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.
sasan baleghizadeh; Sepideh Farshchi
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, Pages 17-38
Abstract
This study was an attempt to explore the beliefs of Iranian EFL teachers about the role of grammar in English language teaching in both state schools and private language institutes. Data were collected through a questionnaire developed by Burgess and Etherington (2002), which consisted of 11 main subscales ...
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This study was an attempt to explore the beliefs of Iranian EFL teachers about the role of grammar in English language teaching in both state schools and private language institutes. Data were collected through a questionnaire developed by Burgess and Etherington (2002), which consisted of 11 main subscales and was divided into two sections. The first section dealt with approaches to grammar teaching and the second with student and teacher difficulties with grammar. An independent sample t-test was used on all the eleven subscales to check the differences among teachers’ beliefs in both state and private language schools. Responses from 117 English language teachers from both settings indicated that they appreciate the value of grammar and its role in language teaching. However, their beliefs were significantly different in three areas: explicit teaching of grammar, the role of instruction versus exposure, and presentation of grammar through authentic texts.
Farahman farrokhi; Somayeh Ashrafi
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, Pages 39-75
Abstract
This study was motivated by three factors, which also contribute to its significance for today’s academic writing. First, research articles are the significant means of communication between the writers all over the world. Second, persuasion and organization are crucial notions in academic writing ...
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This study was motivated by three factors, which also contribute to its significance for today’s academic writing. First, research articles are the significant means of communication between the writers all over the world. Second, persuasion and organization are crucial notions in academic writing where the authors have to consider the academic audiences and their needs. Third, some writers are not the native speakers of English and write their research articles in English. Despite their importance in academic writing, we know little about how textual metadiscourse resources (TMRs) are used in different disciplines and genres. This study examines the use of TMRs in research articles of three disciplines of Mechanical Engineering (ME), Medicine (MED), and Applied Linguistics (AL). It also explores distribution of TMRs by native and non-native writers of English in the research articles of three disciplines. Based on a corpus of thirty research articles, the frequency of TMRs was calculated per 1,000 words. The findings of the study indicate a significant difference in the distribution of TMRs in three disciplines and also between the writings of native and non-native writers. In addition, these findings may have some implications for teaching disciplinary communication especially to foreign language learners of English.
Mohammad reza Hashemi; Ebrahim Khodadadi; Elham Yazdanmehr
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, Pages 77-106
Abstract
The purpose of this research was to analyze EFL writing tasks in the most popular ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) exam preparation courses in Iran: IELTS, TOEFL, FCE and CAE. Having collected the criteria of writing task appropriateness in light of the process-oriented approach to writing ...
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The purpose of this research was to analyze EFL writing tasks in the most popular ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) exam preparation courses in Iran: IELTS, TOEFL, FCE and CAE. Having collected the criteria of writing task appropriateness in light of the process-oriented approach to writing instruction, 114 learner participants were asked to rate EFL writing tasks based on a checklist previously gathered and validated. An observation process was conducted of the task performance followed by an interview with teachers about the nature of these courses and learners’ motivation. According to the learners’ primary needs and goals, the four types of courses were initially divided into two groups: Group-1 (IELTS/TOEFL) and Group-2 (FCE/CAE). The independent-sample t-test was employed to compare the mean scores of ratings for all items of the checklist once between IELTS and TOEFL courses in Group 1 and once between FCE and CAE in Group 2. Significant differences were obtained especially related to the quality of writing procedures .
Reza G.samar; Parvane Shayestefar
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, Pages 107-134
Abstract
This quasi-experimental study examines the extent to which research findings from teacher Corrective Feedbacks (CFs) and SLA concerning the efficiency of Focus-on-Form (FoF) pedagogy is transferable to the context of foreign language learning in Iranian schools. To investigate how "grammar instruction ...
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This quasi-experimental study examines the extent to which research findings from teacher Corrective Feedbacks (CFs) and SLA concerning the efficiency of Focus-on-Form (FoF) pedagogy is transferable to the context of foreign language learning in Iranian schools. To investigate how "grammar instruction with FoF-oriented error treatment" functions as a matrix in which English learning takes place, transcripts of learners' interactions in two communicatively-based high school classes were analyzed using Lyster & Ranta's taxonomy of CFs moves (Experimental Group (EXG) received CFs but provision of CFs in Control Group (CG) was not aimed). Findings reveal that all six types of CFs defined in literature were enjoyed by the present EFL teacher with a tendency to use "metalinguistic" or the overall "student-generated repairs" more than "recasts". The frequency and distribution of EFL teacher’s CF types together with the frequency and distribution of different types of learner uptake following each CF type are discussed. The results highlight the endorsement of FoF pedagogy in EFL contexts and bring to light the efficacy of teacher CFs on the learner uptake. The study is unique as it adds an important layer to teacher CF and SLA research by further accounting for differences between EXG and CG in terms of negotiation strategies
Abbas ali Rezaee; Nasrin Sayfouri
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, Pages 135-160
Abstract
During recent decades publishing articles in academic journals has become a worldwide urge for all members of academia. There is, however, a widespread belief according to which more value is given to the articles published in internationally-recognized, high standard journals. ...
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During recent decades publishing articles in academic journals has become a worldwide urge for all members of academia. There is, however, a widespread belief according to which more value is given to the articles published in internationally-recognized, high standard journals. An issue raised in this regard is whether the articles published in highly prestigious journals are remarkably different from those published in other journals as far as their contents and rhetorical styles are concerned. Taking the organization of information/moves into account, the present study seeks the probable differences existing between the two groups of 32 research articles (RAs) randomly selected from among Iranian ISI and non-ISI medical journals in English, published between January 2008 and February 2009, through analyzing the Introduction and Discussion sections of these articles based on the model presented by Nwogu (1997). The results of Mann-Whittney U and correlational tests revealed that Moves and Sub-moves have been exploited with quite similar frequencies in the two sets of the articles. The frequent use of Moves/Sub-moves in the sections not commonly stated in the literature, use of meta-discourse markers in the corpus, some marked implications of the findings of ESP genre analysis of RAs as well as some other findings have also been discussed
Manijeh Youhanaee; Ahmad Alibabaee
Volume 1, Issue 212 , December 2008, Pages 161-176
Abstract
The present study was planned to investigate the efficiency of explicit teaching and adequacy of the L2 learners' exposure to L2 input in academic contexts in Iran. The case at hand was the acquisition of referential, quasi and expletive subject pronouns, as three different types of obligatory subjects ...
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The present study was planned to investigate the efficiency of explicit teaching and adequacy of the L2 learners' exposure to L2 input in academic contexts in Iran. The case at hand was the acquisition of referential, quasi and expletive subject pronouns, as three different types of obligatory subjects in English. 96 Iranian EFL learners were selected from two universities in Isfahan. They were categorized into three groups based on the amount of L2 instruction/ input they had received. Analysis of the participants’ performance on a grammaticality judgment test and a translation task revealed that their knowledge of English obligatory subjects progressed after instruction and as the years of exposure increased. However, it did not reach an acceptable rate for learning. The problem was more prominent for quasi subjects where they performed least accurately. These results indicate that the kind of instruction on obligatory subjects is not efficient enough to affect the learning process. It is concluded that certain properties of L2 require more elaborate instructional techniques to achieve a higher rate of effectiveness in our teaching EFL setting
