درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Correlational studies supporting the link between learners’ multiple intelligences and their learning are superseded by interventionist attempts to explore direct applications of Multiple Intelligence (MI) Theory in language teaching and learning. This quasi-experimental study examined the extent to which engaging ELT major university students in writing tasks, compatible to their dominant intelligences, might enhance the accuracy, organization, and fluency of their writing. The participants were 64 male and female English major sophomores. They were in three intact classes, randomly assigned to a control no task (NT) group, a task-supported (TS) group, and an MI-oriented task (MIT) group after their initial homogeneity was assessed. The fifteen-session treatment comprised pre-writing brainstorming activities in the NT group and a set of pre-writing tasks performed by the TS group. In the MIT group, however, individuals with the same dominant intelligences were grouped together to perform tasks that were compatible with their dominant intelligences. The one-way ANOVA analysis of the research data obtained from the post-test writing scores revealed that the MIT group surpassed the other groups in accuracy, fluency and organization. The findings underscore the necessity of taking learners’ intelligences into consideration as a criterion for task selection and offer important pedagogical implications for teaching writing.

Academic essays entail taking a stance on the truth value of propositions. Epistemic adverbs deal with the speaker's assessment of the truth value of propositions. Employing a corpus-based approach with descriptive statistics and qualitative description, this study explored the use of epistemic stance adverbs in academic essays written by native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners. Following Biber et al.'s (1999) framework of stance adverbials, the researchers employed a corpus of 62077 words taken from class assignments written by Iranian EFL learners and a corpus of 65268 words taken from British Academic Written English (BAWE) to investigate the use of epistemic stance adverbs. Antconc software 3.4.3 version was used to search the most frequent stance adverbs. Frequency counts for each of the adverbs were extracted and normalized per 1000 words; then, Chi-square was run to pinpoint any differences between the two groups. The findings revealed both similarities and differences in the use of stance adverbs between the two groups. For example, EFL writers used more confident adverbs to show their authorial presence while native speakers used more maybe adverbs which are less authority-oriented. The findings may have implications for second/foreign language learners and writing instruction.