مطالب

Morpho-syntactic patterns device encompasses a subcategory of the cohesive devices that assists hearers to have an adequate mental representation for understanding speech. This article investigates the morpho-syntactic patterns employed in some Persian live sport radio and TV programs adapting Dooley and Levinsohn’s theoretical and analytical framework. The research data includes around 30,000 words extracted from 20 live sport radio and TV recorded programs. The morpho-syntactic patterns functionality is presented via comparing their frequency using descriptive statistics. The t-test is run to evaluate whether the differences in the utilization of morpho-syntactic patterns used in live radio and TV talks is significant or not. The results show that such patterns in Persian can be studied in the same way as Dooley and Levinsohn’s perspective, among which consistency of inflectional categories receives the most frequency while echoic utterances do the least. The consistency of inflectional categories catches a meaningful difference between its applications in the research data. Furthermore, there are not significant differences between the application of echoic utterances and discourse-pragmatic structuring in the corpora. Finally, morpho-syntactic patterns device, generally speaking, is reported as not having any significant relation in its applications in Persian live radio and TV talks under study.

Systematic phonics instruction in first language education has recently received considerable research attention due to its critical role in facilitating phonological awareness and processing skills. However, little is known about the effects of systematic phonics instruction on foreign language reading and spelling in an EFL context. This study examined the effects of spelling-based phonics instruction on 9-12 year old Persian speaking learners’ reading and spelling English words. The participants were randomly assigned into two groups: a control group who received non-phonics instruction, and an experimental group who received spelling-based phonics instruction. CORE Phonics Survey (2003), a battery of diagnostic tests and tasks, was used to uncover the effects of phonics on oral reading and word spelling development of the learners. The results of independent-samples t-test revealed that after 10-weeks of instruction, the spelling-based phonics instruction had really significant effects on improving both young Iranian EFL learners’ oral reading and whole word spelling. In other words, the experimental group benefited from spelling-based phonics instruction compared to the group with non-phonics instruction.

The language register used in academic communities has the special features of density, complexity, and abstractness which are associated with nominalization with which new members of the communities might not be familiar. To explore the possible distance between novice and established members regarding their awareness of this grammatical feature, the present study investigated the employment of nominalization in the writings of Iranian graduate students (both MA and PhD students) and experienced figures in applied linguistics. Forty five research articles in the discipline by the three groups of writers served as the corpus of the study. A rigorous analysis began by identifying and outlining nominalization instances manually through and per all rhetorical sections of the articles. The occurrences of the two types of nominal expressions was counted and normalized. So as to detect the possible significant differences between the samples, chi-square tests were run. The results revealed that the experienced writers used significantly more nominalization in their writings. However, although the total nominal expressions used in MA texts were more than those used in PhD texts, the difference turned out not to be significant. There were also similarities and variations in the ranking patterns of the two types of nominalization in four rhetorical sections of the three groups of the articles. It can be concluded that the differences might reflect the distance between the novice and the established authors regarding their awareness of the importance of nominalization in academic writing. The implications of the study for EAP courses were also discussed.