درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Circulation of scientific discoveries occurs in various discourse communities. Adopting an audience-oriented view of writing (Hyland, 2010) and drawing on the appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), the current study aimed to explore the evaluative strategies psychologists would use to share their specialist knowledge with scholarly and non-scholarly readers. To this end, a corpus of 38 academic research articles and 38 popularized science articles from the archive of an English international refereed journal, Current Psychology , and two English popularized magazines, Newsweek and New Scientist , were analyzed in terms of attitude resources of appraisal, namely appreciation, affect, and judgment . The results of the study revealed that palpable degrees of persuasion were achieved through including certain attitude elements in both corpora despite no statistically significant difference. The results debunked the myth of objectivity in academic discourse and disclosed the psychology experts’ appealing to persuasive tools for convincing the specialist and non-specialists of the truth value of their research outcomes. The findings carry pedagogical implications for English for the students of psychology courses. Indeed, future psychologists need to get familiar with the common discursive strategies to address their intended audience in academic and non-academic settings.

The present article experimentally studied the impact of mindfulness-cultivating intervention on various dimensions of learning. The mindfulness-cultivation techniques employed in the experimental group involved observance of all experience, analyzing, planning, judging, reasoning, and fantasizing (van Vreeswijk, et al., 2014). Furthermore, Pirson et al.’s (2012) contention that mindfulness encompasses four facets of attributes:; novelty producing, novelty seeking, engagement, and flexibility informed the selection of techniques. Learners’ level of proficiency was checked before the treatment. Before and after the treatment, three questionnaires were employed: 1) Langer Mindfulness Scale 2) Reflective thinking questionnaire 3) Positivity Scale. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) results demonstrated, approximately 50 percent of variance in reflective thinking was predicted by these techniques. Furthermore, the results via independent samples t -test demonstrated that positive orientation and language achievement promoted in the experimental group, thus implying that the intervention executed in the experimental group was effective in enhancing these two factors as well.

Proper use of source material in second language writing is an essential skill in the academic writing process. The present study investigates source use and plagiarism level in the essay writing process by the English as a foreign language (EFL) student in one of the international universities in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Thirteen first-year students who failed and then retook the language program were chosen for the purpose of the study. A mixed-methods research design was used to collect the data (i.e., language programs over two subsequent academic years were analyzed for their relevance to the process-based writing). To evaluate the students' opinions on both programs and correct academic citation, a paper-based questionnaire was circulated. The data analysis revealed a positive influence of program two on organizing ideas, incorporating source-text ideas, and using more academic and error- free sentences. A comparative analysis of the plagiarism level and writing performance in students' papers in both programs was performed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, which showed a positive difference in the overall writing scores but an insignificant difference in the level of plagiarism. F indings of the study identified that the engagement of the EFL undergraduate students in process-based writing made a positive impact on writing from sources and overall performance.

This study is an investigation of gender equity in the context of the General English Achievement Test developed and used at Islamic Azad University (Isfahan Branch, IRAN), henceforth IAUGEAT, with test takers majoring in different fields of study. A sample of 835 students sitting for IAUGEAT was chosen purposively. The test scores were analyzed by the one-parameter IRT model. A focus group interview (10 test developers and language teachers) was also used to inquire into their perceptions about the impact of test takers’ gender and major on test equity. The findings of the DIF analysis indicated a reciprocal action between item type and gender DIF as some items exhibited DIF across different subgroups. In three subgroups, they favored female students. In one subgroup, they favored males. In the other two subgroups, they favored males and females alike. The qualitative data obtained from the focus group interview further confirmed the results. In general, our findings strongly suggest that checking gender equity via a Rasch-model DIF analysis is both eminent and convergent with a qualitative evaluation of test-takers' performance by test developers and instructors.      

The Covid-19 pandemic revolutionized the world's status quo to transition from face-to-face into online E-learning. However, this unexpected transformation in teaching-learning approaches necessitates teachers to teach while frequently assessing students' performance through online assessment, which has been substantiated to expose teachers to an array of unanticipated challenges. To this end, the current study was a bid to unearth the Iranian EFL teachers' perceptions of online assessment and illustrate the challenges encountered through adopting a sequential mixed-methods design. For the quantitative phase of the study, one hundred EFL teachers submitted responses to an online questionnaire constructed in Google Forms. The researcher recruited twelve teachers for the qualitative phase of the study from a pool of one hundred participants who completed questionnaires to participate in a semi-structured interview protocol. The findings from the descriptive statistics of the questionnaire revealed that Iranian EFL teachers had either a negative or a neutral attitude toward online assessment. In addition, the results of the interview offered more insight into the challenges that teachers encounter during online assessment. In this light, the three most frequent challenges were the high risk of students cheating and plagiarism, the issue of internet connectivity, and poor technological infrastructures. The findings of this study bear witness to the voices of a group of Iranian EFL teachers about their perceptions and challenges of online assessment during the COVID-19 epidemic. In the spirit of the findings, the recommendations and suggestions for further investigations are discussed.

Learning-oriented assessment (LOA) seeks to support instruction by providing information about students ’ current learning conditions and their ultimate performance. This study scrutinizes the application of LOA in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes within Iranian language institutes. In addition, the current study examined the participants’ writing traits using the researchers-developed writing traits questionnaire during the implementation of LOA. Sixty upper-intermediate students (male & female) in two intact classes at a language institute in Tabriz, Iran, were taken as the participants. One of these classes was randomly picked as the control and the other one as the experimental group. During the treatment, learners of the experimental group carried out the relevant writing tasks based on the principles of LOA. On the other hand, the control group adopted the teacher-centered approach. 120 IELTS writing task 2 samples were collected and scored by using a scoring rubric (Wang & Liao, 2008) before and after the LOA treatment. To realize the differences in the mean scores of students in the control group and the experimental group, an independent sample t-test was used. The findings showed that the students of the experimental group benefited vastly from multiple drafting, self, and peer-evaluation, sharing learning goals with teachers and each other, and using feedforward techniques instead of feedback. The results might provide both theory and pedagogy implications for syllabus designers and language teachers with valuable guidelines on improving writing assessment in IELTS writing courses.

A needs analysis (NA) study was carried out to determine how well course objectives and actual classroom activities aligned with the English language needs of learners enrolled in a communicative EFL course in Iran.  Brown’s (2016) NA framework was adapted with a focus on the democratic and discrepancy view of NA. A case study design utilizing triangulation of data collection was employed to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. A questionnaire, classroom observations, and post-observation interviews were among the methods used to collect information from 143 learners and 10 teachers. The questionnaires were quantitatively analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, and one-way repeated measures ANOVA analyses to identify learners'' language needs. The qualitative dimension of the study provided a complete picture of course objectives and classroom activities and tasks. The results of the questionnaire showed that the majority of learners agreed that all general English skills were fundamental to communicating in English and ranked speaking skill, followed by writing, as the most needed skills. Also, a review of course objectives indicated that the learning objectives of the English course aligned with learners’ English language needs.  However, according to classroom observations and post-observation interviews, classroom goals were not focused on attaining communicative tasks and activity objectives. In fact, teachers’ teaching objectives did not meet the learners'' communicative needs and were limited to teaching four skills at comprehension, grammatical, and lexical levels. Misalignment between assessment tasks and course objectives was reported as one of the contributing factors.