English language teaching
afsaneh saeedakhtar; Afsar Rouhi; Reza Abdi; Jafar Parsanezhad
Abstract
This study examines the influence of output-based podcasts (OBPs), the mediating effect of funds of identity (FoI), and teacher corrective feedback (CF) on L2 speaking of Iranian pre-intermediate learners and their willingness to communicate (WTC). The study also surveys the attitudes of the experimental ...
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This study examines the influence of output-based podcasts (OBPs), the mediating effect of funds of identity (FoI), and teacher corrective feedback (CF) on L2 speaking of Iranian pre-intermediate learners and their willingness to communicate (WTC). The study also surveys the attitudes of the experimental groups toward OBPs and CF, as well as their probable attitude and WTC changes over time. To these ends, 60 participants recruited were randomly divided into two experimental groups (the OBPs + CF and theOBPs – CF group) and a control group. Podcasts were created based on themes congruent and incongruent with students' FoI. The data was collected through pretest, immediate and delayed posttests, (attitude, WTC, and FoI) questionnaires, reflective journals, as well as an interview. Results demonstrated that OBPs improved the experimental groups’ speaking ability. Moreover, CF pushed learners to perform better. FoI also proved to be pivotal in triggering learners’ WTC. Learners had positive attitudes toward OBPs as well as FoI in improving their speaking skill. Furthermore, learners’ WTC changed positively over time as a result of creating podcasts. Integrating FoI into creating podcasts improved learners' performance and their WTC.
English language learning
Afsar Rouhi; Afsaneh Saeedakhtar; Behrooz seifi; Reza Abdi
Abstract
Objective: This study explores the effect of recruiting topics highly valued by students along with the interest-igniting mode of reading texts in the site of practice, collectively framed as funds of identity (FoI), on willingness to read (WTR).Methods: To this end, three groups of students were recruited. ...
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Objective: This study explores the effect of recruiting topics highly valued by students along with the interest-igniting mode of reading texts in the site of practice, collectively framed as funds of identity (FoI), on willingness to read (WTR).Methods: To this end, three groups of students were recruited. Over a 17-session extracurricular experiment, all the three groups received books in and out of tune with their FoI, elicited through an initial-semester researcher-made questionnaire. One group (n = 20) received e-books with few interactive features, the second group (n = 20) received e-books with no interactive features, and the third group (n = 20) received print books. WTR and attitude changes toward e-books were assessed using initial- and final-semester questionnaires. Students were also required to send summaries of their readings and keep journals throughout the experiment. They finally gave a post-treatment interview.Results: Qualitative sets of data in juxtaposition with quantitative ones lent support to the positive influence FoI and e-books—as on-site emerging FoI—exercised on WTR and attitude change toward e-books.Conclusions: FoI operationalized through e-books increased learners' WTR. In light of the patterns of changes observed, FoI of students are suggested to be taken into consideration for obtaining better educational results.
English language teaching
Reza Abdi; Vali Mohammadi; Maryam Amani
Abstract
Materials evaluation plays an important role in language teaching as it helps practitioners to develop an awareness of the coverage and quality of the existing materials and as such, guides most instruction and revision decisions. Therefore, we sought to evaluate three English Vision textbooks exclusively ...
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Materials evaluation plays an important role in language teaching as it helps practitioners to develop an awareness of the coverage and quality of the existing materials and as such, guides most instruction and revision decisions. Therefore, we sought to evaluate three English Vision textbooks exclusively written for Iranian secondary high school students through a comparison to the identical Interchange book series, the fifth edition. Following a model of nominal groups outlined here, the evaluation targeted the quantity and quality of the groups appearing in the two series as they are assumed to be an important part of authentic language. For the quantitative part, the results indicated a significantly higher use of nominal groups in the Interchange series. Similarly, in the qualitative analyses, we found higher quality nominal groups appearing in the Interchange books. The findings revealed inadequate inclusion of nominal groups' potentially useful structures in the Vision textbooks, supposed to help teachers to raise an awareness so as to come up with appropriate instructional policies, and the textbook developers to consider the findings when any revision is due.
Tohid Siami; Reza Abdi
Volume 4, Issue 9 , December 2012, , Pages 165-176
Abstract
In order to develop an understanding of the rhetorical conventions in the Persian language and to find out the metadiscursive cultural norms of Iranian writers in their native language writings, it is necessary to probe into the implicit rhetorical features of academic writing which has so far eluded ...
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In order to develop an understanding of the rhetorical conventions in the Persian language and to find out the metadiscursive cultural norms of Iranian writers in their native language writings, it is necessary to probe into the implicit rhetorical features of academic writing which has so far eluded a comprehensive systematic characterization. Metadiscourse marking, which is supposed to be one of the important rhetorical aspects in the writing process, is shown to be susceptible to cultural mentalities. Therefore, in this study an attempt is made to explore interactive and interactional metadiscourse strategies use by the Persian writers in the genre of research articles (RAs). For the purpose of this study, a corpus of 60 Persian research articles from social and natural sciences was selected for a close qualitative manual analysis. It appeared that, though globally similar in many ways, different IMRD sections of RAs which follow different cognitive genre types use interactive and interactional strategies differently. Also, the conventions of the two sciences appeared to be weirdly different. The findings are analyzed and implications are drawn for the teachers and learners of writing research articles in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes. It is argued that without such characterizations it would be very difficult to gather an idea of the current rhetorical trend in Persian language so that a comparison can be made with any target language conventions in teaching and learning foreign languages.
Reza Abdi
Volume 3, Issue 7 , December 2011, , Pages 1-17
Abstract
As part of a wider attempt to bestow the spirit of scholarly prose upon the research articles’ rhetorical structure, academic writers invariably take advantage of quantity metadiscourse markers to avoid prolixity and live up to the implicit and explicit maxims of quantity category as suggested ...
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As part of a wider attempt to bestow the spirit of scholarly prose upon the research articles’ rhetorical structure, academic writers invariably take advantage of quantity metadiscourse markers to avoid prolixity and live up to the implicit and explicit maxims of quantity category as suggested in Gricean CP and similar models. In order to develop a clear understanding of quantity strategies distribution in academic prose, 120 research articles were selected from among recently published journals in Sciencedirect database. The articles were selected equally from two disciplines in social sciences (SS) including applied linguistics and sociology and two disciplines from natural sciences (NS) including chemistry and medicine. The linguistic realizations of metadiscursive quantity strategies comprised of endophoric markers and collapsers were estimated through a manual analysis of the corpus. The results showed that collapsing is a widespread strategy specifically among NS writers. Differences were found between SS and NS writers in their use of initials, citations and footnotes\endnotes. It is argued that collapsing is an inherent property of NS disciplines giving rise to the dense use of such markers. At the end, the implications of the study to teaching and learning writing research articles are discussed.
Reza Abdi
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, , Pages 1-15
Abstract
Writing projects are socially-situated identities. The rhetorically-loaded aspects of writing, like metadiscourse marking, are more prone to carry such identities. Through analyzing metadiscourse strategies employment in Persian and English (as the lingua franca of academic discourse community) research ...
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Writing projects are socially-situated identities. The rhetorically-loaded aspects of writing, like metadiscourse marking, are more prone to carry such identities. Through analyzing metadiscourse strategies employment in Persian and English (as the lingua franca of academic discourse community) research articles, this study makes an attempt to find out whether Persian native writers take on the identity and norms of the discourse community in writing in their own language or preserve the cultural identity and norms of their native language. A comparison of 36 Persian and 36 English research articles showed that, on the whole, the norms of Persian language in the use of metadiscourse were different from that of the academic discourse community. Closer analysis revealed more similarities in the employment of interactive metadiscourse used to guide the readers, and significant differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse that could represent the specific cultural identity of the Persian writers.
