درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Using a mixed methods design, the present study attempted to identify the factors influencing Iranian untrained EFL raters in rating group oral discussion tasks. To fulfil this aim, 16 language learners of varying proficiency levels were selected and randomly assigned to groups of four and performed a group discussion task. Thirty two untrained raters were also selected based on their volunteer participations. They listened to the audio files of the group discussions and assigned a score of one to six to each language learners based on their own judgments. They also provided comments on each language learners’ performance pointing to why they assigned such scores. The researchers had an interview with the raters after the rating session as well. The quantitative phase investigated whether linguistic features of accuracy, fluency, complexity and amount of talk were attended to by the raters in terms of having any relationship to the scores the raters assigned. Speech rate as an index of fluency and amount of talk turned out to be significantly correlated with the scores. Of more importance was the qualitative phase with the aim of identifying other factors that may account for the scores. The comments provided by the raters on each score and the interviews were codified based on Content Analysis (CA) approach. It was found that the raters attend not only to the linguistic features in rating oral group discussions, but they are also sensitive to the interactional features like the roles the participants take in groups tasks and the overall interaction patterns of the groups. The findings of this study may shed light on group oral assessment in terms of training the raters rating group oral tests and developing rating scales specific for group oral assessment.

Abstract: The widespread use of test scores for different educational and social decision making purposes has made the washback effect of tests a distinct educational phenomenon (Cheng, 1997).The high school third grade final exam in the general educational system of Iran has for long been a high stake test designed to assess the achievement of high school graduates in different school subjects. The present study aimed to investigate the washback effect of this nation-wide exam on EFL teachers’ teaching methodology, assessment procedures, and attitudes towards different aspects of the educational system. For this purpose, a researcher made, validated questionnaire was administered to 160 EFL teachers. The results indicated that the third grade nation-wide final exam adversely affects EFL teachers’ teaching methodology and increases teaching to the test effect quite noticeably as they try to teach according to the content and format of the test. The results further showed an even stronger negative effect of the exam on EFL teachers’ assessment procedures. However, the teachers’ attitude towards different aspects of the educational system was not found to be as strongly affected as the other two variables. The findings of the study are of importance for testing and assessment bureaus in charge of extensive high stake tests development. Moreover, raising teachers’ awareness of the drawback of teaching-to-the test effect of such a high stake test might help them improve their teaching and evaluation practices.

Reading comprehension (RC) and critical thinking (CT) are the two basic cognitive skills that should be developed through involving language learners in a carefully planned instruction. Multiple intelligences (MI) instruction may assist learners in developing RC and CT in L2 education. This study probed the effect of MI-based reading instruction on the Iranian EFL learners’ RC and CT skills. In so doing, it compared the effectiveness of an MI-based reading instruction with a traditional one. To this end, 4 intact classes from several English language institutes, comprising 56 Iranian intermediate-level EFL learners, were selected and randomly assigned to MI-based (experimental) and traditional (control) groups. A multiple- choice RC test, a reading summary test, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test were used as the instrumentations to collect data on the participants’ RC and CT. Analysis of covariance revealed a significant effect for the MI-based reading instruction. Furthermore, the RC scores increased more significantly in the MI-based group in comparison to the traditional one. However, the CT scores did not significantly improve in both groups. There was also no statistically significant difference in the CT scores between the two groups after the treatments. Iranian EFL educators are, then, encouraged to develop MI-based lessons and activities for diverse students and take explicit instruction for the enhancement of CT skills in EFL reading courses

Despite the general findings that address the positive contribution of teaching pragmatic features to interlanguage pragmatic development, the question as to the most effective method is far from being resolved. Moreover, the potential of literature as a means of introducing learners into the social practices and norms of the target culture, which underlie the pragmatic competence, has not been fully explored. This study, then, set out to investigate the possible contribution of plays, as a medium of instruction, to the pragmatic development through either explicit or implicit mode of instruction. To this end, 80 English-major university students were assigned to four experimental groups: two literary and two nonliterary groups. One of the literary groups (Implicit Play) received typographically enhanced plays containing the speech acts of apology, request, and refusal and the other (Explicit Play) received the same treatment in addition to the metapragmatic instruction on the acts. The medium of instruction for the nonliterary groups were dialogs containing the given functions; they were also given either enhanced input (Implicit Dialog) or input plus metapragmatic information (Explicit Dialog). Analyses of the four groups’ performance on a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) before and after the treatment did not show any advantage for the literary medium, i.e., there was no significant difference between literary and nonliterary groups. It was rather the mode of instruction that mattered most, where explicit groups outperformed their implicit counterparts. These findings indicate that even though implicit teaching, that is, exposure to enhanced input followed by some awareness-raising tasks, is effective in pragmatic development, it cannot contribute so much to learning as can the explicit instruction

Motivation can be conceptualized as a dynamic process which is a key contributor to mastering a second language. This study used the L2-Motivational Self System as the basis for a conceptual framework for studying the effects of external factors on learners' motivation. In particular, the role of teachers and parents was studied as the external facets of predicting learners' motivation. One hundred and twenty EFL teachers along with 1,270 of their students participated in the study. To measure motivation, the Persian version of Dörnyei's L2 Motivation Self-System Scale was utilized. Three key components of the scale, namely, criterion measure, attitudes to L2 learning, and instrumentality promotion were employed in measuring motivation. To assess the role of family in motivating learners, another subscale of Dörnyei's questionnaire, i.e., family influence was used. To gauge teacher burnout, the educator version of the Maslach burnout inventory (MBI-ES) was used. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was run to analyze the causal relationships among the variables. The results revealed that teacher burnout negatively influenced learners' criterion measure and their attitudes to learning English. However, the path leading from teacher burnout to instrumentality promotion was not significant. Furthermore, three direct, positive, and significant paths leading from family influence to learners' criterion measure, instrumentality promotion, and attitudes to learning English were detected. Finally, findings are discussed with reference to the context of Iran

بی شک کارآمد بودن آگاهی فرا زبانشناختی در بهبود کیفیت نگارش و دانش دستوری یادگیرندگانی که زبان انگلیسى را به عنوان زبان خارجی می آموزند از دیرباز حوزه جذابی در زبانشناسی کاربردی بوده است(براون، ٢٠٠١ ). از این رو، هدف اصلى مطالعه ى حاضر بررسى اثر تدریس بصورت تاکید بر صورت به طور برنامه ریزی شده و برنامه ریزى نشده بر توانایى دانش آموزان برای یادگیری دستور و کاربرد صحیح آن در نگارش است. به همین منظور سه کلاس فشرده در دانشگاه اصفهان ایران که دوره های دستور و نگارش برگزار می کند برای تدریس ساختار مورد نظر (یعنی کلمات پیوند دهنده) از طریق روش های متفاوت تدریس تاکید بر صورت انتخاب شدند. نمونه های انتخاب شده شامل دانشجویان سال دوم و (٣٠ نفر در هر گروه) در رده ى سنی ١٩ تا ٢٤ بودند که در دانشگاه اصفهان مترجمی انگلیسی مطالعه می کردند. نمونه ها به ترتیب آموزش با تاکید بر صورت بطور برنامه ریزی شده و برنامه ریزى نشده و تاکید صفر بر صورت دیدند. نتایج پس آزمون پارگراف نویسی و پس آزمون متعاقب آن که با تاخیر گرفته شد نشان داد که شرکت کنندگانی که در گروهی قرار داشتند که تدریس برنامه شده می دیدند عملکردشان بطور قابل ملاحظه ای بهتر از آن دسته ای بود که در به کارگیری کلمات پیوند دهنده در نوشتن پارگراف هایشان آموزش برنامه ریزی نشده و صفر دیده بودند.

This study investigated the characteristics of effective secondary school Iranian EFL teachers from students’ and teachers’ perspectives. To this end, 376 junior secondary school students and 32 EFL teachers teaching at various Iranian secondary schools participated in the study. A validated open-ended questionnaire was distributed among the student and teacher participants and asked for their opinions on key characteristics of an effective EFL teacher. A semi-structured interview was also conducted with the teacher participants to investigate why they deemed the characteristics important. The results of the content analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire and the interview indicated that students and teachers were approximately of the same opinion, both highlighting teachers’ professional qualities (e.g., knowledge of the subject matter, ability to impart knowledge properly, etc.), classroom management-related qualities (e.g., involving all students by assigning pair work/group work activities, assessing their learning progress regularly, etc.), and interpersonal relationships as being of crucial importance for effective EFL teaching. However, they differed in the degree to which they perceived these qualities to be important

The present study investigated comparatively the impact of two types of input enhancement (i.e. textual vs. compound enhancement) on developing grammar ability in Iranian EFL setting. Sixty-five female secondary high school students were selected as a homogenous sample out of about a 100-member population based on Nelson language proficiency test. Then, their grammar ability was measured based on a researcher-made diagnostic test prior to the experiment. The sample was randomly divided into two equal groups; one group received text-enhancement-based instruction of grammar, while the other received compound-based enhancement. Finally, they received an achievement test of grammar as a posttest to measure their progress in light of two different types of input enhancement mechanisms. The pertinent statistical analyses of the results indicated that a) the effect of textual enhancement-based instruction of grammar is not significantly meaningful, while b) the compound enhancement-based instruction has significant effect on learning grammatical structures. Comparatively speaking, therefore, c) compound enhancement-based instruction of grammar is more significantly effective than that of textual in developing grammar ability. It can be safely concluded that grammar instruction and its resultant development are subject to intervention type, which, pedagogically, bears promising messages for both teachers and syllabus designers to incorporate parameters of input enhancement in both teaching and materials development, respectively.

This paper provides a fairly detailed corpus-based vocabulary profile of the Iranian EFL books used in public schools. To this end, the WordPerfect files of all the seven books were converted to text format to get rid of the formatting features and be compatible with the software used for analysis. The software tools used were the Compleat Lexical Tutor suite, version 6.2 (Cobb, 2011), AntConc (Anthony, 2012), and AntWord Profiler (Anthony, 2012). The output of the analysis included general counts of words in Iranian school books at different levels, the frequent function and content words, frequent n-grams, frequent metalinguistic words, the coverage of several well-known, corpus-based word lists in these books, the range of the words across the books, and the amount of vocabulary recycling. The paper discusses the vocabulary representativeness and recycling and the adequacy of exposure to English in these EFL books. Detailed word frequency tables as well as some practical implications of the quantitative results constitute important features of this article

Pragmatic assessment and consistency in rating are among the subject matters which are still in need of more profound investigations. The importance of the issue is highlighted when remembering that inconsistency in ratings would surely damage the test fairness issue in assessment and lead to much diversity in ratings. Our principal concern in this study was observing the criteria that American and Iranian EFL/ESL teachers consider when rating Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic productions regarding the speech act of compliment. The instrument utilized in this study was WDCTs and a speech act rating questionnaire administered to sixty American and sixty Iranian EFL/ESL teachers. In order to come up with the criteria, the reasoning and justifications of the raters when rating learners’ pragmatic productions were analyzed carefully through content analysis. The results showed that overall the raters considered nine general criteria when rating. They included: “Strategy use”, “Affective factors”, “Politeness”, “Interlocutors’ relationships”, “Linguistic accuracy”, “Sincerity”, “Authenticity”, “Fluency”, and “Cultural issues”. Also, the most frequent criterion among the native and non-native raters was “Strategy use” and “Politeness” respectively. Finally, it was concluded that due to some inconsistencies and variations in the ratings and criteria of both native and non-native raters, it seems that both groups are in need of pragmatic workshops and training sessions. The results of this study can have important implications for EFL/ESL teacher educators who are considerate of the importance of pragmatic training and instruction.

This study was intended first to categorize the L2 learners in terms of their learning style preferences and second to investigate if their learning preferences are related to lexical inferencing. Moreover, strategies used for lexical inferencing and text related issues of text density and parts of speech were studied to determine their moderating effects and the best predictors of lexical inferencing. To this end, a posttest group design with 142 students studying engineering was adopted for the study. Perceptual style preferences questionnaire was administered to identify the students’ major learning styles, followed by strategy training for deriving the meaning of unknown words. Finally, lexical inferencing texts were given to the students to study and extract the meaning of unknown words and concurrently determine the type of strategy used for lexical inferencing. The results indicated that a great proportion of students belonged to the kinesthetic category of styles while the predominant treatments in the class were audio-visually structured. The analysis also revealed that tactile, kinesthetic, and group categories of style preferences are meaningfully related. Moreover, it was found that learning style preferences lead to statistically different lexical ineferncing. As for the strategies, the ‘syntactic knowledge analysis’ showed the highest correlation with ‘auditory learners’. Lexical density and parts of speech were also shown to moderate the effect of perceptual style preferences on lexical ability. On the whole, strategy and perceptual style preferences were found to be the two best predictors of successful lexical inferencing.