درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study was carried out to investigate the comparative effect of antonym in-text glosses and description in-text glosses on a group of Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 female intermediate students between 18 and 19 years old were selected among a total number of 90 through their performance on a piloted PET. These 60 participants were non-randomly divided into two equally populated experimental groups. During the process of this study, in one of the experimental groups the participants were given reading texts with antonym in-text glosses and in the other group, the participants were given reading texts with description in-text glosses. A piloted reading comprehension posttest (derived from another sample of PET) was administered at the end of the treatment to both groups and their mean scores on the test were compared through an independent samples <em>t-test</em>. The result led to the rejection of the null hypothesis, thereby, demonstrating that the learners in the description in-text glosses group benefited significantly more than those in the antonym in-text glosses group in terms of improving their reading comprehension.  

This study investigated the effect of story-based technique, L₁ translation, and Whatsapp emoticon puzzle solving on EFL learners’ learning proverbs. From among 90 female intermediate level learners at two language institutes in Qom, Iran, 60 homogeneous students were chosen following the administration of a sample of Nelson proficiency test and a pre-test. The 60 participants were then assigned to three experimental groups, equal in number. The experimental group 1 was instructed using story-based technique; the experimental group 2 was taught through L₁ translation; and the experimental group 3 was exposed to Whatsapp emoticon puzzle solving. Subsequently, all three groups took part in a proverb post-test similar to the pre-test. The data were analyzed by ANOVA. The results showed that Whatsapp emoticon puzzle solving was significantly the most effective, and that the students’ level of learning proverbs was influenced by story-based technique more than L₁ translation technique. The findings of this study can contribute to technology- enhanced language teaching.

This study aimed to compare the effect of listening strategies, namely, metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies, on impulsive and reflective visually impaired EFL learners’ (VILs) listening comprehension. The participants of the study were 58 male and female VILs at pre-intermediate level within the age range of 12-18 in the west of Iran, Khorram Abad. These participants were selected non-randomly from among 10 different classes available to the researcher. To select the participants, the researcher talked to learners of these 10 classes and sought the consent of 58 learners to take part in the study. The Preliminary English Test (PET) pre-piloted on 30 students with almost similar characteristics to the target sample was administered to 72 students for selecting a homogenized group of participants. Then, 58 students were selected. Afterwards, the researcher administered the Personality Questionnaire developed by Eysenck (1975) to categorize them into two experimental groups of impulsive and reflective. Furthermore, the researcher made sure that the two groups were homogeneous regarding their listening comprehension prior to the start of the treatment. In this study, both experimental groups practiced listening comprehension through listening strategies, namely, metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies. The listening section of the PET test was administered as the posttest at the end of the treatment to both groups and their mean scores on the tests were compared through Independent Samples t-test. The results of statistical analyses led to the rejection of null hypothesis with the conclusion that the reflective learners significantly outperformed the impulsive students on the posttest of listening comprehension.

From a Systemic Functional perspective, Grammatical Metaphor (GM) as is taken to be a chief driving force in the discourse of different genres, an important adult language machinery for ideational meanings to be semantically cross-mapped and realized through a different form in the stratum of the lexico-grammar, in order to convey changed meanings and tinker with the discursive flow and development of text in real time, mainly through nominalization of adjectives and verbs. Using a number of established works of the English novel as data, this study draws upon the author’s previous model for the categories of GM used in modern prose fiction, with the main focus placed on one of the six categories, Prepositional GM (PGM). PGM figures with a very high frequency in fiction and occurs when a GM is preceded by a preposition. This study finds that the language of prose fiction in English deploys some of these PGMsin either of two different meaning sof the adverbial, varying according to context. Again, as seen to be the hallmark of GM by many, GM is found to open up vast ideational meaning potentials in the semantics stratum, from which the lexico-grammar makes choices according to context and intended meaning. As argued elsewhere in the literature and here, and as backed up by the author’s own experience of the advanced teaching of writing and reading, broadened understanding of GM is a critically important component to writing instruction and its effectiveness, as seen in the large-scale horizons and agendas for effective teaching of English as a Foreign Language in Iran and beyond.

This study explored the relationship between EFL learners’ vocabulary size, lexical coverage of the text and reading comprehension texts (narrative & argumentative genres). To this end, 120 male and female out of 180 students studying at Talesh Azad University were selected based on their performance on the Nelson Proficiency Test. A Nelson reading proficiency test was also administered in order to check the homogeneity of the learners in their reading proficiency. After that, the researcher administered reading comprehension tests with narrative and argumentative genres in order to find the lexical coverage and vocabulary size for such reading tests. Learners' Vocabulary size was measured by the Levels Test, while their lexical coverage was measured by the newest version of Vocabulary Profile. In order to probe any significant relationship between the variables of the study, Pearson Correlationwas run. Results of the study showed that there was a strong relationship among vocabulary size, text coverage, and reading comprehension test at different genres.