درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

این مطالعه به بررسی تاثیر استفاده از دو نوع مواد اموزشی واقعی با موضوع اشنا ولی متفاوت از لحاظ ساختار بلاغی بر کیفیت شنیداری زبان آموزان سطح بالای ایرانی می پردازد. این مواد از لحاظ استدلال و منطق بیانی متفاوت هستند. براساس عملکرد زبان آموزان بر امتحان تعیین سطح فاولر و کو (1976) تعداد 60 نفر انتخاب شدند. پس از آن یک تست محقق – ساخت که دو نوع ساختار بلاغی توضیحی و مباحثه ای برای دو گروه اجرا شد. نتیجه نشان داد که شناخت موضوع به تنهایی تاثیر مهمی بر عملکرد زبان آموزان نداشته است هرچند عملکرد انها بر تست های توضیحی نسبت به مباحثه ای بهتر بود. به نظر می رسد که دانش کلی و مبهم به تنهایی کافی نیست و عملکرد ضعیف انها بیشتر مربوط به سختی ساختارهای بلاغی از لحاظ شناختی و زبانی بود. برداشت اصلی از ین موضوع می تواند این باشد که زبان آموزان سطح بالای ایرانی نیاز به شناختن این نوع ساختارها هم از لحاظ موضوعی و هم از لحاظ ساختار زبانی، اجتماعی و فرهنگی دارند. بعلاوه موضوع تعیین سطح زبانی مثلا به عنوان سطح بالا می بایست برای تک تک مهارت های زبانی در مقایسه با سطح کلی به گونه ای دیگر تعریف شود.

Theoretically framed within Vygotskyan sociocultural theory of mind (SCT), Dynamic assessment (DA) is a new approach to classroom assessment offering mediation to help learners perform beyond their level of independent functioning. As a web-based qualitative inquiry into the nature of mediation in DA and its impacts on the participants’ private speech patterns, this study explored the role of private speech as a social and psychological tool to mediate learners' thinking and performance in online DA. The subjects of the study were two Iranian university students along with two English native speakers orally narrating a series of picture stories and having weekly DA mediation with the researcher via Skype. In the present study, the students' private speech markers’ typology emerged out of thematic analysis of oral narratives transcribed before and after DA mediation and it was presented as a criterion to evaluate the learners' progression towards self-regulation. The frequency of occurrence of the learners’ private speech markers was reported and interpreted based on the emergent typology to evaluate the possible changes in their use as the result of DA mediation. Meanwhile, the differences between native speaker participants and the learners’ use of private speech markers in oral narratives were highlighted and discussed. The results of the study indicated that mediation was effective in reducing the number of private speech markers in the learners' narratives after mediation which reflects their progression towards self-regulation in online DA. The findings of the study highlight the importance of private speech as a mediating tool in DA which reflects learners’ struggle to take control of direction of learning and move beyond their current capabilities.

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

In response to the increasing interest in and need for a practical brief measure in language testing, this study explored the properties of an offline short-form test (OSF) versus a conventional lengthy test. From the total of 98 vocabulary items pooled from the Iranian National University Entrance Exams, 60 items were selected for the conventional test (CT). To build the OSF, we created an item bank by examining the item response theory (IRT) parameter estimates. Data for the IRT calibration included the responses of 774,258 examinees. Upon the results of the item calibration, 43 items with the highest discrimination power and minimal guessing values from different levels of ability were selected for the item bank. Then, using the responses of 253 EFL learners, we compared the measurement properties of the OSF scores with those of the CT scores in terms of the score precision, score comparability, and consistency of classification decisions. The results revealed that although the OSF generally did not achieve the same level of measurement precision as the CT, it still achieved a desired level of precision while lessening the negative effects of a lengthy test. The results also signified an excellent degree of correspondence between OSF and CT scores and classification results. In all, findings suggest that OSF can stand as a reasonable alternative for a longer test, especially when conditions dictate that a very short test be used.

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.

Burnout is one of the potential threats to teachers which can negatively influence their performance and bring about many side effects such as poor health conditions, depression, absenteeism, etc. It has, however, been found teachers who use effective coping strategies to deal with stressful job conditions can resist burnout. This qualitative design study aimed to investigate the coping strategies of 15 Iranian high school EFL teachers who did not show burnout on Maslach Burnout Inventory. The participants were interviewed and observed in classrooms and they were asked to keep journals for 8 sessions. The data were content analyzed and results show that establishment of rapport with students, discussing problems with principals and colleagues, class management, reflection, ongoing learning, adherence to moral principles and adopting a traditional teaching style are among the coping strategies these teachers used. The low frequency of these strategies, however, implies that EFL teachers, even those who resist burnout, need to be trained on different burnout coping strategies. Keywords: burnout, coping strategies, qualitative design, Iranian EFL teachers   راهبردهای مقابله با فرسودگی شغلی در میان معلمان زبان انگلیسی ایرانی فرسودگی شغلی یکی از خطرات بالقوه ای است که معلمان در معرض آن قرار دارند و می تواند تاثیر منفی بر عملکرد آنان داشته وموجب  عوارض جانبی بسیاری مانند وضعیت بد سلامتی، افسردگی، غیبت از محل کار، و غیره شود. با این حال مشخص شده است که معلمانی که از راهبردهای مقابله مؤثر برای رویارویی با شرایط استرس زای شغلی استفاده می کنند می توانند در برابر فرسودگی شغلی مقاومت نمایند. این مطالعه کیفی با هدف بررسی راهبردهای مقابله مورد استفاده 15 معلم زبان انگلیسی ایرانی که در دبیرستان تدریس می کردند ودر پرسشنامه فرسودگی شغلی مازلاک فرسودگی شغلی کمی نشان داده بودند انجام شد. شرکت کنندگان مورد مصاحبه  و در کلاس های درس مورد مشاهده قرار گرفتند و از آنها خواسته شد به مدت 8 جلسه خاطرات کلاسی خود رابعد از کلاس ثبت نمایند. داده های جمع آوری شده مورد تحلیل محتوا قرار گرفتند و نتایج نشان داد که ایجاد رابطه مثبت با دانش آموزان، بحث در مورد مشکلات با مدیران و همکاران، مدیریت کلاس، تفکر و تأمل، یادگیری مداوم و پایبندی به اصول اخلاقی جزء راهبردهای مقابله مهم مورد استفاده  معلمان می باشد. یافته های مطالعه حاکی از ضرورت آموزش راهبردهای مقابله به معلمان زبان انگلیسی است تا بتوانند د رمقابل فرسودگی شغلی از خود محافظت نمایند. کلمات کلیدی: فرسودگی شغلی، راهبردهای مقابله، مطالعه کیفی، معلمان زبان انگلیسی ایرانی

This study aims to compare the effects of four types of FFI on second language vocabulary learning. To do so, the study adopted a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, including five groups, each receiving a distinct treatment. The participants were 80 fourth-grade male students ranging in age from 17 to 19. Before the treatment phase, the participants took a researcher-made test of vocabulary as a pretest which was meant to measure the participants’ prior knowledge about the target words. After the treatment phase, the participants took a researcher-made test of vocabulary as posttest to measure the students' achievement of the target words. Independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were run to analyze the scores from the pretest and the posttest. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between proactive and reactive FonF in the comprehension mode in terms of promoting vocabulary learning. There was also no statistically significant difference between these two forms of FonF in the production mode in terms of promoting vocabulary learning. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the comprehension-based and production-based FonF in enhancing vocabulary learning. These results extend the positive effect of FFI to L2 vocabulary teaching/learning.

The field of ELT is constantly witnessing the introduction of new instructional approaches: one such perhaps recent initiative is critical discourse analysis (CDA). Accordingly, the present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of CDA instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ descriptive and argumentative writing ability. To fulfill the aforementioned purpose, a sample TOEFL was primarily piloted among a group of 30 upper intermediate EFL learners by the researchers; with the acceptable reliability and item analysis indices achieved, then the researchers administered the test among another group of 90 upper intermediate learners. Ultimately, those 60 learners whose scores fell one standard deviation above and below the mean were chosen as the participants of the study and were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group with 30 participants in each. Both of these groups underwent the same amount of teaching time during 20 sessions which included a treatment of CDA instruction based on Jank’s (2005) set of 14 features for the experimental group. A posttest was administered at the end of the instruction to both groups and their mean scores on the test were compared through a multivariate analysis of variance. The result (F = 14.41 and p = 0.000 < 0.05) led to the rejection of the two null hypotheses raised in this study, thereby demonstrating that the learners in the experimental group benefited significantly more than those in the control group in terms of improving their descriptive and argumentative writing ability. Hence, the major pedagogical implication of this study is that CDA instruction can be effectively used to assist EFL learners improve their argumentative and descriptive writing ability.