Foreign Language Teaching and Research

Chomsky cannot help wondering at the fact that we, despite so vast evidence, have little knowledge about the obvious evidence. A good example, I think, is the child’s way of first language acquisition. A great many researchers have studied various aspects of child language acquisition at different stages of the child’ life and have brought to light many details of language development. However, it remains uncertain how the child can cope with this heavy task of language acquisition within the first two years of his life. Since its birth, the child begins acquiring the intonation, the sound, the phoneme, the word, the meaning, and the structure of the language, to which he is exposed so fast that it is beyond our imagination. Mind that the same child is unable to do the simplest addition or subtraction of numbers within the early years of life. Thus, the intriguing question for Chomsky is: How is it that the child can acquire the complex system of a language such as English, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese … very fast despite so little and often deficient linguistic input?

Mispronunciation is still among the frailties of language learners the world over. The present study reports an all-out investigation into pronunciation training for the Persian-speaking EFL learners at the intermediate level of language proficiency. More specifically, the present study investigated (a) the underlying causes of mispronunciation at the level of segmental features, (b) the crucial importance of error analysis prior to developing any materials concerning suprasegmental features, and (c) the effectiveness of materials developed on the basis of the findings in the first two phases of the study. Sixty-Four Persian-speaking intermediate EFL learners were selected as participants for the purposes of this study. Twenty-Four of them assisted in the second and forty of them in the third phase. Since the results obtained in the first two phases were to be used for the preparation of the materials in the final phase, the researchers devised a pretest posttest design to prove or disprove the efficacy of the whole study. Thus, two intermediate classes in one of the language schools in Isfahan were chosen and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The first phase of the study confirmed the great impact of Persian language on EFL learners’ English pronunciation (51.82%). The second phase supported the idea that some suprasegmental features such as linking sounds are obstacles to proper pronunciation for Persian-speaking EFL learners. The results obtained from the last phase of the study indicated that pronunciation training with supplementary materials is rewarding albeit the progress might be slow.

While the number of computers in the classroom continues to increase and tremendous support for technology integration exists in government, business, and academia, a major discrepancy exists between the level of technology use that is expected from the educators and the actual use and integration of technology in the classroom. However, effective technology integration in early childhood education depends on an early childhood program’s overall program goals and objectives, and the program’s goals and objectives for each student. Also, it depends on how computers are incorporated into the early childhood curriculum (Haugland, 2000).

Among the fans of animated films young children are the most popular. This has led the dubbing industry to produce domesticated animations for the young audience of a different language and culture. In other words, in most cases dubbers attempt to adopt domestication procedures to make the language of animations easier and more tangible for children. The domestication strategies may bring both children and their parents great satisfaction. However, as a result of domestication, the dubbers may go too far and utilize a language which is not appropriate for children. Based on Venuti’s theory (1995) of domestication, the present study took a look at the merits and demerits of this procedure. It actually aimed at exploring different cases of inappropriate domestication in the two dubbed cartoons “The Incredibles” and “Barnyard”.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how voice is realized by Iranian EFL learners in persuasive English and Persian text types. This discourse-related notion is a required criterion for writing acceptable English. However, L2 learners from cultures other than English might face problems in realizing it, or even ignore it all through their writing. In this connection, the present study attempted to discover the possible relationship between the intensity of voice and the overall quality of text. Thus, thirty university students were selected as participants. They were asked to write in both English and Persian a persuasive text within the same subject matter. Then, their writings were rated in terms of intensity of voice and the overall quality based on Jacobs’ voice intensity scale and Jacobs’ overall quality scale (1981), respectively. The analysis of their productions indicated that there is a significant relationship between voice intensity and some of its features, and overall quality; while no relationship was found between English and Persian voice intensity. Therefore, voice deserves more attention on the part of writing instructor, as it could enrich the quality of L2 learners’ written productions with more sense of naturalness and smoothness. Moreover, material designers can incorporate English writing materials with various aspects of this critical notion, in addition to other language rhetoric, for learners at appropriate language proficiency level.