درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

. روش های آموزش و یادگیری زبان فرانسه به عنوان زبان خارجی، از دهه 60 میلادی به این سو تحولی چشمگیر داشته اند. این تحولات منجر به تغییراتی کلی در محتوای کتب آموزش زبان شده است. تغییراتی که بی ارتباط با تصویر جلد متدهای آموزشی نیست. این تحقیق به دنبال تبیین رابطه احتمالی میان محتوای کتاب های آموزش زبان فرانسه و تصویر جلد آن ها از طریق مطالعه نشانه- معناشناختی جلد پنج کتاب آموزش زبان فرانسه است. کتاب های بررسی شده ویژه آموزش بزرگسالان و متعلق به سه رویکرد آموزشی مختلف است. این تحقیق در حقیقت، مبتنی بر مفهوم نظری نشانه شناسی در مکتب پاریس است که بر اساس آن بین صورت و محتوای زبان، ارتباطی متقابل وجود دارد. هدف این تحقیق آن است که با استفاده از روش های نشانه- معناشناختی نشان دهد که چگونه محتوای کتاب های آموزش زبان به تصویر جلد کتاب راه انتقال می یابند. هدف دیگر این تحقیق بررسی تحول جلد کتاب های آموزش زبان فرانسه از طریق رابطه متقابل میان اهداف نظری و آموزشی هر رویکرد و بازنمود نشانه -آموزشی آن است.

Nowadays, intercultural communication via email among various groups and societies has been increasingly important as an aspect of communication. This research aims at investigating aspects of politeness meaning negotiation via emails exchanged between English and Persian speakers with different cultural backgrounds. The present study also reveals the potentials for using emails to experience culture as a process of meaning negotiation. To do this, 18 English and Persian speakers (aged 22-60) were asked to exchange emails for 12 weeks. After collecting the required samples, the interplay between the computer-mediated communication, speech act and politeness is explored by using the analytical frameworks of Hyme’s ethnography of communication (1974), Searle’s speech act theory (1969) and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987). The methodology of this research is descriptive analytical. The results of this research show that “politeness” is not a stable construct. Rather it is constantly (re)negotiated by the interactants who take into account the relevant contextualization cues. In addition saving the face of the sender and the receiver is concerned simultaneously in the process of email exchanging.

A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of English language teaching (ELT) textbooks can provide a theoretical description of existing ideological effects in the texts and a means to link linguistic and social practices. This study, thus, seeks to evaluate Summit 2B (i.e., the advanced book of Top Notch series) with a focus on the representation of male and female social actors. In so doing, this study drew on van Leeuwen’s (1996) social actor framework and Halliday’s (2004) transitivity model. To achieve the purpose of this study, content analysis was first carried out in the corpora obtained from the aforementioned textbook to find out the frequency and proportion of various social actors. The results obtained from the tests of significance (i.e., chi-square tests) and the qualitative data analyses revealed that there were some significant differences between males and females concerning role allocation (i.e., activation, subjection, and beneficialization), substitution (personalization/impersonalizaton), and personal pronouns. Compared with females, males were represented as more active, energetic, independent, and assertive forces; males were represented more frequently and placed in high-status positions; they were also individualized more frequently. The results indicated that though females and males were almost equally informalized and indetermined, there was not much serious attempt to eliminate the gender bias in Summit, used as a substitute for other ELT textbooks used in private language institutes in Iran. The findings suggest that textbook writers and publishers should be more cautious about the gender discourse, along with other criteria making ELT textbooks work, because gender bias can affect language learners’ perception and preference for the choice of language in second or foreign (L2) communication.

Cognitive linguistics gives the most inclusive, consistent description of how language is organized, used and learned to date. Cognitive linguistics contains a great number of concepts that are useful to second language learners. If-clauses in English, on the other hand, remain intriguing for foreign language learners to struggle with, due to their intrinsic intricacies. EFL grammar books are paying focal attention to present explanations of if-clauses in terms of their form not meaning, hence not giving attention to their contextual meaning usage. Cognitive linguistic insights on if-clauses discuss their complexity in such a way that could be very beneficial for L2 learners. This study aims to investigate the effect of two different ways of teaching (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) on learning English if-clauses. A sample of 60 non-English postgraduate students in three groups, two experimental groups (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) and one control group participated in our study. The results indicated that participants from the cognitively-oriented group performed better than those in task-oriented and control groups and proved a higher degree of comprehending English if-clauses in different contexts. The findings have implications for curriculum and materials developers, as well as the English language teachers in incorporating insights from cognitive linguistics in second language materials.