درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

With the latest paradigm shift in SLA from Cognitivism to Sociocultural Theory (SCT), more studies are carried out to investigate the efficacy of Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) through a social and cultural lens. A more recent offspring of SCT is Activity Theory which provides an explanatory framework for scrutinizing an activity in a social setting. The present study aimed at investigating the impact of Scaffolded WCF within the framework of Activity Theory on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance in terms of reduction of the learners’ writing errors with respect to the content, vocabulary, mechanics, organization, and grammar. Finally, different types of Activity Theory-based strategic mediations (i.e. artifact, rule, community, and role mediations) Iranian EFL learners employed in their writing revisions were investigated. Accordingly, 25 Iranian university-level students, through convenient sampling, were chosen to participate in the study. The treatment they received on their writings was a graduated Scaffolding WCF in their Zone of Proximal Development in the form of both peer and teacher feedback. The findings indicated that Scaffolded WCF statistically significantly contributed to the participants’ writing performance in terms of content, vocabulary, mechanics, organization, and grammar. With respect to the mediation strategies used by the learners, it was discovered that the learners benefitted from all the available mediators although with various degrees. It is hoped that the findings of this study will promise implications for promoting a teacher/learner-friendly method of providing WCF based on SCT, which can be utilized in large classes typical of Iranian EFL university courses.

The purpose of the present article is to investigate Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) within a theoretical context set by Linda Hutcheon’s definition of parody. In Hutcheon’s view, parody is a repetition with critical distance. Hucheonian parody allows the adapted work to challenge and ironically transform the form and the content of the hypotext in order not to ridicule but to create. The central questions of this research are: How does Jack Maggs employ Hutcheonian parody within the broader postmodern narrative discourse to view its source text with a critical distance? And, how does Hutcheonian parody engage Jack Maggs in contemporary social debates? In order to answer these questions, the research applies various aspects of Hutcheonian parody to Carey’s novel. The present paper demonstrates that Carey’s Jack Maggs recontextualizes Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1860) in a new Australian setting. It also argues that the novel, which has mostly received positive responses and reactions from both literary critics and general readers, illustrates Carey’s parodic attempt to revisit one of the most renowned novels of the Victorian era. The present research contends that Jack Maggs is a critique of nineteenth-century realism and, more broadly speaking, of master narratives.