درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Abstract in every research paper has always been functioning as an attention-grabber which can encourage readers to keep reading the research or to dissuade it. Although abstracts are believed to play an important role in distributing the research findings, few studies have been done to evaluate the rhetorical organization of thesis abstracts, especially in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Thus, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the rhetorical moves of the MA thesis abstracts written from 1988 to 2015 in the field of TEFL in Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU), an Iranian university. To this end, 300 MA thesis abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2000) rhetorical move framework. To track the rhetorical move trends of the thesis abstracts and for the ease of analysis, they were analyzed in three time intervals. The results revealed that while in the first interval (1988-1997) the most frequent rhetorical moves were the “Purpose”, “Method”, and “Product”, in the other two intervals (1998-2007 and 2008-2015) the “Purpose” was the most used rhetorical move. In addition, the least frequent rhetorical moves were the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” for the three intervals. The findings, on top of these, indicated that the rhetorical move patterns of thesis abstracts moved from Purpose-Method-Product (P-M-Pr) to Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C). That said, it can be concluded that in the examined thesis abstracts, the highest average of information was provided on the “Purpose” of the study, while the other moves, especially the conclusion move, was not deemed important; moreover, an increasing rate of information provision was detected on the “Method” and “Product” moves. This research bears some implications for L2 learners to better know their community of practice and writing instructors to prepare genre-based writing materials.

Almost in every stage of their language learning process, the learners have motivation for what they do and receive a negative or positive feedback for it. The current study was after finding the would-be effect of motivation on 58 elementary EFL learners’ pronunciation gains successive to teacher and peer oral corrective feedback. To this aim, two intact groups at elementary level of proficiency were employed as the study participants, each of which was exposed to treatment through one type of oral corrective feedback (either teacher or peer feedback type) following the initial administration of a tailor-made recognition test of pronunciation. Thus, following pretest, an adopted motivation questionnaire was assigned to participants in both groups to gauge their motivation type (intrinsic or extrinsic) in learning a foreign language. Subsequent to the treatment applied via teacher and peer corrective feedback methods, the posttest was administered to all the study participants. The oral corrective feedback was utilized to provide implicit instruction to the EFL learners regarding their pronunciation at the segmental level. The results revealed that no statistically significant difference existed between the two groups regarding their pronunciation enhancement. Thus, it was indicated throughout the research that neither learners’ motivation type nor the corrective feedback type offered by the study played a significant role in ameliorating learners’ performance on pronunciation posttest. The issue problematized in the current study may help teachers rethink the way they provide corrective feedback in their classes, and be more vigilant of and sensitive to the preferred ways of feedback provision on the part of learners in the light of motivational and attitudinal factors.       Keywords: motivation; second language pronunciation; oral corrective feedback   جستاری درباره تاثیر انگیزه یادگیرندگان بر بهبود تلفظشان در سایه دریافت بازخورد اصلاحی از معلمان و همکلاسان   یادگیرندگان زبان در هر مرحله از فرایند یادگیری از انگیزه برای آنچه انجام می دهند برخوردار بوده و بازخورد مثبت یا منفی در قبال آن دریافت می کنند. هدف تحقیق حاضر بررسی تاثیر انگیزه زبان آموزان سطح مقدماتی بر بهبود تلفظشان بدنبال اجرای جلسات بازخورد اصلاحی شفاهی بود. بدین منظور در ابتدای کار دو گروه از زبان آموزان سطح مقدماتی انتخاب گردیده و پس از اجرای پیش آزمون تلفظ، هر کدام به یکی از دو شیوه بازخورد اصلاحی (از طریق معلم و یا همکلاسان) مورد بررسی قرار گرفتند. همچنین جهت تعیین نوع غالب انگیزش زبان آموزان (درونی یا بیرونی)، پرسشنامه انگیزش توسط محققان ارائه گردید، و در انتهای کار پس آزمون تلفظ از فراگیران به عمل آمد. گفتنی است بازخورد اصلاحی شفاهی با هدف اجرای آموزش غیر مستقیم تلفظ به زبان آموزان صورت گرفت. بر پایه نتایج حاصله، هیچ تفاوت معناداری در میزان پیشرفت زبان آموزان دو گروه در پس آزمون مشاهده نگردید. بنابراین محققان از یافته های تحقیق حاضر اینگونه استنباط نمودند که نه نوع بازخورد اصلاحی ارائه شده و نه نوع انگیزش زبان آموزان هیچکدام تاثیر عمده ای در ایجاد تفاوت معنادار بین عملکرد دو گروه در پس آزمون تلفظ نداشتند. در نهایت چنین به نظر می رسد که نتایج پژوهش حاضر می تواند به معلمان کمک کند تا در نحوه ارائه بازخورد اصلاحی در کلاس تجدید نظر نموده و نسبت به ترجیحات زبان آموزان در این خصوص با توجه به انگیزه و نگرش های آنان آگاهانه تر و دقیق تر عمل نمایند.   کلید واژگان:انگیزش، تلفظ در زبان دوم، بازخورد اصلاحی شفاهی

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

This study compared the effects of two types of form-focused tasks on proceduralization and transfer of linguistics knowledge in case of English modals. All participants of the study attended pretests, posttests and delayed posttests. The procedural comprehension and production knowledge were measured through the groups’ performance on a timed dual task test that resembled the context of practice. The transfer of knowledge was measured by evaluating the performance of participants on a timed dual task test in a context dissimilar from or reverse to the practice context. Three intact classes of intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The output group (n= 27) received explicit grammar instruction and a combination of three output practice, while the input group (n=25) received explicit instruction and a combination of three input practice. Identical texts were exposed to the control group (n=25) through listening and reading tasks. The texts were followed by some questions irrelevant to English modals. On the procedural knowledge posttests, the experimental groups outperformed the control group. The participants were able to transfer the knowledge to dissimilar contexts. The results may help language teachers design more effective activities for the learners considering the institutional constraints

مطالعه حاضر به پردازش بندهای موصولی مبهم توسط فارسی زبانان فراگیر انگلیسی به عنوان زبان دوم که دارای درجات متفاوتی از ظرفیت حافظه فعال و تسلط به زبان انگلیسی هستند می پردازد. بندهای موصولی مورد مطالعه از آن جهت مبهم هستند که میتوانند به یکی از دو عبارت اسمی ماقبل خود اشاره کنند. هدف اصلی مقاله بررسی تاثیر معنا بر نحوه رفع ابهام این گونه جملات می باشد. بدین ترتیب رابطه معنایی بین فاعل/فعل عبارت اصلی و یکی از دو عبارت اسمی که قبل از بند موصولی آمده اند ایجاد شد. طبق پیش بینی مدل انتشار فعال سازی، احتمال این که عبارت اسمی که به واسطه ارتباط معنایی با فاعل/فعل در ذهن فعال شده به عنوان مرجع بند موصولی انتخاب شود بیشتر خواهد بود. نتایج دو آزمایش صورت گرفته نشان داد که ارتباط معنایی نقشی در رفع ابهام بندهای موصولی ندارد. بلکه فارسی زبانان فراگیر انگلیسی تحت تاثیر اطلاعات نحوی جمله میباشد. همچنین نتایج نشان داد که ظرفیت حافظه فعال افراد به میزان معناداری با نحوه ابهام زدایی از این گونه جملات ارتباط معکوس دارد.

Self-regulation of learning has been extensively investigated in second language (L2) learning. Many studies have focused on the strategies that language learners employ to regulate their own learning processes. However, motivational self-regulation is considerably less explored. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivational self-regulatory strategies (MSRSs) and academic achievement. A motivational self-regulation questionnaire was administered to 64 male and female adult Iranian EFL learners to measure their choice of various strategies. The quantitative data was analyzed by applying correlational and multivariate analyses. The results demonstrated that there was a strong relationship between motivational self-regulatory strategy use and academic achievement. However, no difference was found between male and female learners in their use of the strategies. Further examination revealed that higher-achieving students differed from lower-achieving participants in their preference for strategies. The article concludes that while all learners use extrinsic rewards to self-regulate their motivation, more successful learners tend to manipulate learning tasks to make the tasks intrinsically interesting and pleasant. Also, more successful learners set both long-term and short-term goals to motivate themselves. The results underscore the importance of students’ personal interests, needs and goals, and suggest that teachers foster learners’ command of the strategies through instruction and cooperative activities.

Although uninterpretable features are claimed to be an area of difficulty for EFL learners, they are still one of the less explored areas of research in the field of L2 pedagogy. The present study sought to investigate the impacts of two techniques, namely contrastive analysis and dictogloss on EFL learners’ mastery of resumptive pronouns, an uninterpretable feature absent in English relative clauses but present in most Persian ones. To this end, 77 elementary EFL learners with similar background in English were selected and assigned to three groups: one control and two experimental. Before and after the instruction the participants were administered a 50-item Grammaticality Judgment test and a 20-item translation test which had been developed and validated for use in this study. The results showed that all three groups had significant progression after the treatments, but the comparison among the groups indicated no statistically significant difference. This may suggest that L2 exposure had a more important role in the participants’ performance than the instruction type (contrastive analysis and dictogloss). The findings seem to support the importance of exposure to such L2 structures over time and that instruction cannot always accelerate acquisition.