درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

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.

مطالعه حاضر به بررسی میزان تمایل به انگلیسی صحبت کردن و ارتباط آن با ویژگی های فردی و محیطی در بین ٣٧٢ زبان آموز ایرانی می پردازد. داده های لازم به وسیله ی پرسشنامه جمع آوری شد. از نرم افزار اس پی اس اس جهت اجرای آمار توصیفی و از نرم افزار آموس، با حداکثر میزان برآورد، جهت طراحی و تست مدل جدید روانشناسیِ آموزشِ زبان استفاده شد. نتایج معادلات ساختاری نشان داد که اعتماد به نفس، دیدگاه بین المللی و انگیزه پیش بینی کننده های معنادارِ تمایل به انگلیسی صحبت کردن هستند. نتایج همچنین نشان دادند که اضطراب از صحبت کردن، انگیزه و ویژگی شخصیتیِ موافق بودن و رفتار استاد می -تواند به صورت غیر مستقیم بر متغیر تمایل به انگلیسی صحبت کردن تاثیر بگذارد. رفتار استاد و شخصیت موافق به صورت معناداری هم دیدگاه بین المللی و هم اضطراب از صحبت کردن را در بین زبان آموزان پیش بینی می کند. نتایج بر اساس سیستم و بافت اجتماعی-آموزشی زبان انگلیسی در ایران مورد بحث قرار گرفت و مضامین تحقیق مشخص شد.

An overview of pedagogical interventions in the field of interlanguage pragmatics reveals the under-exploration of the processes in which changes in learners' second language (L2) pragmatic competence are established and that most of these investigations have focused on the product or final outcome of the learners' pragmatic development (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper, 1996; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006). This study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis of the microgenetic development of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' pragmatic knowledge of request speech act. A total of 140 male and female participants received instruction on request strategy types and internal and external modification devices for seven sessions (weeks) through consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks. The data were collected after instructional sessions during the first, third, fifth, and seventh weeks through discourse completion tests (DCTs). The results indicated that, in the course of time, the participants stopped using direct request strategies and employed conventionally indirect strategies more frequently in situations involving high-status interlocutors and high-imposition requests. Moreover, as time progressed, the learners became more preoccupied with pragmatic appropriateness rather than grammatical correctness. The results of the study suggest that C-R instructional tasks offer an effective means of teaching pragmatics. Considering request speech act, learners should become conscious of the significance of concepts such as status and imposition as well as internal and external modification devices in request formulation.

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.

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.

Cognitive linguistics gives the most inclusive, consistent description of how language is organized, used and learned to date. Cognitive linguistics contains a great number of concepts that are useful to second language learners. If-clauses in English, on the other hand, remain intriguing for foreign language learners to struggle with, due to their intrinsic intricacies. EFL grammar books are paying focal attention to present explanations of if-clauses in terms of their form not meaning, hence not giving attention to their contextual meaning usage. Cognitive linguistic insights on if-clauses discuss their complexity in such a way that could be very beneficial for L2 learners. This study aims to investigate the effect of two different ways of teaching (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) on learning English if-clauses. A sample of 60 non-English postgraduate students in three groups, two experimental groups (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) and one control group participated in our study. The results indicated that participants from the cognitively-oriented group performed better than those in task-oriented and control groups and proved a higher degree of comprehending English if-clauses in different contexts. The findings have implications for curriculum and materials developers, as well as the English language teachers in incorporating insights from cognitive linguistics in second language materials.

Given the fact that developing an intimate relationship between teacher and students creates a safe learning environment (Harran, 2006), and because teacher immediacy is proved to increase students’ motivation for learning (Velez & Cano, 2008), this study was an attempt to explore the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ perceived teacher immediacy and their willingness to communicate (WTC). To this end, first, a new WTC questionnaire, specific to EFL settings, was developed, piloted, factor analyzed, and then administered on 90 intermediate EFL learners. In the second phase, the participants were required to complete Gorham’s (1988) Verbal Immediacy Measure (VIM) and McCroskey et al.’s (1996) Revised Nonverbal Immediacy Measure (RNIM). The findings revealed that there are 7 factors underlying EFL learners’ WTC, one of which is teacher immediacy. Further analyses showed that there is a positive relationship between both verbal and nonverbal teacher immediacy behaviors and EFL learners’ WTC in EFL classes. It can be concluded that teacher immediacy is one of the constituents of EFL learners’ WTC and that their WTC is likely to increase when teachers demonstrate immediacy behaviors while teaching. The present study has implications for language practitioners as well as teacher trainers.

As the main part of a large-scale project, the present study investigated the relationship among reflective thinking, listening anxiety, and listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners with regard to their proficiency level. To this end, 223 (106 intermediate and 117 advanced) adult male and female Iranian EFL learners from a private language institute took part in the study by completing the Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ) developed by Kember et al., (2000), the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS) developed by Kim (2000) and a listening comprehension test selected from the listening part of IELTS. Using factor analysis and Chronbach’s Alpha, the questionnaires were revalidated and their reliability was re-estimated. The results of Pearson product moment correlations indicated there was a statistically significant: (a) positive association between reflective thinking and listening comprehension, (b) reverse correlation between listening anxiety and listening comprehension, and (c) reverse relationship between reflective thinking and listening anxiety of Iranian EFL learners. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analysis indicated listening anxiety, compared to reflective thinking, was a significantly stronger predictor of listening comprehension. Additionally, the results of MANOVA revealed there was a significant difference between intermediate and advanced EFL learners with respect to their reflective thinking and listening anxiety. In the light of the findings of the study, foreign language education policy makers in general and EFL teachers in particular are thus recommended to introduce ways to enhance reflective thinking of the students and decrease their listening anxiety if they are to improve their listening comprehension. The results and implications of the study are discussed in more detail in the paper.

Incidental vocabulary learning is often seen as superior to direct instruction on many occasions. Meanwhile, upon the emergence of the World Wide Web, second language (SL) learners have been introduced to 'podcasts' (recorded audio and video online broadcasts) which could be authentic sources of vocabulary learning. The relatively recent phenomenon of video podcast (vodcast) might be considered as a reliable complementary source of input to the written text or the audio track which are predominantly used to represent the platforms of SL instruction. To examine this assertion, three groups of Iranian EFL learners (n=63) were independently exposed to different modes of input (the reading text, audio track, and vodcast) during a series of classroom sessions under highly controlled circumstances. Immediate and delayed passive recall tests of vocabulary were administered to investigate their incidental gains. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that both dependent variables (immediate and delayed recall) were significantly affected by the input modes. The post-hoc tests indicated no significant difference between the written and the audio groups while the vodcast group significantly outperformed the other two. The rich contextual clues made available by this audiovisual source seem to account for its superiority

این مقاله گزارش پژوهشی است درباره رابطه میان هوش هیجانی گروهی از فراگیرندگان زبان انگلیسی ایران و انسجام نوشته های آنها. در راستاس این پژوهش یک آزمون توانش زبانی که شامل 40 پرسش چهار گزینه ای مربط به دستور زبان، لغت و درک متون انگلیسی بود و از پایایی با کرونباخ آلفای 742. برخوردار بود به تعدادی از فراگیرندگان زبان انگلیسی داده شد تا آن هایی که توانایی تولید متون نوشتاری معنادار را داشتند مشخص شوند. پس از آن مقیاس هوش هیجانی شات (شامل 33 پرسش) به شرکت کنندگان در پژوهش داده شد و نیز از آن ها خواسته شد تا مقاله ای کوتاه در مورد موضوعی مشخص بنویسند. از 110 نفری که آزمون توانش زبانی، پرسشنامه هوش هیجانی و تکلیف مقاله نویسی را گرفتند، 79 نفر به هر سه پاسخ دادند. 45 نفر از 79 نفر توانستند به بیش از 23 پرسش از 40 پرسش آزمون توانایی زبانی پاسخ دهند و از این رو پاسخ های آن ها به پرسشنامه هوش هیجانی و نوشته های آنها مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. برای ارزیابی عینی نوشته ها، از مقیاس انسجام متن کل نگر بامبرگ (1984) استفاده شد که دارای 5 درجه، از کاملا منسجم (4 امتیاز) تا غیرقابل نمره دادن (صفر امتیاز)، است. برای مشخص کردن ارتباط میان انسجام نوشته ها و هوش هیجانی نویسندگان از آزمون اسپیرمن استفاده شد. اما برخلاف انتظار پژوهشگران، رابطه میان دو متغیر مورد بررسی قوی و معنادار نبود.

توسعه توانشهای زیر مجموعه زبان دوم تحت تاثیر عوامل مختلفی چون عوامل شناختی، فردی، و اجتماعی است ( الیس، 1994) که در این میان طیف وسیعی از عوامل فردی در مطالعات آموزش زبان مورد تحقیق و بررسی قرار گرفته اند لیکن تاکنون در این مطالعات هوش هیجانی به عنوان یک عامل فردی مورد توجه جدی قرار نگرفته است (پیشقدم، 2009). از سوی دیگر برخی از کنشهای زبانی که از جمله عناصر اصلی توانش کاربردشناسی زبان بینابین به شمار می رود دارای ویژگی «تهدید وجهه» می باشد. این نکته تاثیر و یا ارتباط هوش هیجانی - که ارتباط مستقیم با توانایی و مهارت افراد در مدیریت و کنترل احساسات دارد – را با توانش کاربرد شناسی زبان بینابین بسیار محتمل می سازد. در مطالعه حاضر محقق به بررسی این ارتباط محتمل می پردازد و با این هدف پرسشنامه «بار-آن» به عنوان معیار هوش هیجانی ، آزمون تافل به عنوان معیار سطح مهارت و توانایی زبانی و دو آزمون کاربرد شناسی زبان بینابین بر روی 52 زبان آموز ایرانی اجرا شده است. نتایج حاصل از تجزیه و تحلیل داده ها نشانگرعدم وجود ارتباط موثر و معنا دار میان هوش هیجانی و توانش کاربرد شناسی و سطح مهارت زبانی زبان آموزان می باشد در حالی که میان توانش کاربرد شناسی زبان بینابین و سطح مهارت زبانی ارتباطی معنا دار و موثر وجود دارد. افزون بر این نتایج به دست آمده بیانگر آن است که هوش هیجانی نمی تواند به عنوان معیار مناسبی برای پیش بینی میزان توسعه توانش کاربردشناسی زبان بینابین و یا سطح مهارت زبانی مورد استفاده قرار گیرد و در نتیجه با استناد به نتایج تحقیق حاضر می توان گفت که در فرآیند یادگیری زبان دوم به طور عام و توسعه توانش کاربرد شناسی زبان بینابین به طور خاص نمی توان هوش هیجانی را به عنوان یک عامل فردی تاثیر گذار و مهم به شمار آورد.

This study examined the Iranian EFL learners’ multicultural developmental trend in light of Investment Hypothesis as they furthered their academic studies from BA toward postgraduate levels. In so doing 117 BA, 92 MA, and 35 Ph.D. EFL students at AllamehTabataba’i University, Tarbiat Modarres, and Islamic Azad Universities, Tehran, Iran, were randomly selected to provide answers to Multicultural Personality Traits Questionnaire (MPQ) that measures individuals’ Multicultural Personality Traits (MPTs: Cultural Empathy, Open-Mindedness, Social Initiative, Emotional Stability, and Flexibility). Ph.D. students’ MPTs mean was found to be 277.77; MA students’ MPTs mean score was 272.20; and BA students’ MPTs mean score was 267.96. The ANOVA conducted revealed that EFL Iranian students’ MPTs improved as they furthered their academic career from BA to MA and from MA to Ph.D. levels. The study concluded that advancement in EFL students’ academic career resulted in a concomitant development in their MPTs and among the five MPTs, cultural empathy and social initiative were found to have been significantly improved at Ph.D. level. Among the MPTs, Social initiative provides the highest contribution to social interactions and its significant development at Ph.D. level is confirmatory of the discursive-constructionists’ approach to L2 learning.

Academic writing ability is an important goal that learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) try to attain. While ESL students’ academic writings have been widely explored, owing to few studies investigating appraisal resources in EFL students’ argumentative writing, the gap still exists about EFL students’ academic writing. This study aimed to see how Kurdish-speaking learners of English employ appraisal resources in their writings. It further aimed to explore whether the appraisal framework can be utilized as an assessment scale for evaluating the students’ argumentative writing. To this end, the study investigated the argumentative essays written by 15 bilingual Kurdish-Iranian graduates of English within the framework of the appraisal theory. The instruments applied in this study consisted of a modified rating scale for assessing the essays in terms of the macrostructures exploited in them and the framework for the analysis of appraisal resources. Quantitative findings revealed high-graded essays employ more attitudinal items and fewer monoglossic resources than low-graded ones. Qualitatively, the high-graded essays articulated attitudinal values in nominal forms and sometimes in a backgrounded manner while these values were mostly presented by surge of feelings and in a foregrounded way in the low-graded essays. Regarding engagement, unlike the high-graded essays, the low-graded ones were poor in recognizing other voices and alternative positions. Inspired by the strength of the appraisal model evaluating writing, results suggest that high-graded essays are successful in positioning readers attitudinally and clarifying the ethical message to readers.

طراحی تکالیف با سطح پیچیدگی شناختی معقول همیشه ازدیدگاه برنامه ریزان درسی, معلمان , و محققین حائز اهمیت بوده است چرا که تغییر تکالیف (از لحاظ پیچیدگی) می تواند منجر به نتایج متفاوتی در زمینه تولیدات شفاهی گردد. این تحقیق تلاشی در جهت بررسی تاثیر تغییر درتکالیف بر اساس 3 مورد (نیاز به برهان, تعداد عناصر, و موقعیت ""اینجا و اکنون"" در مقابل"" آنجا و سپس"" ) از مدل resource-directing , مطرح شده توسط رابینسون, بر روی نقل داستان از روی تصایر است. این تحقیق شامل 30 زبان آموز ایرانی در رنج سنی 20 تا 34 سال بود. همه این افراد موظف به انجام هردو مدل تکلیف (پیچیده و ساده) برای نقل داستان از روی تصایر بودند. داده های صوتی ضبط و سپس تست پارامتریک MANOVA برروی آن انجام گردید. نتایج نشان داد که افزایش پیچیدگی شناختی در تکالیف منجر به افزایش صحت و پیچیدگی زبانی گردید. یافته های این تحقیق می تواند بینش عمیقی برای تدوین کنندگان مطالب درسی در خصوص تدارک تکالیف و زبان آموزان در راستای سنجش پیشرفت فراهم آورد.