درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study examines intergenerational transmission of Chinese Foochow in Sarawak, Malaysia by exploring a connection between family language policy and language-ethnicity dimensions. The specific aspects examined were: (a) family language practices; (b) family language ideology in defining characteristics of being a Foochow; and (c) family language attitudes towards heritage language management. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with nine Foochow ethnic families (29 participants) from urban Sarawak, Malaysia. The findings showed the Foochow dialect was mainly spoken at the highest level of the family hierarchy with the lowest level shifting to use standard languages (Mandarin and/or English). The nine families held strong beliefs regarding their ethnic identity being passed down by birth, blood, and descent and thus, not being able to speak Foochow did not subtract from their Foochow ethnicity. Some participants defined themselves as Foochow because they practised Foochow customs and ate Foochow food, indicative of the phenomenological dimension of the language-ethnicity link. As the dialect is predicted to lose its role and status in urban settings, various strategies for managing Foochow which attributed agency to others were provided by the participants. The findings suggested that attributing ethnic identity to paternity and not patrimony will lead to potential loss of Foochow from the linguistic repertoire of the youngest generation in urban localities in Malaysia.

Giving certain elements more significance than others in the same context is called prominence. This study aims at identifying and comparing markers of focal and thematic prominence in Persian general       practitioners’ books (GPBs) and Persian online medical journals (OMJs) based on Levinsohn’s model. The data were gathered from 100 texts from two written Persian GPBs and 100 texts from two Persian OMJs. SPSS software version 24 was used to evaluate the data. Results demonstrated “emphatic   markers” such as fæqæt ‘just’ were used for focal prominence much more frequently in OMJs than in GPBs. In addition, significant differences were observed between GPBs and OMJs with regard to the markers of focal prominence and prominence in general, but not with regard to markers of thematic prominence. This may be related to the twofold effect of the different discourse types and different addressees of these texts.

Teaching grammar has always created some challenges for EFL teachers. Therefore, this study explored the effect of four scaffolding strategies as contextualizing, modeling, metacognitive scaffolding, and bridging on Iranian EFL students’ grammatical knowledge. Moreover, this study examined Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes towards scaffolding strategies. To fulfil the purpose of this study, 40 language learners were chosen based on convenience sampling as the participants of this study. They were both males and females between 20 to 30 years old divided into two groups as the control and experimental groups. After assuring the homogeneity of the students in terms of their English proficiency in general and grammatical knowledge in particular, a parallel achievement test was administered to both groups as the pre-test. Following that, as the treatment, scaffolding strategies were applied for the experimental group to teach grammar and a traditional way of teaching grammar for the control group. After running the classes, a parallel achievement test was administered to both control and experimental groups as the posttest. The data analysis revealed that the experimental group that received scaffolding strategies significantly outperformed in the grammar part compared to the control group which received a conventional way of teaching grammar. It is believed that utilizing scaffolding strategies can motivate learners and facilitate the tough task of grammar learning and thereby make teachers aware of their ability to obtain success in their teaching process.

Since an effective technique to assess the level of thinking ability is to identify the types of questions one generates, the present research by employing a hybrid question framework, intended to investigate the status of thinking ability among Iranian EFL students in two majors of TEFL and English Literature in M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. To this end, through convenience sampling, a group of 51 students was asked to read two simple short texts and make any type of question(s) that would spring to their minds in essay-type format. Then, using purposeful sampling, 15 participants out of 51 were selected for a semi-structured interview. The findings revealed that nearly half of the participants did not generate thought-provoking questions, which might imply that beyond-routine thinking is not well attended to in the related context. Moreover, as the English Literature students were more capable of producing thought-provoking questions than the TEFL students, it can be inferred that an academic major can be considered an essential factor impacting one’s way of thinking. Furthermore, since the students of English Literature/TEFL in Ph.D. degree outperformed those in M.A. degree, it can be concluded that the academic degree can be accounted as an aiding factor influencing the level of thinking ability as well. Furthermore, in searching for the reasons affecting (non-) production of thought-provoking questions, several factors were discovered and categorized into impeding and promoting ones.

Score decision-making is largely an undocumented process in performance assessment. To conduct a more in-depth cognitive study in scoring, one must ask if these underlying processes can be identified efficiently and objectively. To this end, the present study attempted to shed some light on how Iranian teachers as untrained raters rate speech samples of learners and how their cognition functions in the decision-making process in terms of the scores they assign. A series of monologues were obtained from a group of language learners; afterward, English language teachers were asked to rate them. The raters were asked both to assign a score and provide comments regarding why they assigned a specific score. Having rated the samples, the raters were individually interviewed. The results of the recorded interviews and the comments they had provided on scores were subjected to qualitative analysis like coding and extracting both idiosyncratic and shared features of the raters’ cognition. The results revealed that some of the factors attended to by the raters were both linguistic and relevant to speaking proficiency construct like fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Some other factors influencing the raters while rating were non-linguistic and not directly related to speaking proficiency construct like the tone of voice, personality feature of the testee, etc. It seemed that the untrained raters did not have a clear definition of oral proficiency construct. The implications of the study for rater training programs have been discussed.

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is prevalent in English instruction to enhance students' learning interest and motivation. However, its effectiveness and practicality have rarely been well confirmed. The present study intended to investigate the effectiveness and practicality of utilizing a developed Mobile Learning Application (MLA) in listening instruction. A quasi-experimental design was applied in the study with a test and a questionnaire as research instruments. The pre-test and post-test were administered to examine the effects of administering MLA on 86 undergraduate students’ listening comprehension, and the questionnaire was employed to investigate 184 students’ perceptions of the practicality of MLA in mastering listening comprehension as data triangulation. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the collected data. The results showed that a teacher-developed MLA is feasible for effective learning media to enhance students’ listening comprehension with the significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores. Moreover, it also accentuated that students' perception obtained a positive perception of the practicality of a developed MLA in mastering their listening comprehension. This finding encourages EFL teachers to use a mobile learning application in listening instruction to promote students’ independence in mastering listening skills.

The present study aimed to analyze two secondary English school textbooks from Iran and Egypt to see to what extent these two middle-eastern countries with similar religious, historical, and social backgrounds include culture in their official textbooks.  For this purpose, Vision I , the Iranian secondary school textbook, and Hello I, the Egyptian English school textbook, were chosen. Four aspects of culture (topics, cultural dimensions, international/intercultural issues, and cultural references) were investigated in these two textbooks. The results show that Vision I has a more limited number of cultural content compared to Hello I . However, a lack of in-depth cultural information could be observed in both textbooks. Thus, it is necessary to take special measures concerning Vision I by including a greater array of cultural content and giving this content depth and detail. For Hello I , the cultural content needs to exceed in quality. The present study's findings might be insightful for syllabus designers, textbook publishers, and teachers to reconsider the essential role of culture qualitatively and quantitatively.

Culture is an indispensable part of Foreign Language Education Policy (FLEP), especially in English Language Teaching (ELT). In addition, the spread of English around the globe has resulted in English users’ tendency to embed their local culture in their English communication (Kirkpatrick, 2012). However, literature remains silent on culture representation in FLEP, especially in an ideologized country like Iran. To address this issue, due to lack of an explicit FLEP in Iran, the present study analyzed the cultural schemas addressed in the seven major national policy documents of Iran, namely 20-year National Vision, Comprehensive Science Roadmap, Support for Comprehensive Science Roadmap in the Domain of Languages, Cultural Engineering Document, National Curriculum, Fundamental Reform in Education, and Islamicization of Universities. Results of content analysis using MAXQDA Software unmasked Islamic-Iranian culture as the baseline for ELT in Iran. In order to further examine the representations and implications of ‘Islamic-Iranian culture’ hidden in the documents, open coding, axial coding, and labeling along with constant comparative procedure revealed various Islamic cultural schemas. However, very few instances of Iranian cultural schemas were unveiled. The findings were discussed in light of the hidden curriculum and the power relations behind the extracted cultural schemas

A key aspect of effective communication is the use of appropriate speech acts.   This study investigated the difference between Persian native speakers, Iranian EFL learners, and English native speakers in terms of the speech act realization of refusal and uncovered the reasons for which, each group of participants produced the refusal speech act regarding the Rapport Management Approach. To this end, 100 (male and female) intermediate EFL learners were chosen based on their performance on the Oxford Placement Test. 100 Persian native speakers among 140 students studying Persian literature at Najafabad Azad University were randomly chosen and they were asked to fill out a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), consisting of 12 situations realizing the refusal of four types of eliciting acts. Additionally, 12 English native speakers (6 males and 6 females) were also contacted through emails to participate in the study. The English DCT was given to two groups of participants and the Persian DCT was given to Persian native speakers. The politeness model proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) was adopted to show the differences between Iranian EFL learners, English native speakers, and Persian native speakers who were participants in this study. By using the SPSS software program, the results indicated 'negative' strategies as the most frequent ones and highlighted the significant role of face, social rights, and obligations in interaction. The findings revealed that among politeness strategies 'negative' strategies are the most frequent ones. The results also indicated that English native speakers use negative politeness strategies more than Iranian EFL learners. Therefore, English native participants regard themselves as having rights and obligations about other people more than Iranian EFL learners. The results of this study highlighted the importance of pragmatic knowledge in international communications.       

Developing textbook material is a crucial component of any curriculum, which should be based on sound and systematic techniques. In a detailed view, considering the importance of knowing English not only as an international language but as the language of commerce, tech and science, English course needs to be programmed efficiently to provide a suitable circumstance of learning for learners. In this regard, the present study is to develop a new English textbook for Iranian Senior High Schools to provide an opportunity for high school students as well as teachers to be actively engaged in the text, questions, and images of the textbook based on William Rummy’s Technique to keep up with the developments of the field. The results of the study demonstrate demonstrates that the involvement index is appropriate enough to actively engage the learners in the newly developed English textbook. That is, the texts, questions, and images within the textbook are suitably developed to engage the students actively.

Assessment literacy refers to the knowledge teachers have about definitions of testing and the employment of this knowledge to classroom practices. This study inspected the extent to which high school teachers of English, mathematics, science, and social studies utilize assessment literacy and instructional improvement practices in their classrooms and the probable relationship between these two factors. To this end, ninety-seven teachers from sixty high schools across Zanjan province in Iran were selected based on convenient sampling. The instrument used was a 32-item questionnaire designed by researchers and validated by experts. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was also conducted in order to validate the factor structure of the questionnaire. The results showed a strong positive relationship between assessment literacy and instructional improvement practices in all four subject areas through correlations. This suggests that showing an understanding of assessment literacy results in a greater understanding of instructional improvement in the classroom. Moreover, a one-way ANOVA was performed in order to determine if there is a significant difference in the use of assessment literacy practices and instructional improvement among different subject areas. The data revealed no statistically significant differences between neither assessment literacy nor instructional improvement scores by subject area. The study can be beneficial to school districts and teachers since the review of existing teaching practices and an increase in ongoing professional development in assessment literacy theories and practices may improve instructional improvement in all subject areas.

The current study aimed to find the relationship between personality traits and learning styles of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students across high, intermediate, and low levels of reading proficiency in online courses. To this purpose, 50 male and 50 female BA students were selected through convenient sampling from the executive management department at Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran. Their age range was 20 to 26 years. They were divided into three groups of high, intermediate, and low reading proficiency based on a simulated TOEFL CBT reading test. Their learning style and personality type were assessed through Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)-Form M and the Learning Style Inventory-3 (LSI3), respectively. Upon collecting the data from the MBTI, the LSI3, and the reading tests, the researchers coded the scores and used path analysis. The results showed that there were significant relationships among a number of the variables under investigation; especially extroversion was found to be an important personality trait affecting online reading proficiency and other variables. The results also showed that the extroversion trait had a positive significant relationship with high reading proficiency, while the thinking dimension resulted in low reading proficiency. Moreover, The participants who had the objective experience trait possessed a high ability in reading, and those who had the reflective observation trait were less proficient in reading.

The study is a part of a larger study on the impact of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) on English grammar acquisition and retention of adolescent English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. More specifically, the primary aim of the paper at hand was to examine the impact of RALL on adolescent EFL learners’ anxiety levels. In this regard, three intact classes (N=45) in a private language institute in Tehran were evenly divided into two experimental groups of RALL and Game-based Language Learning (GBLL) and one control group. The participants were adolescent male EFL learners between 11 to 15 years old with a mean age of 13. While the teacher, the textbook, and the teaching materials were identical in all groups, a kid-sized humanoid social robot was exclusively used in the RALL group. The data were collected through questionnaires in the final session for each group, and the results of descriptive statistics and ANOVA indicated that lower anxiety rates were observed in the RALL group. Our findings could clearly be proof of the efficiency of socially assistive robots in the instruction of language skills in a more favorable teaching context.