مطالب

This mixed-methods study aimed at investigating the effects of a gadget-based Internet multimedia extensive reading program on promoting language proficiency. In so doing, a pretest-posttest design was applied in the quantitative phase to comparatively analyze outcomes of three classes of college-level EFL learners (two experimental groups and one control, each including 30 university students) on how much they improved in their receptive proficiency, before and after the general English language course they were taking. The first group took the General English course along with a multimedia-based Internet extensive reading program as the study’s treatment, and the second group took a linear text (traditional) extensive reading program with their English course. The posttest scores showed that students in experimental group 1 (extensive reading using multimedia texts) outperformed both experimental group 2 (extensive reading using linear texts) and the control group. Furthermore, experimental group 2 had higher scores in comparison to the control group. As for the qualitative phase, results of the follow-up interviews and open-ended questionnaires also indicated that the learners liked, and would prefer to substitute traditional reading programs by gadget-based multimedia ones. EFL teachers may be most interested in outcomes of this study since insights may be gained regarding the extent to which Internet-based reading should enter language courses.

The main priority for university translation educators is to improve the quality and outcomes of translation courses. To achieve such a goal, the instructors are required to integrate learners' needs, identified with the help of a needs survey, into syllabus content. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to identify the Iranian English majors' difficulties in translating English texts since once a problem is identified, exploring the best pedagogical solutions would follow. The aim was accomplished through qualitative descriptive research conducted at Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch tracing the errors committed by the English majors in their exam papers in academic years 2016-2019. Following the model proposed by Miremadi (2008), the syntactic and lexical problems were identified in the exam papers collected during six semesters. Moreover, three more categories were added to the list as the data analysis moved forward: culture problems, stylistic problems, and miscellaneous errors with detailed subdivisions. What appeared to be worthy of attention in the results was the students' weakness in text and sentence segmentation to find the function of the components to approach textual meaning, resulting from the students' poor English language proficiency. The results also revealed the students' poor topical knowledge as well as the lack of knowledge of translation techniques and strategies.

Hedges, as tools to express tentativeness and doubt, have been studied in plenty of research papers in the Iranian EFL research setting. However, their use in a learner corpus, portraying Iranian learner English, is in need of more research attention. With this end in view, this study aimed at investigating how Iranian EFL learners who have majored in English-related fields in Iran deployed hedges in their academic, expository essays. This study was conducted through running the corpus analysis software MonoConc Pro-Semester version 2.2 on the electronically compiled Iranian Corpus of Learner English, totaling 436,035 words. Automatic and manual analyses suggested that hedges comprised only 7.4% of the total metadiscourse in the Iranian Corpus of Learner English, with 0.68 occurrences per 1,000,000 words. In a comparable native corpus, a sub-corpus of the British Academic Written English, hedges were used with 1.43 occurrences per 1,000,000 words (21% of the total metadiscourse in the corpus). Log-likelihood statistical analysis confirmed statistically significant differences between the two corpora in terms of the use of hedges, with underuse of hedges in the Iranian academic, expository essays relative to the English natives’ essays. Implementations of the results for English academic writing instruction including genre-based, explicit teaching of hedges through data-driven techniques with the aid of tools such as AntConc software and corpora such as the BAWE are considered.

It is necessary to establish mutual relationships between suppliers and demanders to ensure the quality of services. As English is the language of international communications, and the linguistic competence can greatly help develop the tourism industry, this study aimed to analyze the effects of learning English listening, speaking, reading, and writing on tourism development in Iran through the mediating roles of effective communications and teaching in English. The study is applied regarding purpose, and descriptive-survey study of correlation type regarding method. The population consisted of the professors and students of tourism management of Iran's universities, tourism faculties of Tehran, Mashhad, Semnan, Ahvaz, Babolsar, Yazd, and Kerman, as well as the experts in the tourism industry of Iran and foreign tourists. Data collection was field and library method done by distributing a questionnaire online and in person to 351 participants to complete them. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques were used to analyze the collected data. The research findings indicated that listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills have a significant effect on effective communication and education in English. On the other hand, effective communication and teaching in English affect tourism development. The results indicate the essential role of linguistic competence in developing the tourism industry. For better understanding, recognition and learning the international environment and the development of the tourism industry, Iran needs to deal with this challenge, learning English, maintain its competitiveness in the globalization stage.

The application of zone of proximal development (ZPD), as a major tenet of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT, 1978), has recently been invited in the L2 learning/teaching profession. This study mainly examined whether Iranian EFL learners’ interactions in diverse ZPD-activated proximal contexts through the use of storytelling instruction could improve their oral (speaking) proficiency and attitudes towards speaking in ZPD-based learning context. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used with 60 intermediate EFL participants selected from Asre-no English Language Institute in Iran, after administering the OQPT. Then, the participants were assigned into 2 experimental groups (ZPD-activated equal and unequal groups), and 1 control group, with 20 participants in each group. The students in both experimental groups were exposed to the storytelling-based instruction within different ZPD-activated proximal contexts (equal and unequal), but in the control group the traditional teacher-fronted instruction within a non-ZPD context was conducted. A semistructured interview and a questionnaire were used to assess the participants’ speaking proficiency and attitudes before and after the instruction. The findings from the analysis of covariance and t test suggested that using storytelling instruction within ZPD-activated contexts significantly improved both the participants’ speaking proficiency and their attitudes. Further data analysis of the ZPD participants’ performance indicated that no significant difference between the learners’ speaking proficiency development of equal and unequal peer groups was found. By implication, ZPD-based pair work and storytelling-based instruction, interwoven with each other in a balanced manner, would be highly fruitful in developing EFL learners’ speaking skill and their attitudes.

This comparative study aimed at finding out the types of grammatical shifts which have occurred in two English translations of the Quranic rhetorical questions, and the impact of such shifts on the said rhetorical questions. For these purposes, the study firstly analyzed the Arabic and English texts syntactically using the x-bar theory for Haegeman (2006) and then classified the grammatical shifts according to Catford’s (1965) kinds of shifts. The X theory has been applied as a tree diagram and liner structure. Where necessary “al-Gadwal fi i’arab al-Quran”/the Quran grammatical analysis” of Safi published in (1995) has been used. The two English translations used in the study were “the Koran Interpreted” by Arberry (1955) and “the Noble Quran: English translation of the meanings and commentary” (1996) by al-Hilali and Khan. According to the analysis, different types of grammatical shifts, e.g. class, unit, structural and level shifts have occurred in the two translations. Further, another kind of shift has appeared in the two translations. This refers to the syntactic shift where a question has been changed into a statement. With respect to the impact of such shifts on the meanings of the Quranic rhetorical questions, sometimes the entire meaning of the ST rhetorical questions is distorted like in al-Hilali and Khan’s translation. In addition, the intended reason of the function is changed like in Arberry’s translation. By and large, it can be argued that the shifts committed by Arberry affected the ST rhetorical questions more than those made by al-Hilali and Khan.

Recent thrust of research has focused on non-conventional classrooms for teaching to EFL learners. Amongst the newly developed models, Unplugged Classroom Model (UCM) is the most debated one as textbooks are aside and the syllabus is based on conversation-driven activities. This study sought to determine the pros and cons of unplugged teaching for enhancing EFL learners' oral proficiency. From a pool of 317 intermediate and upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners, 120 intermediate and upper-intermediate learners (60 each) were selected based on SPEAK NOW 1-4 Interview Placement Exam and were divided into conventional and non-conventional classrooms at each proficiency level. The participants in the non-conventional classrooms received unplugged instruction; whereas, their counterparts in the control group (conventional) classrooms were taught according to their textbook's instruction. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to measure learners' performances before and after instruction through paper-based exams and interviews. Participants' perspectives and viewpoints in the non-conventional classrooms were analyzed using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) questionnaire and the instructor's observations, respectively. The findings revealed that not only did the UCM participants enjoy collaborative learning but also enhanced their learning ability to produce more orally proficient utterances and to expand their gained knowledge in order to scaffold their classmates' conversation.

This study aimed to analyze high school EFL teachers’ attitudes toward collaborative action research (CAR). This study was of both qualitative and quantitative types. The number of the selected samples of this research, based on the convenience sampling method, were 20 male and female EFL teachers teaching at the Education and Training Organization of Isfahan Province. As the instrument of this research, they were given the standard questionnaire of Savaskan (2013) and Byrnes (2009) to fill. Then, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test through SPSS Software, version 25. According to the obtained results, based on descriptive statistics, both male and female teachers had a positive attitude toward collaborative action research. (56.25% of the answers were under average (3) which showd a more positive attitude). Also, in comparison with the female teachers, male ones had a more positive attitude toward collaborative action research (2.70˂2.95). Conducting such research in this realm paves the way to make sure about the right selection of the teaching techniques in general, and collaborative action research and its subcategories in particular.

Research evidence reported to date demonstrates the differential effects of manipulating second language (L2) task conditions on the resultant production as measured in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. The present study was aimed at adding to the available body of findings by exploring the synergistic effects of two task condition variables, namely online planning and immediacy (± Here/Now) on L2 oral discourse. For this purpose, 60 Iranian intermediate learners of English as a foreign langue (EFL) were asked to perform the task of narrating a story based on a sequenced set of pictures under four conditions (i.e., Here/Now and pressed online planning, Here/Now and careful online planning, There/Then and pressed online planning, There/Then and careful online planning). The results of statistical analyses revealed that carefully planning speech while performing the task consistently assists complexity and accuracy, but negatively affects fluency of speech. Besides, it was observed that carrying out the same task using the past tense without contextual support (i.e., There/Then), if coupled with careful online planning, simultaneously enhances complexity and accuracy. Performing a task in Then/There also reduces fluency. Interestingly, it was also found out that the opportunity to carefully plan online while performing the task in There/Then exponentially increases complexity and accuracy with strong negative effects on fluency. Lastly, pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed regarding the contribution of task condition to directing learners’ attention and their L2 speech quality.