مطالب

The importance of teachers in promoting reading comprehension skills among learners is crucial in the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education. This study aims to explore how teachers utilize social, discursive, and textual methods to enhance the development of reading comprehension skills in EFL learners. A total of 160 translation-majoring learners enrolled in a Reading Comprehension Course at Applied Scientific University (Rad) in Tehran were purposefully selected and divided into three experimental groups and one control group. The experimental groups received instruction based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which included social, discursive, and textual strategies to enhance their reading comprehension skills in the EFL classroom. To evaluate the effectiveness of the CDA-based instruction, pre- and post-tests on reading comprehension were conducted using a quasi-experimental design. The data obtained from these tests were analyzed using a one-way analysis of covariance (one-way ANCOVA). The results showed a significant improvement in reading comprehension among learners who were exposed to the CDA-based treatments, highlighting its essential role in promoting critical interaction with texts and enhancing overall language proficiency, while no significant improvement was observed in the control group. Additionally, social practice was found to be more effective than discursive and textual practices; however, no significant differences were observed between discursive and textual practices. The findings have implications for EFL teachers, learners, and curriculum planners, which can ultimately help make reading comprehension easier in EFL contexts.

Jam (2020) attempts to provide an Optimality-Theoretic analysis of Persian vowel harmony. As to cases where backness harmony does not appear to occur, his explanation appeals to Lexically Specific Constraint Theory, treating these instances as exceptional rather than systematic. In this reply, I argue that such an appeal to exceptionality is unnecessary, and I propose an alternative analysis in which regressive vowel harmony in Persian can be accounted for in a principled, unified manner without recourse to lexically indexed constraints. By introducing an appropriately formulated markedness constraint, it becomes possible to capture the full range of observed patterns while maintaining the parsimony and explanatory elegance expected of an Optimality-Theoretic framework. In addition to this central point, I identify several further weaknesses in Jam’s analysis. These include a conflation of rule ordering with constraint ranking, which obscures the theoretical distinction between derivational and constraint-based approaches, the problematic assumption that the phonological representation of loanwords should mirror their source-language forms, and the omission of critical information in both the representations and tableaux.

The ability to write from sources or integrated writing is considered an essential competency in academic and professional settings. This study investigated the possible interactions between motivation regulation strategies, integrated writing strategy use, and integrated reading-listening-to-write (RL2W) performance of Iranian EFL learners. A convenient sample of 31 learners from an EFL essay writing course participated in the study. The required data were collected based on the learners' performance in an integrated writing task and their responses to motivation regulation and integrated writing strategies questionnaires. The correlation analysis indicated a positive moderate relationship between motivation regulation strategy use and integrated writing performance of the learners, while integrated writing strategy use showed a low relationship with these constructs. Multiple regression analysis also indicated that among the subscales of motivation regulation strategy use in writing, interest enhancement had a significant contributory power to account for the integrated writing performance of the learners. MANOVA results also pointed to the superiority of high writing proficiency learners in motivation regulation strategy use compared to their less competent counterparts, but there were no significant differences between high and low groups in integrated writing strategy use, which confirmed the importance of quality of strategy use to mere quantity. As a subsidiary aim, the challenges learners encountered in the integrated writing process were identified by analyzing their responses to a reflection question and examination of their written essays. They were identified as linguistic, psycholinguist, and academic skill problems.

L’intertextualité littéraire est la mémoire du passé et offre un terrain fertile pour explorer la richesse des dialogues entre auteurs éloignés dans l’espace-temps. Dans cet article, nous nous plongerons dans l’univers de deux figures marquantes de la littérature pandémie, Albert Camus et José Saramago, pour retracer les emprunts, inspirations, et transformations opérés à partir de leur héritage littéraire, en particulier autour de la thématique de la contagiosité, et à travers deux œuvres emblématiques: La Peste et L’Aveuglement . Cette recherche se propose donc d’analyser la manière dont Saramago s’inspire de l’héritage camusien tout en développant une approche distinctive de la contagiosité. Cela nous amène à nous demander comment et dans quelle mesure Saramago met la littérature au seconde degré en réinvestissant le concept de la contagion, dans les niveaux textuel et contextuel, comme à la fois concept issu de l’intertextualité défini par Durkheim, et transfiguration de l’épidémie. A cet égard, à travers l’examen des procédés et techniques relevant de l’intertextualité, qui permettent le réinvestissement du motif de la contagiosité dans l’œuvre de Saramago, nous aborderons également les convergences et divergences entre les styles narratifs et les visées symboliques de deux auteurs. L’objectif principal de cette recherche consiste à l’examen de l’approche intertextuelle dont José Saramago dialogue avec l’héritage camusien à travers la représentation de la thématique de la contagiosité en tant qu’allégorie sociale, et métaphore obsédante de l’absurde. Pour ce faire, la théorie de l’intertextualité de Genette dans Palimpseste, littérature au seconde degré , et la modélisation typologique de l’intertextualité par Vincent Jouve, dans Poétique du roman , servent de cadre théorique à la méthodologie adoptée qui consiste à l’étude de la notion d’intertextualité comme métamorphose, selon la logique du palimpseste, et/ou comme métaphore de la contagiosité, selon la classification générique de Durkheim qui considère l’intertextualité comme à la fois contagion et imitation.