درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

English coursebooks used in vocational secondary schools should accommodate the engineering students’ needs for their future profession. It is essential to reveal company trainers’ and engineers’ perception of the English coursebook used at school to know whether the English coursebook meets students’ needs for their future profession or not. Therefore, in this study, we investigated company trainers’ and engineers’ perception of the English coursebook that is used at vocational secondary schools based on the social semiotic perspective. We distributed open-ended questionnaires and conducted in-depth interviews to both engineers and engineering company trainers as professionals about the topics and registers provided in the English coursebook. The results of data analysis revealed that the topics and registers in the coursebook are not relevant with what students need for their future profession as engineers. In fact, both engineers and company trainers believed that the English coursebook should provide topics and registers related to the engineering field. Thus, we hope that the findings of this article would positively contribute to the development of English materials and coursebooks for vocational secondary school level.

Forty general English teachers at the university level attended three supervisory sessions. The qualitative data were collected through a triangulation of various techniques, including: pre/post-supervision semi-structured interviews, classroom observation checklists, reflective journals, field notes, and transcriptions of audio-recorded data from supervisory meetings. Thematic analysis was used to identify recurring themes at each layer of the onion model. The Chi-square analysis revealed a significant difference between teachers’ attitudes and strategies before and after the supervisory meetings. The results demonstrated that teachers experienced a process of growth with a developmental trajectory from the outer layers to the inner layers of the onion model fostering the core qualities of self-confidence, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and autonomy. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that the supervisor played a significant role in teachers’ development by using supervisory strategies such as: empathetic listening and accepting the problems, empowerment by activating core qualities, giving attention to inner obstacles, giving balanced attention to cognition, emotion, and motivation, and help to get autonomy in core reflection. The findings support making deliberate efforts to establish regular supervisory practicum meetings as part of academic professional culture, and the core reflection approach as a valuable strategy.

Writing is considered one of the most difficult skills in EFL/ESL. Thus, meticulous recognition and classification of students’ errors in certain contexts is a worthwhile endeavor which provides us with both diagnostic and prognostic power. Accordingly, a total of 430 students in 15 English writing classes held during 12 consecutive semesters in a private university in central Taiwan were the subjects of this study. They composed 5703 essays which were rated and coded by the authors. Adopting and modifying the error taxonomy proposed by Zheng & Park (2013), the authors classified a sum of 63460 errors into four main groups with their subsequent subcategories. This study revealed that the highest problematic areas for Taiwanese university students were ‘misformation’ with 51.55% of the whole including errors in tenses, parts of speech, prepositions, subject/verb agreements, and run-on sentences. Then, ‘omission’ errors ranked second with 21.30% including errors in articles, plural suffix-s, and relative pronouns. Finally, the third and fourth error types were ‘others’ with 15.13% including spelling, capitalization, and wrong vocabulary, and ‘addition’ with 12.01% containing errors in articles, unnecessary words, and conjunctions. This study provides numerous genuine samples from the students’ compositions being annotated based on the applied error taxonomy. Thus, the data presented in this study can provide researchers with a practical framework for future studies in error analysis, as well as pedagogical implications in the field.

This study explores the experiences of two high school students learning English in rural Vietnam through the lens of ecological systems theory. It also aims to gain in-depth insights into learners’ constructions of motivation within the nexus of personal and ecological elements. Data gathering spanned approximately ۱۸ months and was based primarily on interviews, observations, and written and visual reflections. The analytical procedures drew on deductive category application in which pre-formulated theoretical constructs were used for content analysis. Findings show that given the constraints of rural context, the learning experiences of the two participants were vividly unfolded through their dynamic role in perceiving and evaluating language resources, support and learning opportunities, and their ongoing interaction with elements within and across ecosystems. Such processes contributed to shaping the ways in which these learners constructed their L۲ motivation against the challenges in their lifeworld. The study reiterates the importance of examining motivation in context, incorporating both personal and ecological aspects underpinning language learning at both micro and macro levels. It calls for dialogues, discussions and negotiation among various educational stakeholders in creating language environments and opportunities for learners in rural settings . متن کامل [PDF 811 kb] (107 دریافت) نوع مقاله: مقاله تحقیق | موضوع مقاله: روان شناسی زبان انتشار: 1400/11/1 ارسال نظر درباره این مقاله : نام کاربری یا پست الکترونیک شما: ارسال پیام به نویسنده مسئول بازنشر اطلاعات این مقاله تحت شرایط Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License قابل بازنشر است.

With the abrupt emergence and dissemination of the COVID-19 pandemic, the traditional face-to-face classes were replaced by online classes in Iran. This quick shift has put great demands on finding and practicing new methods to teach and learn English in high schools. Owing to this urgent call, the present study follows a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it purports to disclose the effects of online portfolio assessment (PA) on developing Iranian high school students’ English writing skills. Secondly, it aims to excavate the Iranian high school students’ perceptions about the merits of online PA in cultivating their writing skills. To meet the aims, an intact second-grade class, including female students (n = 25), was chosen in Shahed public high school in Borujerd City. The class received online instruction (sixteen sessions lasting 90 minutes) based on the tenets of PA (e.g., collection, selection, and reflection). Then, a focus group interview was conducted with five of the active participants. Findings evidenced a significant improvement in the participants’ writing skills owing to the instruction. Additionally, the results of the focus group interview yielded some themes about the benefits of PA as perceived by Iranian high school students: ‘developing students’ autonomy’; ‘fostering a sense of belonging to classroom community’; ‘providing a comprehensive analysis of students’ writing proficiency’; ‘collecting empirical evidence on students’ gradual improvement in writing’; ‘training self-regulated students’; and ‘making classes student-centered by teachers-as-advisors’. Finally, a range of implications is presented to various stakeholders.

This case study examined the adaptivity of learning transfer from an English for general academic purposes course to different disciplinary writing contexts. Data were collected at the end of one academic semester from 7 students of engineering disciplines enrolled in the writing course. Their EGAP writing course lasted for 16 weeks over which they were taught The St. Martin's Handbook, 6th Edition. The participants’ disciplinary writings together with interview transcripts served as the data sources for the extraction of adaptive transfers and also the processes of realizing the transfers. Adaptive transfers were identified by participants. Findings indicated that learning outcomes can transfer adaptively through a variety of processes to accommodate to the new writing demands. The results showed that the participants could adapt their learning along two broad dimensions of transfer, ‘idea generation’ (IG) and ‘text construction’ (TC) with the former involving ‘explication’ and ‘integration’ of knowledge and the latter achieved at macro and micro level. Within these adaptive transfers, we found a range of writing issues pursued including ‘goals, topics, logics, propositions, integrity, disciplinarity, linearity, paragraphing and linguistic resources’. Furthermore, the findings displayed two broad categories of ‘higher order’ and ‘lower order’ processes employed for the realization of adaptive transfers. While higher order processes operated through ‘transformative and evaluative’ mechanisms, the lower order processes involved two categories of ‘avoidance and affordance’, with the former as an attempt to refrain from going wrong and the latter as an effort to generate adaptivity. The findings for L2 writing are theoretically discussed.

The present study examined the comparative effects of Etherpad-based writing instruction and face-to-face writing instruction on EFL learners' writing quality and writing self-efficacy. It also aimed at finding the learners' attitude towards the influence of Etherpad and their reason for success/ failure in this writing course. To this end, ninety students were selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned to one of the two instruction groups. In addition to an IELTS writing task, Self-efficacy in Writing Scale (SWS) was administered. During the course, the students received instruction on writing an argumentative essay. After the treatment, the SWS and another IELTS writing task were given. Subsequently, a semi-structured interview was conducted with twenty Etherpad-based learners to find their attitudes towards the reason for their success/ failure and the effectiveness of Etherpad. The results revealed that the Etherpad-based group significantly outperformed the face-to-face group in the writing posttest and demonstrated a higher level of writing self-efficacy. The interview data showed that the students attributed their success to both internal and external factors. Whereas, they ascribed their failure to internal factors rather than external ones. It was also revealed that the students found Etherpad as a predictor of their success in writing performance.