مطالب

University students in Iran need English to reinforce their specialist knowledge in order to meet their academic needs and not to be isolated from technological advances. The architecture students at the university level in Iran are no exception. Bearing this in mind, the present research intends to address itself to the following questions: 1) what are the problems in materials design in ESP courses in general and architecture students in particular? And 2) what are possible solutions to the problems identified? In an effort to pave the road for preparing a textbook for architecture students in Iran, we have analyzed the textbook presently used by architecture students at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz branch. To do this, we prepared two questionnaires to be answered by both the students and teachers about the content of the textbook under discussion. On the basis of their responses and also the researchers' comments on the issue, we have tried to discuss the shortcomings therein, and to give possible solutions.

The research reported here examined the relative effectiveness of semantic mapping, as an interactive pre-reading strategy, on reading comprehension of Iranian undergraduate students (non-EFL majors). It also examined whether there was an interaction between gender and the effect of teaching semantic mapping strategy on reading comprehension. The participants in this study consisted of 120 male and female pre-intermediate undergraduate students taking a General English course at UrmiaUniversity in Spring 2008. A Certificate of Advanced English Reading Paper (CAE) was administered to measure the students’ proficiency at the beginning of the research. Later, the participants were semi-randomly (Mackey and Gass, 2005) assigned into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was instructed on how toemploy semantic mapping strategy in reading while the control group received normal reading instruction. The post-test results supported the findings of earlier research that instruction on the application of semantic mapping contributed to reading comprehension. Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.

ESL students who write in English may present written material in a rhetorical and organizational mode that reflects the pattern which is valued in their native culture and rhetoric. Considering the violation of English code of writing in the writings of Iranian students, we will notice one common characteristic: They are reluctant (or ignorant of) to write a unified paragraph. Their writing consists of one whole page or two. They do not divide their writing into separate paragraphs. The knowledge of the writer on any subject begins and ends as much as the time or space for writing allows with no paragraph separation. The length of sentences is extraordinary, and the position of modifiers does not seem natural according to the code of English sentence pattern. This means that elements transferred from L1 rhetoric result in a production which does not match the English language style and rhetoric, despite the fact that some students lack grammatical competence. As a result, this type of writing is labeled unacceptable, vague or erroneous by English language standards. The focus of this study is to use English major students' writings to identify the elements which violate English language pattern of writing. The sources of errors responsible for non-English language rhetoric will be classified after a short theoretical review in the literature and finally suggestions for the elimination of errors will be presented.

Testing the comprehension of spoken language is of primary importance. A lot of factors may affect the performance of EFL learners on listening comprehension tests, among which are the use of visual advance organizers, and types of listening passages (dialogues or monologues). As B-Ikeguchi (1997) states a few studies have been carried out on the effects of these factors on EFL learners’ listening comprehension with controversial results. And even fewer studies have concentrated on the effects of these factors on EFL learners’ performance on listening comprehension tests, which is the purpose of this study. In the present study, 180 advanced EFL learners were randomly selected by administering the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The subjects were randomly assigned to three groups each consisting of 60 students. As far as the performance of subjects on listening comprehension test was concerned, the following results were obtained: 1) There was a significant difference between the presence vs. lack of visual advance organizer; 2) There was a significant difference between the uses of short-interval vs. long-interval advance organizer; 3) There was a significant difference between different types of listening passages (dialogues vs. monologues); and 4) There was no significant interaction between the use of visual advance organizer and different types of listening passages.