مطالب

This study aimed to investigate the grammatical complexity based on Biber, Gray, Staples, and Egbert’s (2020) linguistic description in research articles published in Iranian local journals and international journals. The corpus of the study included 40 Applied Linguistics research articles, 20 published in Iranian local journals and 20 in international journals in 2019-2020. The research articles were selected through purposive sampling from two Iranian journals, namely Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics and Journal of Teaching Language Skills, and two international journals, including Journal of English for Specific Purposes and System Journal. The research articles were analyzed in terms of three dimensions of grammatical complexity, including the structural types, syntactic functions, and specific structural/syntactic features. Moreover, for intra-rater consistency, the researcher re-analyzed the corpus after one month to see whether the same results were found. According to the results, in terms of the first dimension, i.e., the structural types, the frequencies of structures indicating higher grammatical complexity (non-finite dependent clauses and dependent phrases) outnumbered the frequency of structures showing lower grammatical complexity (finite dependent clauses) in both local and international journals. Concerning the second dimension, i.e., syntactic function within the structural type, the frequencies of more complex syntactic functions were higher than those of simple functions in both sets of research articles. Concerning the third dimension, i.e., specific structural/syntactic features, both groups of writers preferred to use more complex specific structural/syntactic features than simple ones.

The present study intended to design some materials based on the guidelines of González Davies (2004) for ‘legal texts and correspondence translation’ course of graduate students majoring in translation studies. To this end, first a checklist on the basis of Gentry and Gable's (2001) model was designed to find out the participants’ perceptions of the tasks. Next, the researchers designed related tasks based on Gonzales Davies’ (2004) guidelines inspired by Kiraly’s (2000) constructivist approach. In the third phase, the participants were given the designed tasks published in a book during10-12 sessions. Finally, the researchers held a semi-structured interview with the participants to find out their perceptions towards classroom activities as well as their translation ability. The results indicate that the participants had positive perceptions regarding the designed tasks. The findings have implications for translation classroom courses.

Transitioning smoothly from traditional learning of language to independent learning and consequently, moving from teacher-assessment to self-assessment faces teachers with a dilemma of deciding on learners’ final improvement. To assist to eliminate this dilemma and to compare learners’ self-assessment of reading comprehension skills with those of teacher assessment, the present study was set out. To this end, 190 B.S. Iranian engineering students were selected based on intact classes. The participants’ proficiency was determined by the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Prior to the instruction, the participants’ ability to use two reading skills, i.e. scanning and skimming was assessed by their instructor and by themselves through using a Likert Scale questionnaire. After instructing each skill, the participants received post-tests, both self-assessment and teacher assessment. Following the post-self-assessment, the participants answered an open-ended questionnaire to reflect on their assessment. To analyze the data and understand the differences and correlations between the two types of assessments, SPSS was performed. Intriguingly, the results from self- and teacher-assessment were pro-self-assessment. Besides, the outcomes of the open-ended questionnaire indicated that it is time to trust learners and allow them to assess their own learning and decide on their learning process.