مطالب

This study focused on the pedagogical application of priming in an EFL context. Structural priming refers to the speakers’ tendency to produce the structure they encountered in recent discourse in subsequent production compared to an alternative form. Given the limited number of studies in the literature with a focus on the application of priming in L2 teaching and the problems that L2 learners face during speech production, the present study aimed at investigating whether the implication of priming leads to a more frequent oral and written production of the relative clause (RC) structure compared to adjectival modification of nouns (AN) in long- and short-terms as an instance of implicit learning. Participants consisted of 60 EFL female L2 learners, aged between 18-25 years old. Two experimental and 1 control groups were defined and 20 participants were allocated to each group. By applying a pretest, a treatment, an immediate posttest, a delayed posttest design, a picture description task, and a grammaticality judgment test (GJT), the data were gathered. Results of the descriptive and inferential analyses revealed that the implication of priming led to an improvement in the rate of the RC construction when the participants were involved in the written production of the L2, as compared to oral modality. Results are discussed based on structural complexity and procedures involved in L2 production. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are considered, too.

In the educational setting of Iran, language assessment literacy (LAL) is still an underexplored issue. This paper investigated the development of LAL among EFL students taking language assessment course at state universities in Iran. The three components of LAL (i.e., knowledge, skills, and principles) were the focus of the inquiry. To collect the required data, a questionnaire, encompassing 83 Likert items and a set of open-ended questions, was developed, and responses from 92 course instructors were collected. Teaching and assessment practices of two course instructors were also observed throughout an educational semester. SPSS (26) was used to analyze the data. Findings revealed that these courses mainly focused on knowledge and skills, overlooking the principles of assessment. Adherence to traditional assessment approaches, use of inappropriate teaching materials, and lack of practical works in assessment also characterized the investigated courses. The paper concludes with suggestions to better design language assessment courses to increase the assessment literacy of English graduates who will probably enter the teaching contexts after graduation.

In educational psychology, mindsets refer to a set of core beliefs about intelligence and its role in successful learning in a specific domain. This study investigated the extent to which, the EFL learners’ mindsets might predict their English achievement considering the mediating roles of engagement and self-regulation. The data were collected by means of three questionnaires: The Language Mindset Inventory (LMI), the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI), and the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), as well as the institutes’ reports on their English achievement. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the SPSS 20 and Amos 8 Software. The results revealed that there was a significant direct relationship between language mindsets and English achievement of the EFL learners. Besides, this relationship was significantly mediated by the learners’ engagement and self-regulation. Drawing on the findings of this research, the challenge for teachers is to cultivate in students the mindsets that emphasize growth and potentials rather than constraints and stagnation.

The current study aimed to explore the nature of discursive strategies academics would use to share their specialist knowledge to both specialists and non-specialists. To this end, a corpus of 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles were randomly selected from the archive of four English international peer-reviewed journals and four English popular magazines and newspapers in the field of Nutrition. Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), a discourse framework to examine evaluative and/or persuasive language, was used to analyze the data. The results revealed significant areas of similarity and difference in terms of certain discursive elements leading to discernible degrees of persuasion. The findings imply that in order to develop a scientifically literate society, scientists should appeal to diverse discourse resources to provide the public with their findings in an informative and entertaining way. The results of the study carry some pedagogical implications for EAP courses held in EFL settings since being able to both comprehend and produce scientific texts of different professional levels at international scale seems to be a requirement for the future scientists.

This meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the effect of 22 primary studies which have been conducted to test the effect of the integrated skills approach (ISA) on language skills and components. Three questions guide this analyses: What is the overall effect of ISA on language skills and sub-skills? To what extent moderator variables such as learners level of education and proficiency modify the effect of the ISA? What is the magnitude of publication bias in this analysis? The overall effect size was found to be 1.18, which represents a large effect size based on Cohen, Manion and Morrison’ (2007) scale. The results of moderator analysis revealed that the ISA has the largest effect for advanced learners and at a tertiary level of education. The symmetrical funnel plot together with fail-safe N test shows that publication bias does not have any significant effect on the effect size reported in this study. The findings of this meta-analysis have clear implications for practitioners, policymakers, and curriculum developers.

At the end of the 19th century the British Empire faced numerous challenges, both external and internal. The cultural and political elite from across the Empire tried to find a solution to these crises. Alfred Milner was a member of this cultural and political elite. He contended that in order to safeguard the Empire, the Anglo-Saxon race had to embrace what he called “Constructive Imperialism” and gain an “imperial consciousness”. The aim of this article is first to analyze the nature of the crises the Empire faced, and discover the way in which they shaped Milner’s brand of Imperialism; second to situate Alfred Milner’s Constructive Imperialism in its cultural and political milieu; third to find its roots in the greater history of the British Empire; and finally, to understand why Alfred Milner failed to convince the Empire to embrace Constructive Imperialism. In order to reach its defined objectives, this article examines Alfred Milner’s Constructive Imperialism from a historical standpoint and then utilizes the Contrapuntal Analysis of Edward Said to further investigate its narrative.

This research sheds light on what has constituted and defined Iran’s postrevolutionary political identity and provides insights into its development with important socio-political implications. In order to understand the configuration and the evolution of post-revolutionary identity in Iran, we examined Hajj Messages issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader through a content analysis within the framework of a threefold typological model of identity advanced by the authors: empiricistic, rationalistic, and idealistic. The passages selected from the Supreme Leader’s Hajj Messages are classified into the above-mentioned three categories based on the model. Results indicate that in the post-revolutionary Iran, a rationalism that inherits the doctrines of anti-despotism, anti-colonialism, and return to Islam prevails. It is also observed that the post-revolutionary identity of Iran has both empiricist and idealist factors, in the narrations of which the rituals of Hajj and the history of prophets are underscored respectively. This research also concerns ebbs and flows in the process of identity development in postrevolutionary Iran. Whilst the rationalist factor keeps stable and is gradually strengthening its preponderance, idealism is ebbing away and empiricism is flowing in.