درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study was conducted to explore the effects of genre-based writing instruction on thesis proposal writing self-efficacy and writing quality. Twenty-two graduate students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language participated in the study. Drawing on Bandura's (2006) guidelines, we developed a proposal writing self-efficacy questionnaire, which students completed at the beginning of the semester and the end of one semester. They wrote a preliminary proposal at the beginning of the semester, that is, before being exposed to a genre-based approach. For one semester the students’ awareness was raised concerning the generic structures of the sections included in the thesis proposal and relevant lexico-grammatical features were highlighted. Students initially showed strong writing self-efficacy, which significantly increased at the end of the semester. They also showed remarkably significant improvement in their proposal writing skills. Students’ pre-instruction skills perception was higher than their proposal quality, which may be attributed to their lack of knowledge of academic writing conventions. However, after receiving genre-based instruction, their proposal quality surpassed their level of self-efficacy. The results of this study are discussed, and implications of the study are provided.

Cross-linguistic influence is a documented cause of errors committed by second language learners. Since Talmy (2000) proposed two categories to classify languages of the world regarding their preferred lexicalization patterns of a literal motion event, known as verb-framed and satellite-framed languages, the effect of typological properties of the first language on second language acquisition specifically in the domain of motion expressions has been subject to extensive scrutiny. The present research examines whether the typological properties of Persian (L1) and English (L2) affect adult second language acquisition, particularly in the spatial domain comparing controls (English and Persian native speakers). To this end, three groups (every 25 members) of participants were asked to watch 12 short animated cartoons representing voluntary motion carried out in vertical and trajectory directions. The participants’ descriptions were recorded and analyzed regarding information density, semantic focus, and semantic locus of utterances. The findings of the research revealed that in spite of different lexicalization patterns to encode manner in English and Persian, Persian learners of English across two levels of proficiency, do not face challenges to lexicalize motion components in English, but they produce utterances with low density which is the typical way of focusing on spatial components in their native language, suggesting that the challenge learners face encoding motion events was not a linguistic issue, but rather a cognitive one. Persian learners’ use of English motion expressions regarding information density was more aligned with that of English motion expressions as they advanced to a higher proficiency level.         

Teacher autonomy and teacher personality, both affecting teaching and learning processes, were focused on in this gender-comparative study. The required data was gathered through convenience sampling by online distributing two sets of questionnaires, which were responded by 156 Iranian EFL teachers, including both males and females. Then, SPSS-26 was used to analyze the data in this quantitative correlational survey to answer the two research questions, and the results indicated that a) among the five sub-constructs of personality traits, the Extraversion construct stayed on the first place according to its correlation degree to teacher autonomy, which was assessed very strong; b) male teachers naturally felt more sense of autonomy than females did; also, they are more extraverted, open, and conscientious than female teachers. Finally, Self-Determination Theory (SDT) was applied to support the acquired results. This survey can be best suited for EFL teachers to become more sensitive about their personality constructs.

Early-career language teachers, who are struggling with transitory stages of identity development from students to teachers, can experience an array of negative emotions known as identity tensions. Coping strategies are used by resilient teachers to overcome these tensions. However, the nature and dynamics of such coping strategies employed by EFL teachers are still under-researched in the Iranian context. In order to address this gap, the present exploratory mixed-methods study probed the coping strategies Iranian EFL teachers most frequently use by first interviewing 16 teachers and, subsequently, administrating a developed questionnaire to a cohort of 150 participants. Thematic analysis and between-groups analyses of t-tests and ANOVAs were used for the qualitative and quantitative phases of the study respectively. The results of both phases revealed that Iranian EFL teachers tend to use active coping strategies significantly more often than passive ones. Also, it was shown that female teachers as well as more experienced teachers above the average age of 28 use more active strategies than their younger colleagues. However, type of training did not seem to play a significant role in their choices, which implies a need for a more systematic integration of coping strategy instruction in training programs. The findings of this study can help English teacher trainers, supervisors, and novice teachers form a deeper insight of coping strategies to deal with identity tensions.

La pandémie de Covid -19 s’est propagée dans le monde entier, envoyant des millions de personnes en quarantaine. Parmi les mesures décidées par le gouvernement jordanien pour endiguer l’avancée de cette pandémie se trouve la suspension des cours dans toutes les universités et le passage à l’enseignement à distance afin d’assurer la continuité pédagogique. Cet article vise à proposer, à travers l’expérience vécue par les étudiants, une analyse de l’impact du nouveau contexte sur l’apprentissage de la langue française en milieu universitaire durant la période de confinement liée à la pandémie de Covid-19. D’après les résultats de l’enquête, il est clair que ce modèle d’apprentissage présente des avantages tels que le facteur de temps gagné, la prise en charge de l’apprentissage et la diminution de la barrière de peur concernant la compétence de l’expression orale, mais le manque d’interaction, la baisse de motivation et le progrès minime réalisé en compétence d’expression écrite sont les défis les plus identifiés.

Given the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic and consequently the emergence of more online courses throughout the world, exploring teachers’ views about the shift from face-to-face to online environments seems significant. The objective of this study was thus twofold: (a) to investigate the roles EFL teachers take and (b) to determine competencies required to teach online English language courses. Mixed-methods research was conducted, and the participants were 100 MA students of TEFL at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). The required data were collected through administering two questionnaires, adapted by the researchers, on online teacher roles and competencies along with two open-ended questions. After carrying out descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and theme-based analysis for the qualitative ones, the results indicated that online teaching roles could be hierarchically ranked as pedagogical, professional, administrative, social, assessment, technological, and researcher. With regard to online teacher competencies, pedagogical, professional, and technological role competencies received the highest mean, while the researcher role competencies gained the lowest one. Pre-service EFL teachers held the view that having knowledge of technology and its use, knowledge of course/content, ability to sustain learners' motivation, online teaching skills, and ability to communicate were other competencies teachers require to fulfill their roles in online English language courses. The findings can provide more insights into how to redesign and map online teacher professional development courses to better prepare potential EFL teachers and boost their quality as online EFL teachers.

Despite being an important category of multimodal tourism discourse, Inflight magazines and their roles in promoting international airlines’ profile and their host country, are mostly under-researched. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the application of different visual and semiotic strategies regarding social actors' race, age and social class and how people are represented in different international airlines’ inflight magazines. For this purpose, 16 international airlines’ inflight magazine issues were selected depending on the host country's geographical location and availability. Using Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006 [1996]) and van Leeuwen’s (2008) visual grammar, the data were analyzed based on ideational, interpersonal and compositional levels. The results revealed that inflight magazine designers, content developers and advertisement agencies tend to apply certain visual and semiotic resources. They reinforce bias and false stereotypes towards certain groups of people in terms of their age, race and social class originating in political, historical and ideological perceptions and standpoints of higher institutions across the world. The findings also highlight the importance of visual literacy being promoted to the target audience, including air travelers and EFL learners.

This study investigated Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ remotivational strategies drawing on an integrative framework encompassing Ecological Systems Theory (EST) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT). In this framework, the four EST layers consisting of microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem and the three related aspects of SDT, including autonomy, relatedness, and competence, were integrated to unravel teachers’ remotivational strategies. The participants included 32 Iranian EFL teachers teaching at six language institutes in Isfahan and Hamedan provinces in Iran. The data were collected via conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of a thematic analysis indicated that Iranian EFL teachers’ remotivational strategies were embedded in the four EST layers consisting of the immediate classroom setting, situations beyond the immediate setting, the linkages and processes taking place between the settings, and the manifestation of a particular subculture. Moreover, the results revealed that teachers’ remotivational strategies were also situated within the three SDT aspects, including autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Overall, the results of thematic analysis led to the emergence of various themes positioned in the four layers of EST, while such themes conceptually fit the three aspects of SDT. The results provide EFL teachers and teacher educators with awareness concerning how remotivational strategies are nested across multiple systems while simultaneously being informed by a certain motivation-specific theory.

This synthesis reviews the methodological issues in empirical studies investigating the effect of working memory capacity (WMC) on relative clause ambiguity resolution where results have failed to be consistent cross-linguistically and even intra-linguistically. This discrepancy might have occurred due to ‘methodological inconsistencies’ in the design (Liu & Brown, 2015), administration, and scoring of WMC measures. This study aimed to investigate the aggregative and developmental status of the methodological practices of WMC measures and describe how transparently such practices have been reported. Based on a comprehensive search, 39 experiments were retrieved from 25 studies, culminating in a collection of studies with a time span of 22 years from 1999 to 2021, and coded for 46 features. Results revealed that although over the past 22 years, the field has witnessed significant improvements in the employment of WMC tests, there are still a lot of variations and inconsistencies calling for attempts to raise methodological awareness among researchers to afford more attention to quality and transparency in reporting WMC tests. The article concludes with a call for reform in standardizing WMC tests and a number of other recommendations for future primary and secondary research.

Despite extensive studies concerning written error correction, it is imperative that more research be conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of error correction on improving L2 writing. Driven by this gap, this study aimed to examine whether unfocused direct and indirect types of written corrective feedback had any impact on the writing accuracy of the Iranian English language learners’ new compositions. Through the random matching technique, ninety Iranian English language learners from seven foreign language centers in southwestern Iran were split into two groups for treatment and one group for control. As part of the evaluation, a writing test was utilized to determine whether the learners had improved their writing accuracy due to the treatment. The results showed that the participants in both treatment groups improved their writing accuracy, though the learning gains from both treatment were not significantly different. This study concludes with some implications for teachers regarding their use of appropriate types of written error correction. 

Visual literacy (VL), despite its significance, has not received deserved attention in EFL classes in Iran. Addressing this pedagogic and research lacuna, the researchers integrated VL practices into a General English course attended by female university learners, and examined the vision competencies developed by them. The analysis of the data collected through class observation, learner documents, and semi-structured interviews revealed that the learners developed the vision competencies regarding compositional, affective, and critical dimensions of visuals. It is hoped that the findings of this small-scale study encourage language planners, materials developers, and English teachers to pay heightened attention to the visuals’ potential and open more spaces for VL development in their curricula, materials, and language teaching practices.