درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

A growing body of research has indicated that students of ESL/EFL are reticent and unwilling to be engaged in oral activities in English lessons. Communicative language ability includes speaking ability, so vocabulary knowledge plays an integral role in speaking a language. However, there have been few studies examining the degree to which vocabulary knowledge affects speaking ability. The present study aimed to explore the degree of reticence in Iranian EFL learners and to find out the roles that productive vocabulary knowledge and gender may play in their reticence. To accomplish this, 56 male and female English language learners participated in the study. Unwillingness-to-Communicate Scale and Vocabulary-Size Test of Controlled Productive Ability were used. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-moment Correlation and an independent t-test were used. Results of the study revealed a relatively low level of reticence among Iranian EFL learners. However, it seems that learners mostly avoid communication rather than have a negative attitude toward class participation. In addition, it was found that the learners’ vocabulary knowledge had a significant relationship with their reticence; while, no significant difference was found between Iranian male and female learners in terms of reticence.

Among the linguistic resources for creating grammatical metaphor, nominalization rewords processes and properties metaphorically as nouns within the experiential metafunction of language. Following Halliday's (1998a) classification of grammatical metaphor, the current study investigated nominalization exploited in an English applied linguistics textbook and its corresponding Persian translation. Selection of these textbooks was motivated by consulting 10 ELT professors. Analysis started by identifying nominalization instances and recurrent patterns of nominalization in the books through adopting a mixed approach. The frequency of nominal expressions was counted, and eventually chi-square was run to find out the probable significance of nominalization use in English and Persian academic text samples. The quantitative differences in using nominalization turned out to be significant, and results revealed variations in the ranking patterns of nominalization in both texts. Qualities as entities tended to recur more in English than in Persian. However, the noun to noun modifier was frequently exploited in the Persian translation. The similarities in the employment of nominalization patterns might reflect the awareness of both the author and the translator of the role of metadiscourse markers in scientific texts. The main reason for the differences lies in the matter that knowledge is realized in different languages. The findings of this study have implications for textbook writers, English for Academic Purposes students, and translators.

هدف تحقیق پیش رو، یافتن تأثیر احتمالی عنوان جانبدارانه بر سطح نگارش زبان­آموزان درونگرا و برونگرای ایرانی زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی در سطوح مبتدی/پیشرفته نگارش است. یکصد نفر از میان 150 زبان­آموز بر اساس نوع شخصیت (درونگرا/برونگرا) و سطح نگارش(مبتدی/پیشرفته) در قالب چهار گروه در این تحقیق شرکت داشتند که از آن­ها خواسته شد درباره سه موضوع (غیر جانبدارانه، جانبدارانه به سمت درونگرایی و جانبدارانه به سمت برونگرایی) مقاله بنویسند و همچنین به سوالات پرسشنامه ی شخصیتی آیزنک- ویژهبزرگسال (آیزنک و آیزنک، 1975) پاسخ دهند. مقالات آن­ها توسط دو نفر و بر اساس معیار نمره­دهی بایلی و براون (1984) تصحیح گردید. داده­های گردآمده با استفاده از واریانس دو طرفه مورد تحلیل قرار گرفتند. نتایج حاکی از وجود تفاوت معنادار، با الگوهای متنوع، میان عملکرد گروه­های شرکت­کننده بود که غیر از یک مورد، موید توانایی برتر افراد درونگرا در موضوعات غیرجانبدارانه، جانبدارانه به سمت درونگرایی و جانبدارانه به سمت برونگرایی بود.

Due to the potent role of critical thinking in learners’ academic success and its connection with factors conducive to learning such as argumentation ability, the present study seeks to primarily probe the correlation between Iranian EFL learners’ critical thinking ability and their argumentative writing achievement, and investigate the predictability of the students’ argumentative writing achievement based on their scores on critical thinking scale. Furthermore, the effect of gender on Iranian EFL learners’ argumentative writing achievement was investigated. In so doing, 'Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal' (2002) as well as an argumentative writing assignment was employed, and the participants of the study included 178 EFL learners in three universities in Mashhad, Iran. Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized to analyze the data. The results substantiated the positive correlation between critical thinking ability and argumentative writing revealing that these two variables significantly and positively related to each other; among the predictors (subscales of the critical thinking) of argumentative writing, inference, assumptions, arguments were the stronger predictors. Finally, gender was not found to significantly affect Iranian EFL learners’ argumentative writing achievement. The conclusions and implications of this study are pointed out with reference to foreign language teaching context.

The present study sought to investigate the effect of explicit instruction of lexical bundles (LBs) on the development of Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ writing quality and also their receptive and productive knowledge of Lexical Bundles (LB). Assigned to two experimental and control groups, the eighty participants took pre- and post-tests of writing tasks and the receptive knowledge test. Afterwards, the obtained scores were subjected to a series of Analyses of Covariance (ANCOVAs) and paired samples t-tests. Results of the within-group and between-group analyses indicated that explicit instruction of LBs enhanced the participants’ productive and receptive knowledge of LBs and also improved the overall quality of their written productions. Possible explanations are provided and the implications of the findings for the applicability of LBs instruction are discussed.

Since the emergence of the process-oriented approach to second language writing instruction two main questions have been what and how error feedback should be given to the students. The question of whether teachers should provide feedback on grammar in the writing assignments of English as a foreign language students, and if so how, has been a matter of considerable debate in the field of second language writing. The present study investigated the possible effect of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on descriptive writing accuracy of Iranian intermediate EFL learners (N=39) in Hamedan Islamic Azad University. Two groups were selected: explicit corrective feedback group (N=22) and implicit corrective feedback group (N=17). They received corrective feedback on three grammatical structures. The results showed that written corrective feedback can lead to writing accuracy improvement in the short-term, but it may be unhelpful in the long-run.