درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

از دیدگاه معرفت شناسی، با توجه به ظهور نظریه سیستم های پیچیده و دینامیک و این حقیقت که فراگیری زبان در یک اکوسیستم دارای اجزای مرتبط و درهم تنیده صورت می گیرد، مفهوم و فرایند تحقیق در فراگیری زبان دوم نیازمند بازنگری اساسی است. تحقیق حاضر به بررسی ویژگی ها و مشخصات بنیادین نظریه سیستم های پیچیده و کاربرد آن در تحقیقات فراگیری زبان دوم می پردازد. با توجه به مشخصات نظریه مزبور، استدلال می کنیم که روش های متداول و مسلط تحقیق در فراگیری زبان بسیار ساده انگارانه هستند و قادر به بررسی ماهیت واقعی فراگیری زبان نیستند. ما بر این عقیده ایم که دیدگاه نیوتنی نسبت به تحقیق در فراگیری زبان برای مطالعه بیچیدگی های تحقیق در فراگیری زبان کافی نیست. با در نظر گرفتن فرضیه سیستم های پیچیده، تحقیق به عنوان سیستمی پیچیده، دینامیک، غیرخطی، باز و تطبیقی جهت یافتن راه حل های احتمالی سوالات باز تعریف می شود.

This study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between teachers' personality type (feeling vs. thinking) and speaking skill of pre- intermediate EFL students in Iranian context. Twelve teachers and forty eight students from a local language institute participated in the study. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an instrument based on Jung’s personality theory, was taken from teachers and students were administered Preliminary English Test (PET) interview. SPSS was used to calculate the required analyses. The results showed a statistically significant positive relationship between teacher’s’ personality type and learners’ speaking skill. It was also indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between speaking skill of learners taught by feeling teachers vs. thinking teachers. In fact students in the feeling group had higher speaking scores than their counterparts in the thinking group.

نظر به نقش کلیدی یادگیری واژگان در زبان آموزی دوم، این تحقیق به بررسی تاثیر هدف خواندن بر یادگیری و ماندگاری ضمنی واژگان می پردازد. بدین منظور 75 زبان آموز (سطح مبتدی) به سه گروه 1. خواندن آزاد و بدون هدف خاص (گروه کنترل)، 2. خواندن به منظور درک مفاهیم و مطالب (گروه آزمایشی اول)، و 3. خواندن با هدف خلاصه برداری کردن از مطالب ضروری و عمده (گروه آزمایشی دوم) تقسیم شدند. لغات مشکل متن انتخاب شده برجسته و معانی فارسی آنها نیز در حاشیه متن گنجانده شد. به منظور سنجش میزان یادگیری و ماندگاری لغات جدید شرکت کنندگان در این تحقیق دو بار مورد ارزیابی قرار گرفتند (بلافاصله بعد از خواندن متن و با فاصله زمانی دو هفته). نتایج هر دو آزمون حاکی از وجود تفاوت معنادار درمیزان واژگان فرا گرفته بین دو گروه آزمایشی در مقایسه با گروه کنترل بود، ولی بین عملکرد دو گروه خواندن به منظور درک مطلب و خلاصه نویسی تفاوت معنا داری مشاهده نشد. با این وجود، افکت سایز 21/0 برای آزمون اولیه و 68/0 برای آزمون تاخیری بیانگر این موضوع بود که قسمت عمده ای از تفاوت عملکرد سه گروه ناشی از تاثیر هدف خواندن بر یادگیری و ماندگاری ضمنی لغات می باشد. نتایج حاصله از تحقیق همچنین حاکی از آن بود که گروه خلاصه نویسی توانایی بیشتری در خلق جملات واستفاده از کلمات جدید درون جملات ذکر شده داشتند، در حالیکه دو گروه دیگر بیشتر به شناسایی و ذکر معنی لغات بسنده کرده بودند. به علاوه، در بسیاری از اشتباهات مرتکب شده توسط زبان آموزان اثر مستقیمی از تاثیر زبان اول (زبان فارسی) دیده نشد.

The efficacy of genre-based approach to teaching writing has been regarded as an influential practice in L2 writing pedagogy (Hyland, 2007). However, there is still gap between actual structures found in reading materials recommended as textbooks and discourse patterns recommended for L2 writing in EFL contexts, the gap which would highlight the problems of genre and rhetorical patterns for teaching. The current study, therefore, is an attempt to explore the level of consistency between the rhetorical patterns found in reading textbooks and discourse pattern recommended for writing. For this purpose, a number of 22 essays selected from textbooks were analyzed to identify (1) the overall rhetorical structures, and (2) the location of main idea and opinion of writers. The results show that while some texts did not follow the three-part structure of introduction-body-conclusion, main idea was presented in the introductory parts of essays, illustrating a deductive rhetorical pattern recommended for English writing. Further research was suggested as well.

Test method facet is one of the factors which can have an influence on the test takers’ performance. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of two different response types, multiple-choice cloze and multiple-choice test, on the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ reading comprehension performance. To this end, 40 pre-intermediate and intermediate learners participated in the study. To counterbalance the practice effect, the participants of the study at both pre-intermediate and intermediate levels were randomly assigned into two groups. For each level, there were two types of tests and two test administrations. Within each level, the two groups took these two tests in a different order. For all participants of the study there were two scores based on multiple- choice cloze and multiple-choice tests. Two Paired sample t tests were separately run to compare the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ performance on multiple-choice cloze and multiple-choice tests. Two independent samples t tests were run to compare the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers on these two tests. There was no significant difference between the pre-intermediate test takers’ performance on these two types of tests. There was a significant difference between intermediate test takers’ performance on the tests. There was no significant difference between the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ performance on the multiple-choice cloze tests. The intermediate test takers outperformed the pre-intermediate test takers only on the multiple-choice tests. Based on these results it can be concluded that test methods can have an influence on the test takers’ performance, especially at higher proficiency levels and learners may need to have reached a certain level of proficiency to be able to understand the text.

The application of critical pedagogy in educational contexts has received adequate research attention over the last decades. The main focus of this strand of research has, however, been on raising awareness of the educators. Nevertheless, little is known about the consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy principles from EFL teacher trainers’ perspectives. To begin to address this gap in research, a qualitative (phenomenological) study was carried out to explore the main consequences of violating critical pedagogy in the higher education system of Iran. The participants were 15 faculty members of TEFL and English Literature at 10 Iranian state universities. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews and analyzed according to Radnor’s (2001) model. The results indicated that the main consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy were educational (related to teaching, learning, and testing), psychological, social, and ideological. Therefore, it was concluded that educators must follow the principles of CP in order to avoid the negative consequences and foster the learning and teaching processes more effectively.

Many textbooks include semantically related words and sometimes teachers add synonyms, antonyms, etc. to the words in order to present new vocabulary items without questioning the possible effects. This study sought to investigate the effect of teaching vocabulary through synonym, semantically unrelated, and hyponym sets based on Higa’s (1963) proposed continuum. A total of 120 Iranian intermediate EFL adults were selected and classified into two high and low language proficient learners based on their PET (2003) scores. They learned the vocabulary items based on the three above-mentioned methods. Learners’ vocabulary achievement was measured using Paribakht and Wesche’s (1993) Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) in order to assess both the quantitative (number of learnt vocabulary [NLV]) and the qualitative knowledge of vocabulary (depth of learnt vocabulary [DLV]) by administering the same test twice with a two-week interval for obtaining ST and LT results. To address research questions, two independent two-way ANOVAs and two mixed design two-way ANOVAs were conducted. The results revealed that the learners from synonym sets group gained better ST vocabulary achievement quantitatively and language proficiency level proved not to play any significant role in the learners’ vocabulary accomplishment based on belonging to any given group. It was also revealed that quantitatively hyponym, semantically unrelated, and synonym set groups were respectively the most effective methods of clustering that lead to less forgetting in LT which supports Higa’s proposition.

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the impact of manipulating task performance conditions on listening task performance by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was designed to explore the effects of changing complexity dimensions on listening task performance and to achieve two aims: to see how listening comprehension task performance was affected and to investigate possible overlaps between EFL learners’ perceptions of task difficulty and hypothesized task complexity. A purposive sample of 54 first-year EFL learners randomly assigned to two parallel conversation classes in an English department of a major public university participated in the study and performed listening tasks in a language lab. The instruments used for data collection were seven tasks taken from a TOEFL Test Preparation Kit, each followed by listening comprehension questions and an item on the participants’ personal perception of the difficulty of the task. During counter-balanced administrations, the tasks were manipulated for one of the four dimensions of task difficulty (adequacy, immediacy, perspective, and prior knowledge). The resulting data included the participants’ perception of difficulty as well as their performance scores under less complex and more complex conditions. One-sample T-test and correlation analyses of the data revealed that for all of the four complexity dimensions, the hypothesized less complex task condition led to better learner performance. The correlation between learner-assigned difficulty score for the task at hand and theoretical task complexity level was significant only for the immediacy dimension (r=-0.67, p<.05). The results offer support for task complexity frameworks, raise doubts about learners’ perceptions of tasks, and imply possibilities for task manipulation in language learning contexts.

در آموزش و ارزشیابی زبان دوم، بکارگیری یافته های پژوهشی مبتنی بر رویکردی تلفیقی و روانشناختی زبان به منظور بررسی جنبه های پردازش-اطلاعات و مدیریت تولید گفتار در فصاحت کلام لازم می باشد. این پژوهش با تکیه بر مدل روانشناختی زبان و تولید گفتار لولت (1989، 1999) و با استفاده از یک پرسشنامه و مجموعه ای از مصاحبه های بازنگرانه به مطالعه راه کارهای حل ناکارآمدی سخنگویان فصیح و غیر فصیح زبان انگلیسی پرداخته است. پس از ارزیابی صداهای ضبط شده به کمک یک مقیاس سنجش تحلیلی فصاحت کلام، سخنگویان فصیح و غیر فصیح از میان 200 نفر انتخاب شدند. نتایج حاکی از این بود که شرکت کنندگان فصیح در جهت جبران ناکارآمدی ها در گستره ی مفهومی خود، پوشش مشکلات ارتباطی، و مذاکره در مورد منظورشان با مخاطب به استفاده موثرتری از راه کارهای شناختی، زبانی، و تعاملی مبادرت ورزیدند. آنها به طور مؤثری طرح پیش گفتاری را به شکل جدیدی ارائه می کردند، ماهرانه از راهکارهای پیوستگی گفتاری استفاده می کردند، و هوشیارانه بر گفتمان نظارت داشتند. اما، سخنگویان غیر فصیح زمانیکه در تولید گفتار با مشکل مواجه می شدند طرح اولیه صحبتشان را یا بطور کامل رها می کردند یا کاملا تغییر می دادند که منجر به از هم گسستگی گفتار شان می شد. با این وجود، گاهی تلاش می کردند گفتار خود را اصلاح کنند، اما به دلیل محدودیت در توانش زبانی و تعاملی ناموفق بودند. نتایج گویای این بود که پژوهش بیشتر پیرامون فرآیندهای شناختی، زبانی، و تعاملی موثر در استفاده ی سخنگویان فصیح و غیر فصیح از راهکارها، برای تشریح ناکارآمدی های گفتاری و تفاوت فصاحت کلام در سخنگویان زبان دوم سودمند می باشد.