Protocol analysis

Empirical s tudies in the field of the design process s tarted in the 60s. Protocol analysis is among the empirical research methods that have been developed simultaneously with the growth of empirical s tudies. Concurrent with the use of protocol analysis for researching in the field of the design process, analysis methods have been presented by some researchers, which can be used with the protocol analysis method in order to analyze the s tructure of the design process. Among these analysis methods, problem behavior graph, decision tree, linkography, and extended linkography could be mentioned. The problem behavior graph is based on problem-solving theories. In the decision tree method, the extracted data from protocol analysis is used for the perception of decision-making processes. Linkography is another method for analyzing the s tructure of the design process. In this method, the design process of a designer is unfolding by drawing a graph, which is called linkograph. This paper considers making a s tudy and comparison of these different analysis methods by the use of sys tematic review. By comparison of diverse analysis methods, two approaches could be recognized, formal and informal ones. In the formal approach, the design is mentioned as a logical research process of solving the design problem. The second approach is informal. In this one, the design process is mentioned as a reflective conversation with the situation. In this approach, which is based on Donald Schon’s theories, the design process is referred as an argumentative process.

During the last three decades, especially 1980's, language learning specialists have been busy discovering the nature of language learning strategies, describing them, and formulating their relationships with other language learning factors. In line with these studies, the field of translation studies has undergone a complete revolution in terms of its perspective toward its research priorities; that is, recent works tend to adopt a more descriptive rather than prescriptive approach. One of the newly emerged trends in translation studies is the quest for the nature of mental processes applied while translating a text. Following this trend, the present study incorporates think-aloud protocols (TAPs) and retrospective interviews to probe the learning strategies employed by some university students during the translation of an expository text from English to Persian according to the taxonomy of learning strategies presented by Oxford (1990). The results show that (1) the participants tend to incorporate cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies as their dominant strategies, (2) there is no significant difference between direct and indirect strategies incorporated by the participants, and (3) the scope of the taxonomy proposed in the field of language teaching can be generalized to translation studies.