and non-application of correction for guessing (cfg) formula on scores on these examinations. It was done to determine whether the test takers really knew the correct answer, or they had resorted to a kind of guessing. This study represented a unique opportunity to compare scores from multiple-choice and Yes/No examinations in a settingin which students were given the same number of questions ineach of the two format types testing their knowledge over thesame subject matter. The results of this study indicated that the significant differences were highlighted between the subjects' scores when cfg formula was applied and when it was not.

This article attempts to see، through the structural significances of poetic language، the nature of the split between linguistic description and literary interpretation. Rhythm is the most prominent means of relating form to content in poetic language. The first account of this prominence is seen through identifying its position in the two prosodic forms of metrical and non-metrical poetry. Foregrounding has been seen as a significant feature in literary creation. Following Bradford (1997) the analysis undertakes three stages of analysis as ‘discovery procedures’، ‘naturalization’، and ‘judgment’ (renamed in our work as ‘remarks’). The first level examines the degree of the tension between the two patterns. In the second level، i.e. naturalization، the analysis goes on turning the peculiar language of the poem into that of the ordinary، which means making sense of a text. This translation of the poetic language has been shown to be considerably rooted in elements of form in the classical verse، and of content in modern free verse. The intervening type has thus been judged to exist somewhere between the two. The third level، namely ‘remarks’ evaluates the degree of the poet’s success in managing the tension between the two patterns.