مطالب

La Salle de bain, le premier roman de J.P Toussaint, qui était encore très jeune en 1985, et L’Automne est la dernière saison, le premier roman du jeune écrivaine iranienne, Nassim Mar’achi, publié en 2014, constituent tous les deux des œuvres littéraires de l’extrême contemporain qui nous séduisent par des caractéristiques particulières de leur syntaxe, leur vocabulaire, leur langage mais aussi celles de leur contenu narratif. Participant d’un dynamisme de ‘renouvellement’ du roman, ces œuvres proposent de nouvelles formes et contenus et trouvent ainsi des points de jonction dans un langage précis, court et clair, qui se limite parfois à se déclarer par un seul mot. Certes, ces points de jonction facilitent le regroupement de ces deux écrivains sous la bannière de ‘minimalisme’, mais, le traitement de l’esthétique minimaliste peut aussi présenter ses nuances chez Toussaint et Mar’achi. Ce n’est donc pas forcément des ressemblances que nous cherchons ici entre les deux romanciers, mais aussi des traits qui peuvent contribuer à la construction d’un minimalisme iranien ou français. Nous nous intéressons ainsi au désir commun de ces écrivains de représenter le rapport au monde, aux autres, et à soi de l’homme de l’extrême-contemporain à travers un texte-collage qui économise le style et la péripétie. Cela ne nous empêchera pourtant pas de repérer les traits qui marquent la distance du minimalisme iranien et français.

In this research, the teacher-researcher (henceforth, I) presents a chronological report over some life-long educational experiences in an EFL setting and during a long period—twenty - five years aimed at verifying/authenticating role conflicts. In so doing, I decided to carve my earlier educational paths to describe my diverse roles/realities. To this end, I recounted my past and presented experiences, including my three roles as (A) Language learner, (B) Language teacher, and (C) Language researcher. Using life-history narrative research designs and in line with auto-ethnography approaches, I initially embarked on critically describing my English language educational experiences from a recollection of past events in my memory through my first two roles—language learner and teacher—and mapped them onto my recently assigned role as a language researcher. The findings were self-revealing to me in that while recounting my experiences, I found out how specific intuited conflicts involving ‘impotency in using the English language for non-educational aims’, ‘the gap between theories and practice’, ‘the influence of essential others on my future decisions’, ‘the duality of exposures with people having more vs. fewer authorities’ among others had inflicted me to a great extent. Then and there, during such a long period for demonstrating my professional identity construction, I summarized my intuited conflicts. This was to designate how the unpredictability of affairs in ELT and maintaining intricate interactions with people in the community of practice, which resulted from numerous aims and led to unpredictable directions, might have influenced me as a language practitioner in my future attempts to experience a new being. The findings may promise implications for professional identity construction as mapped on recent narrative accounts for English language teachers.

Fluent reading is a multifaceted ability that integrates several linguistic and non-linguistic processes. Accordingly, recognizing the critical components of fluent reading is highly significant in planning and implementing effective reading programs. This study was undertaken to evaluate the predictive power of syntactic knowledge, vocabulary breadth, and metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in the reading fluency of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, a sample of 149 Iranian EFL language learners took the Vocabulary Levels Test, Survey of Reading Strategies Questionnaire (SORS), a TOEFL PBT, and a fluency test. The linear regression results indicated that vocabulary breadth was the first predictor of readers' performance on reading fluency, followed by metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. At the same time, syntactic knowledge was not entered into the regression model. Moreover, the findings confirmed the contribution of both linguistic and non-linguistic processes to reading fluency. Having a clear picture of fluency components can be advantageous to teaching reading comprehension and test score predictability.