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Materials evaluation studies have constantly demonstrated that there is no one fixed procedure for conducting textbook evaluation studies. Instead, the criteria must be selected according to the needs and objectives of the context in which evaluation takes place. The speaking skill as part of the communicative competence has been emphasized as an important objective in language teaching. The present study explored the core units of spoken grammar inherent in four widely-used ELT textbooks following McCarthy and Carter’s (2002) classification. A coding scheme was developed to make it possible for the researchers to use the classification in codifying the data. The data were then analyzed to detect the units of spoken grammar inherent in the target textbooks. Results from codification of dialogues and transcripts of audio recordings showed that the units of spoken grammar are not evenly distributed in these ELT textbooks. In addition, a significant difference was found between the textbooks in their inclusion of different categories of the spoken grammar.

The importance of demotivation in language learning has been overshadowed in the commonplace research on language learning motivation and even in mainstream psychology (Dörnyei, 2005). The purpose behind conducting this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ demotives for studying in general and English language in particular. Besides, the importance of educational context was investigated through explaining the changes in students’ responses based on the type of university and gender. In Iran, university education is highly important for youngsters and the type of university with their various contexts is determining for their future. There are popular state universities among which one technical university as well as its satellite campus were selected. Besides, a distance-education and a unisexual university were represented in the present sample, overall comprising 194 bachelor students of different majors. Consequently, the factors considered as demotives are ranked, elaborated on and analyzed in order to shed light on the educational context-specific demotives and the pros and cons of current practices of EFL instruction in the universities.

The current study aimed at investigating the academic learning needs of Iranian undergraduate students of English Language and Literature from the perspective of 320 stakeholders including undergraduate students (n=252), graduates (n=51), English literature instructors (n=7), and language instructors (n=10). To this aim, atriangulation of the most important data collection instruments of needs analysis (i.e., questionnaires, class observations, and semistructured interviews) was adopted for data collection at eight different Iranian state universities. The results of data analysis revealed that the above-mentioned students are not adequately equipped with learning and communication strategies during their academic and preacademic studies. The results of the current study may promise implications for the provision of some extracurricular EFL courses at the tertiary and senior high school levels in order to enhance students’ sociocultural and strategic competence based on the shared decision-making process among different stakeholders in the course design community

Concerns over the phony nature of textbooks and artificiality of their contents in reflecting authentic language have been raised by a number of researchers. It has been argued that many language teaching programs result in the failure of learners of English to successfully communicate in the target language. The problem with these programs is that there is no general agreement about the success of these materials in developing the pragmatic competence necessary for interlocutors’ mutually intelligible communication[D1] . Hence, this study explored communicated requests for nonverbal/verbal goods and services (RNGS/RVGS) in the dialogues of 5 textbooks and 8 English movies. The utterances of the textbooks and movies were evaluated on six criteria deriving from research on speech act theory, politeness, and conversation analysis. These included whether the textbooks discussed second pair parts, the forms of requests, the context of request occurrence, the nature of the devices through which the requests are mitigated, and multi-turn request forms. The results of the analysis revealed that, except for re-requests and dispreferred responses of RNGS,textbooks’ strategies including forms, face, contexts of RVGS, and strategies of RNGSwere not realized through adequate examples compared to their variants in movies.Most importantly,except for bald on record, internal mitigators of RVGS, external mitigators, and direct and indirect forms of RNGS, the other request strategies in the textbooks showed less variety than those of their counterparts in the movies. Internally mitigated RVGS were the onlystrategies variouslyexploited in the textbooks.The findings revealed that textbook designers should improve their instructional materials by incorporatingmore accurate samples of communicated requests in their future textbooks.

مطالعات پیشین نشان می دهد که بازخورد اصلاحی در عملکرد زبان آموزان تأثیر مثبتی دارد. پژوهش شبه-آزمایشی حاضر بر آن است تاثیر بازخورد اصلاحی بر نوشتار خود باز خورد دهندگان و دریافت کنندگان بازخورد اصلاحی را بسنجد. برای نیل به این هدف، 45 زبان آموز در 3 کلاس نگارش بازخورد دهندگان، دریافت کنندگان بازخورد و گروه گواه گمارده شدند. گروه اول آزمایشی، بر کاربرد ناصحیح حروف تعریف a/an، the و همچنین زمان گذشته در نوشته های دریافت کنندگان، بازخورد اصلاحی دادند. گروه دوم، باز خوردها را مرور کردند و در نوشته های بعدی خود بکار گرفتند و گروه سوم هیچ بازخورد اصلاحی ندادند و دریافت نکردند. پس از 4 هفته، پس آزمون بلافصل و 2 هفته بعد از آن پس آزمون تاخیری اجرا گردید. تحلیل داده های حاصل از پس آزمون های بلافصل و تاخیری حاکی از آن بود که گروه باز خورد دهندگان عملکرد بهتری نسبت به گروه دریافت کنندگان بازخورد اصلاحی داشتند. همچنین نتایج نشان داد که عملکرد هر دو گروه آزمایشی در استفاده از ساختارهای مورد هدف به صورت معنی داری بهتر از گروه گواه بود

Although decades of research have well elaborated on teacher professional development, we still do not have a thorough picture about what teacher professional development could entail and what components it consists of. The present study aims to develop and validate a teacher professional development scale in an Iranian English foreign language context. An initial tentative model with 130 items was piloted and tested through exploratory and confirmatory data analyses on a sample of 400 EFL teachers. This level resulted in the removal of 28 items in our sample loaded, resulting in a final 102 teacher professional development inventory. The developed inventory measures the extent to which EFL teachers are professionally developed and makes teachers aware of multiple characteristics of professionally developed teachers. These competencies are essential components of teacher professional development, enabling the teachers to utilize them in everyday teaching and learning practices in the classroom settings which, as a result, leads to student achievement. As teachers fulfill important professional roles, they need valid instruments to assess their day-to-day functioning in the class. With the instrument developed and validated in the current research, we, in fact, allow language teachers to assess their extent of professional development in different pedagogical contexts.

Self-regulation is the ability to regulate one’s cognition, behavior, actions, and motivation strategically and autonomously in order to achieve self-set goals including the learning of academic skills and knowledge. Accordingly, self-regulated learning involves self-generated and systematic thoughts and behaviors with the aim of attaining learning goals. With that in mind, this study aimed to examine the effect of self-regulation instruction to the intermediate EFL readers on their ability to make within-text inferences while reading. Zimmerman’s model of self-regulation with its three cyclic phases of forethought, performance and self-reflection constituted the theoretical basis of this study. Two intact intermediate classes in an English language institute were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was trained in self-regulatory processes which were directed at EFL reading comprehension for ten sessions, while the control group received the routine, traditional reading instruction involving pre-, while-, and post-reading tasks and activities. The results of parametric one-way between-group ANCOVA showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group on the post-test of EFL reading comprehension, particularly in term of within-text inferencing. This finding revealed that self-regulation instruction aimed at EFL reading comprehension significantly contributed to learners’ ability to make correct within-text inferences while reading in English as a foreign language.

این مطالعه تأثیر انواع مختلف ارائه معنای لغات را به صورت چندرسانه ای (متنی، تصویری و ویدئویی) از طریق بردهای هوشمند بر درک مطلب دانش آموزان ایرانی مورد بررسی قرار می دهد. از بین 102 نفر جمعیت کلی زبان آموزان دختر، 60 نفر بر اساس آزمون استاندارد نلسون انتخاب شدند. سپس آنها به صورت تصادفی به 4 گروه 15 نفره تقسیم شدند که عبارتند از: سه گروه آزمایش که از ارائه معنای لغات بهره می بردند و یک گروه کنترل. بر اساس نتایج مطالعه آزمایشی، بعضی از لغات متون کامپیوتری، به وسیله یک برنامه نرم افزار کامپیوتری، دارای چند لینک شدند که از طریق این لینک ها معنای آن ها به روش های مختلف (متنی، تصویری و ویدئویی) از طریق برد هوشمند ارائه می شد. وقتی معلم در حین تدریس لغت لینک دار روی برد هوشمند را لمس می کرد یک صفحه جدید ظاهر می شد. این صفحه یا لغت را با معنی آن به صورت متنی (برای گروهی که معنای لغات را فقط به صورت متنی دریافت می کردند), یا با تصویر آن (برای گروهی که معنای لغات را فقط به صورت تصویری دریافت می کردند) و یا با ویدئو ( برای گروهی که معنای لغات را از طریق فیلم و انیمیشن دریافت می کردند) نمایش می داد. هر گروه از زبان آموزان، متن های کامپیوتری را از طریق اینترنت برد هوشمند در کلاس درس بر اساس یکی از روش های فوق می خواندند. نتایج آماری داده های به دست آمده نشان داد که 1) هر سه گروه آزمایش که از ارائه معنای لغات با استفاده از برد هوشمند بهره می بردند (متنی، تصویری و ویدئویی) نسبت به گروه کنترل که از ارائه معنای لغات توسط برد هوشمند هیچ بهره ای نمی بردند، متون زبان انگلیسی را به صورت قابل توجهی بهتر درک می کردند.2) گروهی که معنای لغات را به صورت فیلم ویدئویی و انیمیشن توسط برد هوشمند دریافت می کردند در درک مطلب نسبت به گروه هایی که معنای لغات را فقط به صورت متنی یا فقط به صورت تصویری توسط برد هوشمند دریافت می کردند عملکرد بهتری داشتند؛ اما به صورت معنادار نبود. و در آخر هیچ تفاوت معناداری بین سه گروه آزمایش در درک و دریافت زبان آموزان از متون زبان انگلیسی از طریق برد هوشمند وجود نداشت.

A large number of studies dealing with phonology have focused their attention on phonological production at the expense of phonological perception which provides the foundation stone for phonological production. This study focuses on phonological perception at phonemic level. The purpose of the study is helping beginning learners improve their perception of the English phonemes which are confusable for them. To this end, we propose transcribing as an aural input enhancement device and examine its effect on learners’ phonemic perception. Thirty one females who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups participated in this study. The experimental group had transcribing exercise during the experiment while the control group did not. The results of the study show that transcribing improves beginning learners’ phonemic perception significantly. Therefore, EFL teachers are advised to include transcribing exercise as one of the techniques to improve learners’ phonemic perception and, hence, their listening comprehension.

Given the significance of teacher care and its impact on student motivation, stroke as a unit of recognition seems to be related to motivation for class attendance and language learning. In this regard, this paper aimed to investigate the role of stroke in students’ willingness to attend classes(WTAC) and their foreign language achievement (FLA) in the foreign language context. To this end, a scale was developed and validated through structural equation modeling (SEM) to measure learners` WTAC. A total number of 260 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners completed the newly developed scale along with the stroke scale. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationships among the variables. The results demonstrated that WTAC, Non-verbal, and Valuing subscales of stroke were the strongest predictors and Teacher Characteristics (TCH) subscale of WTAC was the only predictor for FLA. Finally, the results were discussed, and some implications were provided for educational settings. تاثیر نوازه بر تمایل به شرکت در کلاس درس و یادگیری زبان خارجی با توجه به اهمیت توجه معلم و تاثیر آن بر انگیزه شاگردان، نوازه به عنوان واحد دیده شدن افراد، به نظر می رسد با انگیزه شاگردان برای شرکت در کلاس و یادگیری زبان ارتباط دارد. در همین راستا، در این پژوهش به دنبال بررسی نقش نوازه در تمایل به شرکت در کلاس درس و یادگیری زبان خارجی هستیم. بدین منظور، پرسشنامه ای برای سنجش میزان تمایل برای شرکت در کلاس با مدل معادلات ساختاری تهیه و هنجاریابی گردید. از 260 نفر فراگیر زبان انگلیسی خواسته شد به این پرسشنامه و پرسشنامه نوازه پاسخ دهند. از تحلیل رگرسیون برای بررسی ارتباطات بین زیر سازه ها استفاده شد. نتایج نشان داد پرسشنامه جدید با زیر سازه غیر کلامی و ارزشیابی نوازه و ویژگیهای معلمی با یادگیری زبان ارتباط معنادار دارد. در پایان، نتایج بحث شد و برخی از کاربردهای این پژوهش برای محیطهای آموزشی ارایه شد.   کلیدواژه ها:نوازه، تمایل به شرکت در کلاس، حضور در کلاس، یادگیری زبان خارجی