درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

One of the main difficulties facing English as a Foreign Language learners in general and translation students in particular is their lack of mastery of the complexities of grammar in the target language they are learning. This study was an attempt to investigate the influence of categories of auxiliaries (auxiliaires) and present perfect (présent parfait) on Iranian sophomore translator trainees’ ability to use them in English. A total of 60 Iranian male and female sophomore EFL language learners participated in the study. They were chosen out of 90 participants through a piloted version of the Nelson-Danny Test as the homogeneity test. The selected participants were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group, with 30 students in each class. In the present study, the participants were subjected to a pretest, treatment, and posttest. Independent samples t-tests were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that knowledge of French grammar, especially the présent parfait, significantly affected Iranian EFL learners' grammatical knowledge of the same notions in English. The findings could be employed by English teachers, EFL learners, and materials developers in the field of ELT in the Iranian context.

Considering the pluricentricity of English language and more orientation towards intelligibility in multilingual and multicultural contexts, this article presents an attempt to explore 480 Outer Circle (OC) and Expanding Circle (EC) learners’ attitudes towards pronunciation and varieties of English within the framework of global Englishes. Adopting a questionnaire accompanied by interviews with some participants, the analysis shows the degree to which acceptance of pronunciation and pluricentricity of English vary among learners. In particular, the EC participants’ exonormativity was found to be greater. The results also highlight the concept of “identity” and nativism myth which shows native-like preference anchors more in EC learners’ attitudes compared to OC participants. This article argues that English learners must be made aware of the realities of today’s English and global English ownership which can be really helpful to instigate a paradigm shift in language learning to make sure that it is reflective of how English functions globally and all varieties of English in different cultures are respected.

Utilizing graphic advance organizers before reading is to construct a mental model of the meaning of the text based on readers' formal prior knowledge of familiar rhetorical schemata, which enhances reading performance. The effectiveness of an animated matrix in improving reading comprehension was investigated in a computer-mediated reading environment. Eye-tracking was employed to examine the reading process of participants performing a German reading task. Two groups of participants (N = 21) were compared in terms of their reading performance quality, the number of main idea units recalled, and the verbatim recall memory. The use of a graphic advance organizer significantly improved reading comprehension quality (p < .05). Based on the eye-tracking results, the two groups of participants showed no significant difference, indicating equivalent exposure to the passage. There is evidence that the user-controlled sequential display of elements grants categorical reading of the matrix and provides minimal guidance to deepen the understanding of the passage, as metacognitive skills are not actively used in linking new material read to parts of the organizer.

The current study adopted a qualitative-quantitative design to compare the effects of output-based production (OBP) and input enhancement (IE) as two teaching techniques on a group of EFL learners’ writing and also to seek those learners’ perceptions on the two instruction procedures. Accordingly, 65 intermediate learners were selected through convenience nonrandom sampling from among 94 students in intact classes based on their performance on a sample proficiency test (the test had already been piloted among 30 learners). These 65 learners were subsequently divided into two groups consisting of 33 learners in the OBP group and 32 in the IE group. The researchers also made sure that the learners in both groups were homogeneous in terms of their writing prior to the treatment. Next, the treatment in both groups commenced. Once the treatment was over, the researchers gave both groups the same writing posttest. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that the IE group outperformed the OBP group significantly in their writing. The participants further sat for a semi-structured interview comprising five questions about their perception regarding both instructions which demonstrated that the IE group was generally more satisfied with the course than the OBP group. The findings of this study suggest more attention to the incorporation of IE in both English language schools and pre- and in-service teacher training programs.

Idioms and collocations are part of lexical phrases which are of high importance in lexicography. One of the criteria for distinguishing these two types of phrases from each other is the inflexibility of their constituent elements. Idioms, unlike collocations, are not flexible in terms of word order and are always used in a fixed and specific form. The purpose of the present article was to show firstly whether all Persian idioms are inflexible against syntactic changes or some are flexible; secondly, to indicate how a new lexical phrase is created as a result of converting an idiom into a collocation. To illustrate this phenomenon, a new and practical definition for idioms and collocations, based on syntactic criteria not merely semantic, was provided. According to Construction Grammar, idioms were analyzed based on four syntactic tests: ‘passivization’, ‘clefting’, ‘dislocation’, and ‘interrogation’. Two hundred idioms were collected from two of the most up-to-date and comprehensive sources, namely Farsi Amiyaneh Dictionary (Abolhassan Najafi, 2008) and the two-volume Dictionary of Kenayat-e Sokhan (Hassan Anvari, 2019). Some idioms were flexible to syntactic changes, and behaved similarly to collocations. The flexibility of idioms led to introducing a new definition of these phrases based on syntactic criteria. Thus, such phrases were considered a kind of collocation, not an idiom. The result showed that converting an idiom into a collocation always creates a lexical phrase or lexeme with a new meaning. Finally, a plan was introduced to represent such idioms practically in Persian dictionaries.

The study of request speech act has been considered by many researchers in various cultures and communities. In line with the goals of these studies, the cuurent article aims to extract and categorize the request speech act strategies used by Iranian teenager students (ITS) based on Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) coding scheme proposed by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) with regard to the relationship between the social dominance (power) of the addressees on the type and number of request strategies. The data were collected via Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and role-play filled and performed by 100 Birjandi high school students of Persian (50 girls and 50 boys). The results of the Chi-square test and also the two data collection methods employed showed that there was a significant relationship between the addressee’s social dominance and the type and number of request strategies used by ITS. In addition,“Alerters”, “preparatories” and “grounders” were the most employed strategies by the participants in both DCTs and role-plays. Besides, the lower social dominance of the speaker towards the addressee resulted in the application of complex strategies. So, it seems, with regard to politeness, Iranian cultural system to be hierarchical. Moreover, regarding the use of the request strategies by ITS, the findings didn’t show any difference between the two corpora, i.e., the data gathered via DCTs and role-plays.

In line with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT) of mind, digital game-based language learning (DGBL) and dynamic assessment (DA) offer language learning opportunities via sociocultural engagement. This quantitative study explored the role of pragmatic learning strategies (PLSs) and gender in game-based group dynamic assessment. Our participants included thirty upper-intermediate EFL learners (15 males and 15 females) from two intact classes taking an English pragmatic course via game-based group dynamic assessment. Following a pre-test, treatment, and post-test design, the participants filled out a PLS inventory to identify the strategies for tackling L2 conversations in different situations. Besides, all learners were required to write reflective journals following each treatment session. Descriptive statistics and correlational analysis were employed to analyze the data. The findings indicated that the participants most widely used memory strategies, i.e., they relied more on memorizing and storing previous pragmatic knowledge. In addition, compensatory strategies were positive but weak predictors of the learners’ L2 pragmatic performance, and gender did not impact the learners’ use of different PLSs. The study’s limitation and its practical and pedagogical implications for educational policymakers, teacher education programs, and L2 instructors will be discussed in light of the posed research questions.

The present study aims to assess the effectiveness of remedial English courses in improving students’ English skills in terms of grammar, vocabulary, listening, and speaking. The study also aimed to identify the optimal number of contact hours spent in remedial courses to improve students’ post-test scores. The study utilized the pre and post-test scores of 37 students enrolled in the English remedial Programme at the University of Technology Bahrain during the second and third trimesters of the Academic Year 2020-2021. Using a non-parametric Wilcoxon Signed Ranked Test and Receiver Operating Characteristic curve, the study derived the following conclusions: Remedial courses significantly increased the post-test scores of the students for both grammar and vocabulary and speaking and listening. This would suggest that the conduct of remedial courses effectively improves the overall English-speaking skills of the students who completed the remedial course despite being fully delivered online. Contact hours spent in remedial courses, both in ENGL301 for Speaking and Listening and ENGL302 for Grammar and Vocabulary, can significantly determine the students’ success in passing the post-test. The effect of the number of contact hours in the remedial course on passing post-tests, both for Grammar and Vocabulary and Speaking and Listening, is not linear. The optimum numbers of hours to be spent per trimester on directed learning to improve students’ post-test scores in grammar and vocabulary, and speaking and listening are 86.25 and 88.5 hours, respectively. This threshold maximizes the chance of predicting the students who passed at the level of sensitivity and specificity.    

The use of digital games has increased dramatically in the last two decades due to the augmentation in the number of Personal Computers (PCs) and mobile devices worldwide. Not only can digital games be played for entertainment, but also, they may have both positive and negative effects on their players. Various effects of digital games on individuals’ levels of attention span, concentration, and addiction have already been tested by numerous studies; however, their impact on incidental Second Language (L2) acquisition is still untouched by language researchers. To address this lacuna, this is a longitudinal observational study that lasted for three months to investigate the impact of digital games played by young learners for entertainment at home on their unintentional acquisition of English as an L2. The age of the participants ranged from 8 to 14 years old, and the experiment was conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. Three main games were played by the sample; namely, Free Fire, Minecraft, and Among Us. The findings revealed that digital gaming significantly influenced the vocabulary development of the participants, and gaming was a clear asset for their L2 acquisition. It was also found that the players’ level of vocabulary retention was high; however, two drawbacks were identified in this regard, namely, the prolonged screen time and vocabulary items specifically related to a given area of a particular game. Overall, this study can be an impetus for further research into evaluating the benefits or drawbacks of using digital games for specific aspects of L2 acquisition such as the development of cognitive abilities or enhanced understanding. 

I am delighted to be invited to write a paper for the inaugural edition of the journal Applied Linguistics Inquiry . I am also honored to be invited to serve on its editorial board. In this paper, I will first describe the seminal study reported by Biggs and Edwards (1991) to serve as a backdrop for a discussion of classroom communicative and interactional competence. The paper outlines how teachers can reflect on such competence by exploring teacher questions, teacher feedback, grouping and nonverbal communication, and classroom communicative and interactional competence. The paper end with a discussion of evidence-based reflective practice as professional development as well as the place of emotions in reflection.