Volume 9, Issue 19 , June 2017, , Pages 0-0
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Content No. 19
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Content No. 19
Volume 9, Issue 20 , November 2017, , Pages 0-0
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contents of No. 20
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contents of No. 20
Volume 10, Issue 21 , June 2018, , Pages 0-0
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No. 21 Contents
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No. 21 Contents
Volume 10, Issue 22 , December 2018, , Pages 0-0
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Content of No. 22
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Content of No. 22
Volume 11, Issue 23 , June 2019, , Pages 0-0
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Content of Number 23
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Content of Number 23
Volume 11, Issue 24 , December 2019, , Pages 0-0
Zahra Amirian; سمیه کتابی; حامد اسحاقی
Volume 5, Issue 11 , November 2013, , Pages 1-29
Abstract
Connor et al. (2008) mention “specifying textual requirements of genres” (p.12) as one of the reasons which have motivated researchers in the analysis of writing. Members of each genre should be able to produce and retrieve these textual requirements appropriately to be considered communicatively ...
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Connor et al. (2008) mention “specifying textual requirements of genres” (p.12) as one of the reasons which have motivated researchers in the analysis of writing. Members of each genre should be able to produce and retrieve these textual requirements appropriately to be considered communicatively proficient. One of the textual requirements of genres is regularities of specific forms and content. Lexical bundles are one of the features which play significant role in building genres’ regularities. Many researchers have tried to define academic writing with resort to the lexical bundles employed in it. Advanced and high intermediate L2 students’ pieces of writing and also post-graduate writing have been analyzed in different aspects. However, the important element in the analysis of post-graduate writing has always been the differences between genres across disciplines. In other words, in investigating lexical bundles in different genres, researchers have not focused on the issue of “nativity of the writer. To be exact, they consider native and non-native writing to share the same features. By considering this gap in lexical bundles studies, the present paper is an attempt to explore the nature of lexical bundles in native and non-native post-graduate students’ writing. In order to do so, a corpus of about one-million words from Iranian students’ applied linguistics theses is compared with a corpus of the same size from native English students’ applied linguistics theses. The results show significant differences in the frequency of lexical bundles used by native and Iranian students and also in structural and functional patterns used.
Behzad Ghonsooly; Mohammad Ali Shams
Volume 4, Issue 9 , December 2012, , Pages 1-32
Abstract
The present study aims to investigate language learners’ cognitive processes in on-line ESP courses. Three modes of inquiry are used: think-aloud protocol analysis, screen capture analysis, and correlation analysis. The theoretical foundations for the evaluation of the cognitive aspect of Ferdowsi ...
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The present study aims to investigate language learners’ cognitive processes in on-line ESP courses. Three modes of inquiry are used: think-aloud protocol analysis, screen capture analysis, and correlation analysis. The theoretical foundations for the evaluation of the cognitive aspect of Ferdowsi Univeristy of Mashhad E-learning System are drawn from cognitive load theory, cognitive apprenticeship theory and human-computer interactivity theory. 15 users were interviewed while their performance on the screen was recorded electronically. The results of qualitative and quantitative analyses show that design features have a meaningful effect on the users’ performance in four phases of cognitive interaction with e-learning systems. The educational implications of the findings for software developers are discussed.
Mohammad Ahmadi safa; Mohammad Hadi Mahmoodi
Volume 4, Issue 10 , March 2013, , Pages 1-26
Abstract
Second language learners often develop grammatical competence in the absence of concomitant pragmatic competence (Kasper & Roever, 2005) and the exact nature of the relationship between the two competences is still indistinct and in need of inquiries ( Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Khatib & ...
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Second language learners often develop grammatical competence in the absence of concomitant pragmatic competence (Kasper & Roever, 2005) and the exact nature of the relationship between the two competences is still indistinct and in need of inquiries ( Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Khatib & Ahmadisafa, 2011). This study is a partial attempt to address the lacuna and aims to see if any relationship can be found between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ lexico-grammatical and interlanguage pragmatic competences and if such a relationship is found, whether the gender variable affects it or not. A group of 110 male/female senior university EFL students took a standardized lexico-grammatical proficiency test and a researcher made and validated multiple choice pragmatic discourse completion task test including four speech acts of disagreement, scolding, request and complaint at four levels of formality and familiarity. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between the learners' lexico-grammatical and pragmatic competences. Furthermore, the correlation is stronger for female EFL learners than the male participants though the pragmatic competence level of the male and female participants was not significantly different. The results imply that grammatical competence is not in itself sufficient for the EFL learners' pragmatic competence but it can definitely constrain the development of interlanguage pragmatic competence
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.
Esmaeel Abdollahzadeh; Somayeh Baniasad
Volume 2, Issue 217 , October 2010, , Pages 1-17
Abstract
imported instructional English textbooks in Iran and the learners’ attitudes towards English. Further, the instructors’ awareness of these ideologies was examined through a questionnaire. To find the ideological values, a content analysis of conversations, texts, and pictorial prompts ...
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imported instructional English textbooks in Iran and the learners’ attitudes towards English. Further, the instructors’ awareness of these ideologies was examined through a questionnaire. To find the ideological values, a content analysis of conversations, texts, and pictorial prompts in Spectrum and True to Life English textbook series was conducted and the extant ideologies were categorized and statistically analyzed. The results showed that imported textbooks tend to represent particular ideologies and cultural values. The most prevalent ideologies were hegemony of English, sexism, and cultural stereotypes. To discover the learners’ attitudes towards English, a 35-item questionnaire was developed, piloted and distributed by the researchers. The results showed that institute learners and high-school students have different attitudes towards English. Finally, language teachers’ awareness of ideologies in the textbooks was also examined. It was found that institute teachers are aware of the ideologies but they were not very much concerned with teaching or raising awareness about them.
Musa Ahmadian; HamidReza Yadgari
Volume 2, Issue 222 , December 2010, , Pages 1-27
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between extraversion/introversion personality dimension and the use of strategic competence (SC) in oral referential communication by Iranian EFL learners. Referential communication refers to a kind of guided communication in which the referents ...
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This study investigates the relationship between extraversion/introversion personality dimension and the use of strategic competence (SC) in oral referential communication by Iranian EFL learners. Referential communication refers to a kind of guided communication in which the referents (or topics) are given to the speakers to convey their meanings to the listeners. 50 sophomore English students of Arak University (in Iran) were selected from among 70 ones to participate in this study. Using the Persian restandardized version of the adult EPQ (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, 1975) the subjects were divided into two groups of extravert and introvert. The homogeneity of the participants was determined by the Michigan test (1982) at the upper-intermediate level of proficiency. Each individual in the groups was given communicativetasks to communicateorally with a partner while his/her performance was tape-recorded and transcribed for later analyses. Then, the oral performance of the extravert group was compared with that of the introvert group in using compensatory strategies (CSs) in terms of type and frequency as identified by a taxonomy. The results revealed that, as far as total performance is concerned, extravert participants used interactional strategies and a sub-type of linguistic strategies i.e. transliteration significantly more than introvert ones whereas introvert participants used conceptual strategies significantly more than extravert ones. Thus, it can be concluded that the personality trait of extraversion/introversion is associated with L2 learners’ preference in using, at least, some types of CSs in oral referential communication. The findings can have some pedagogical significance.
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.
Mohammad Ahmadi safa; Raouf Hamzavi
Volume 5, Issue 12 , December 2013, , Pages 1-15
Abstract
Most of the studies on the key word method of second/foreign language vocabulary learning have been based on the evidence from laboratory experiments and have primarily involved the use of English key words to learn the vocabularies of other languages. Furthermore, comparatively quite limited number ...
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Most of the studies on the key word method of second/foreign language vocabulary learning have been based on the evidence from laboratory experiments and have primarily involved the use of English key words to learn the vocabularies of other languages. Furthermore, comparatively quite limited number of such studies is done in authentic classroom contexts. The present study inquired into the effect of using mnemonic key word method of vocabulary instruction on the learning and retention of vocabulary over long term in a normal EFL classroom context.Fifty5th grade primary school students were selected and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received vocabulary instruction using mnemonic key word method and the control group received classic memorization based instruction of the same vocabulary items. The two groups took three posttests a day, two weeks, and a month after the last treatment session. A MANOVA analysis was run on the data and the results indicated that subjects in the key word group outperformed the memorization group at a significant level in both their learning and retention of the newly learnt vocabularies. The results of the study underscore the efficacy of the establishment of mental links and images for the vocabulary learning and retention of novice and beginning level EFL learners. It further implies that mnemonic devices like key word method should be given prompt attention by both EFL material developers and practitioners as a potentially effective strategy for vocabulary teaching, learning and long term retention at the early stages of second or foreign language development.
Mohammad Afsharrad; Aram Reza Sadeghi Benis
Volume 6, Issue 13 , September 2014, , Pages 1-14
Abstract
A large number of studies dealing with phonology have focused their attention on phonological production at the expense of phonological perception which provides the foundation stone for phonological production. This study focuses on phonological perception at phonemic level. The purpose of the study ...
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A large number of studies dealing with phonology have focused their attention on phonological production at the expense of phonological perception which provides the foundation stone for phonological production. This study focuses on phonological perception at phonemic level. The purpose of the study is helping beginning learners improve their perception of the English phonemes which are confusable for them. To this end, we propose transcribing as an aural input enhancement device and examine its effect on learners’ phonemic perception. Thirty one females who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups participated in this study. The experimental group had transcribing exercise during the experiment while the control group did not. The results of the study show that transcribing improves beginning learners’ phonemic perception significantly. Therefore, EFL teachers are advised to include transcribing exercise as one of the techniques to improve learners’ phonemic perception and, hence, their listening comprehension.
Mohamad Reza Anani Sarab; Yahya Gordani
Volume 6, Issue 14 , December 2014, , Pages 1-18
Abstract
The present study investigated the use of L2 private speech by English foreign language (EFL) learners in regulating their mental activities. Thirty intermediate adult EFL learners took a test of solving challenging English riddles while their voices were being recorded. Following, instances of the produced ...
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The present study investigated the use of L2 private speech by English foreign language (EFL) learners in regulating their mental activities. Thirty intermediate adult EFL learners took a test of solving challenging English riddles while their voices were being recorded. Following, instances of the produced private speech were analyzed in terms of form, content, and function. Numerous instances of reading aloud and repetition as well as self explanations and reviewing show how important they are in cognitive regulation of EFL learners. In addition, the results indicate the beneficial functions of private speech such as planning, managing the thought, self-orientation, motivating, and controlling anxiety among many others. The paper emphasizes the training of private speech and calls for patience in the face of silent periods produced by language learners.
Hamed Babaie Shalmani; Seyyed Ayatollah Razmjoo
Volume 7, Issue 15 , May 2015, , Pages 1-41
Abstract
This study compared the effects of two annotation modalities on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate level EFL learners. The two experimental groups under study received treatment on 10 academic L2 reading passages under one of two conditions: One group received treatment on key words in ...
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This study compared the effects of two annotation modalities on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate level EFL learners. The two experimental groups under study received treatment on 10 academic L2 reading passages under one of two conditions: One group received treatment on key words in the reading passages through a multimedia environment providing textual annotations. The second group received treatment under a similar environment but received compound glosses. The control group, however, received no treatment and was encouraged to use contextual guessing. The findings revealed that the experimental group who received treatment through compound glosses outperformed the other two groups on the comprehension test, and the group who used textual annotations obtained a higher mean on the post-test than the control group. One explanation is that compound glosses might help learners better decipher the meanings of key words in L2 passages, thus contributing to their deeper understanding of the texts.
Azizollah Dabaghi; Elahe Ghorbanchian; Zahra Amirian
Volume 7, Issue 16 , December 2015, , Pages 1-14
Abstract
Indubitably, the efficacy of metalinguistic awareness in improving EFL learners’ grammatical knowledge and writing quality has long been an area of great interest in applied linguistics Brown (2001). Accordingly, the main objective of the present study was to investigate the impact of planned and ...
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Indubitably, the efficacy of metalinguistic awareness in improving EFL learners’ grammatical knowledge and writing quality has long been an area of great interest in applied linguistics Brown (2001). Accordingly, the main objective of the present study was to investigate the impact of planned and unplanned focus on form instruction on students’ ability to learn grammar and use it appropriately in their writing. For this purpose three intact classes registering for the Grammar and Writing course in university of Isfahan ,Iran were chosen for teaching the target structure (i.e., transitional devices) through different methods of focusing on form instructions. The selected samples comprised 30 in each group, male and female sophomore students with the age range of 19 to 24, studying English translation at university of Isfahan. The samples received instruction through planned focus on form instruction (PFFI), unplanned focus on form instruction (UFFI) and zero focus on form instruction (ZFFI) respectively. The results of the post-test on paragraph writing and on the subsequent delayed post-test revealed that the participants in the planned group notably out performed those in the unplanned and zero focus on form groups in handling transitional markers in the writing of paragraphs.
Parviz Ajideh; Gerhard Leitner; Seyed Yasin Yazdi-Amirkhiz
Volume 8, Issue 17 , July 2016, , Pages 1-24
Abstract
This study purported to comparatively investigate the influence of collaborative writing on the quality of individual writing of four female Iranian and four female Malaysian students. The first semester students at a private university in Malaysia, who were comparable in terms of age, gender, study ...
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This study purported to comparatively investigate the influence of collaborative writing on the quality of individual writing of four female Iranian and four female Malaysian students. The first semester students at a private university in Malaysia, who were comparable in terms of age, gender, study discipline, and language proficiency, were divided into two Iranian and two Malaysian dyads. The dyads performed collaborative writing tasks for 15 sessions; after three consecutive collaborative writing sessions, each participant was asked to individually attempt a writing task. Both collaborative and individual writing tasks comprised isomorphic graphic prompts (IELTS Academic Module task 1). Writing quality of the five individually-produced texts during the study was rated in terms of task achievement (TA), cohesion/coherence (C/C), grammatical range/accuracy (GR/A), and lexical resources (LR). The findings indicated a hierarchy of development in TA and C/C among all the students, while LR showed minor improvement only among three of Malaysian students, and GR/A barely exhibited any progress among everyone. Intermittent progressions and regressions were also discerned in the trajectory of their writing development. The findings are discussed in the light of the socio-cultural and emergentist perspectives, the typology of tasks used as well as the role of the participants’ level of language proficiency.
Omid Allaf-Akbary; Rajab Esfandiari; Abbas Ali Zarei
Abstract
This study investigated personal metadiscourse units across genres. Based on Ädel’s (2006) taxonomy of the discourse functions of personal metadiscourse and Leech’s (2014) grand strategy of politeness, three spoken genres were compared in terms of the use of personal metadiscourse functions ...
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This study investigated personal metadiscourse units across genres. Based on Ädel’s (2006) taxonomy of the discourse functions of personal metadiscourse and Leech’s (2014) grand strategy of politeness, three spoken genres were compared in terms of the use of personal metadiscourse functions and politeness maxims. To that end, a 3,034,025-word corpus consisting of Panel discussion in politics, Interviews with actors, and Comedies genres, which included 30 audio and video transcriptions, was developed. Explicitness, world of discourse, current discourse, speaker qua speaker and listener qua listener were used to identify metadiscourse units. We examined the total frequencies of all personal metadiscourse units used in the corpus. The results of corpus analysis showed that 19.6% of metadiscourse units occurred in comedies, which was the highest among the three genres. The most commonly used metadiscourse units appeared in speaker-oriented metadiscourse with 10.2% in interviews. The results also revealed that in panel discussion the speakers focused more on their own ideas than the listeners or participants. Results of chi-square analysis showed that English speakers used speaker-oriented, participant-oriented, and listener-oriented metadiscourse types statistically significantly differently. A statistically significant difference between speaker-, participant-, and listener-oriented units was found. Results also revealed that speakers in different genres are willing to use such maxims as opinion reticence and modesty more frequently than other maxims. The paper concludes with proposing a new model for analyzing metadiscourse.
Maryam Ahmadi; Abbas Ali Zarei; Rajab Esfandiari
Abstract
Due to the importance of idioms, many researchers and teachers have long sought to find ways of making idiom teaching and learning more effective. This study compared three visual mnemonic devices (pictures, mental imagery, and movie clips) in terms of their effect on EFL learners’ recognition ...
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Due to the importance of idioms, many researchers and teachers have long sought to find ways of making idiom teaching and learning more effective. This study compared three visual mnemonic devices (pictures, mental imagery, and movie clips) in terms of their effect on EFL learners’ recognition and recall of English idioms. Ninety intermediate level EFL learners who were preparing themselves for IELTS participated in this study. They were in three groups of thirty members each. Each group was taught idioms using one of the afore-mentioned visual mnemonic devices. Receptive and productive tests of idioms were administered to all groups after the treatment. The one-way ANOVA procedure was used to analyze the collected data. The results revealed statistically significant differences among these devices, with pictures method being the most effective on both recognition and recall of idioms. The findings of the study can have significant theoretical as well as pedagogical implications for language researchers, textbook designers, curriculum developers, teachers, and language learners.
baqer Yaqubi; Sedigheh Karimpour
Volume 8, Issue 18 , December 2016
Abstract
table of contents No. 18
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table of contents No. 18
Mohammad Alavi; Bagher Yaghoubi; Mostafa Pourhaji
Volume 8, Issue 18 , December 2016, , Pages 1-18
Abstract
The prevailing pattern of classroom interaction is a tripartite exchange structure known as IRF (teacher initiation, student response, teacher follow-up/feedback; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Although it has its own contributions to classroom discourse, it has been criticized on several grounds, ...
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The prevailing pattern of classroom interaction is a tripartite exchange structure known as IRF (teacher initiation, student response, teacher follow-up/feedback; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Although it has its own contributions to classroom discourse, it has been criticized on several grounds, particularly for affording minimum learner participation opportunities (Kasper, 2001). An alternative practice has been promoting learner initiation and agency through moving out-of-IRF. However, when the form of interaction is teacher-fronted, IRF becomes the centerpiece and moving out of it tends to be difficult. This paper aims at exploring first what learners need to take initiatives and exercise agency in teacher-fronted interaction, and second how teachers can play a facilitative role in this process. Conversation analytic study of an EFL teacher’s naturally-occurring interaction with learners during a homework review activity demonstrates how the teacher’s extended wait-time practice affords a learner the interactional space needed to initiate a question and voice her locus of trouble. Moreover, the teacher's consistent extended wait-time practice after the learner’s initiation functions as an invitation bid for other learners to orient to the trouble and successfully negotiate it in their learner-learner interaction. Extracts of this study portray learners’ management to drive their own learning.
Mohammad Amiryousefi
Volume 9, Issue 19 , June 2017, , Pages 1-24
Abstract
With the developments of new technologies appearing very quickly, the attention has been focused more on technology than learning. English centers and institutes have mostly been busy accommodating new programs and technologies and hence have not spent enough time to evaluate the CALL programs and technologies ...
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With the developments of new technologies appearing very quickly, the attention has been focused more on technology than learning. English centers and institutes have mostly been busy accommodating new programs and technologies and hence have not spent enough time to evaluate the CALL programs and technologies employed to find their affordances and limitations. The present study was an attempt to study the perceptions and evaluation of the Iranian EFL learners and teachers about CALL. To this end, 240 students and teachers of two big institutes in Iran where CALL is used in their English learning program participated in the study. The required data were collected through a mixed-method design. The results of data analysis showed that CALL can enhance language learning and English listening, reading, and writing skills. It can also increase students' motivation and interest in learning and their exposure to language. However, it cannot improve speaking skill well. It also causes technology addiction, lacks good standards and an interactive nature necessary for the development of communicative proficiency, and may give the confidence to the teachers that everything is prepared by CALL courseware designers and hence they may come unprepared. The present study argues that the mere focus on technological support is not adequate, and a pedagogical understanding of language teachers’ and learners’ new roles and identities in CALL environment should be developed.
sahar zahed alavi; Alireza Ahmadi
Volume 9, Issue 20 , November 2017, , Pages 1-24
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of two types of paragraph on EFL learners’ written production. It addressed the issue of how three aspects of language production (i.e. complexity, accuracy, and fluency) vary among two types of paragraphs (i.e. paragraphs of chronology ...
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The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of two types of paragraph on EFL learners’ written production. It addressed the issue of how three aspects of language production (i.e. complexity, accuracy, and fluency) vary among two types of paragraphs (i.e. paragraphs of chronology and cause-effect) written by EFL learners. Thirty intermediate level learners of English participated in the study. Each learner wrote the two specified types of paragraphs in the final exam of their writing course. In the first phase of the study, separate paired t-tests were conducted on each dependent variable to see whether there were any statistically significant differences in measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency across the paragraph types. In the second phase of the study, to investigate if the raters detect the inconsistencies in the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of paragraphs written by a learner, four raters were asked to rate 12 paragraphs written by six learners whose paragraphs differed extremely in one of the three features. The findings revealed that EFL learners performed significantly better in paragraphs of chronology than the paragraphs of cause-effect in terms of fluency and accuracy. However, the analysis of complexity measures showed that there was no significant difference between the two types of paragraphs. In the qualitative analysis, it was found that raters did not consistently consider these three features in their examining the quality of the paragraphs. They paid attention to qualities such as coherence, cohesion and unity more consistently.
