درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Alternative assessment approaches received considerable attention soon after a discontent with traditional, one-shot testing. These approaches, however, have been used only to improve learners’ linguistic ability despite communicative models of language which pointed that knowledge of language also involves pragmatic ability (Bachman, 1990; Bachman & Palmer, 1996). The present study tries to explore the effect of two alternative assessment approaches (self-assessment and conference) on students’ production of four speech acts (apology, complaint, request, and refusal) plus politeness markers. A sample of 64 EFL students participated in this study. Metapragmatic explanations were given to three groups of university students studying English as a foreign language. The two treatment groups received instruction through self-assessment and conference and a comparison group was exposed to the conventional one-shot testing. The results of the One-Way ANOVA conducted after the treatment revealed an outperformance of alternative assessment approaches to the conventional one in the production of the four speech acts and politeness markers in WDCTs. A qualitative analysis of students’ self-ratings in the self-assessment group revealed that they focused more on linguistic criteria during the initial sessions and on pragmatic ones by the end of the treatment. It can be concluded that alternative assessment approaches are beneficial to students’ production of speech acts and politeness markers. In the end, the applicability and the positive effect of alternative approaches in pragmatic assessment are emphasized.

This article was written based on the key concept of polysystem theory which, in translating any literary text, emphasizes the transference of the social systems in which a text is embedded. As stated by Tynjanov (1978a), polysystem theory saw translated literature as a system operating in the larger social systems of the target text. Thus, the task of understanding as well as transferring such systems in their translations, which can certainly affect the readers’ adequate understanding of texts, is a challenging job for most of the literary translators. After identifying three main social systems in The Great Gatsby as the corpus which was ranked second in the lists of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, the source and the target texts were studied attentively, to study the way the respective systems were translated by the Iranian literary translators. Therefore, the prominent element of Nord’s textual analysis (1991), macrostructure, was focused throughout data collection procedure. Then, it was demonstrated that especially through an appropriate transference of the major conflict between the two predominant classes in the novel, the translator has managed to suitably convey most of the text’s social systems in his translation. Finally, it could be deduced that most of the literary translators in Iran, somehow transferred the concerned systems into some significantly adequate equivalents in their works.

This study aimed to explore the relationships between foreign language learners’ self-identity changes, motivation types, and Foreign Language proficiency associated with learning English in private language schools in Iranian context. Based on a stratified sampling, 204 English as a foreign language learners from three language schools in Tehran were selected to participate in the study. The instruments were a 30-item Likert-scale questionnaire on motivation types in seven categories: intrinsic interest, immediate achievement, learning situation, going aboard, social responsibility, individual development, and information medium; a 24-item Likert-scale questionnaire on self-identity changes in six categories: self-confidence change, additive change, subtractive change, productive change, split change, and zero change. Results revealed that self-confidence change was the prominent change common among foreign language learners. Canonical correlation analysis revealed that motivation types and self-identity changes were related through three pairs of canonical variables: intrinsic orientations related with personal identity changes, instrumental orientations related with cultural changes, and instrumental orientations related learners’ self-confidence change. Theoretical and pedagogical implications for foreign language learning and teaching are also discussed.