درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The literature of ELT is perhaps overwhelmed by attempts to enhance learners’ writing through the application of different methodologies. One such methodology is critical discourse analysis which is founded upon stressing not only the decoding of the propositional meaning of a text but also its ideological assumptions. Accordingly, this study was an attempt to investigate the impact of critical discourse analysis-based (CDA) instruction on EFL learners’ writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 female intermediate EFL learners were selected from among a total number of 100 through their performance on a piloted sample PET. Based on the results, the students were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group with 30 participants in each. Both groups underwent the same amount of teaching time during 17 sessions which included a treatment of CDA instruction for the experimental group. A writing posttest was administered at the end of the instruction to both groups and their mean scores on the test were compared through a MANOVA. The results led to the rejection of the three null hypotheses, thereby demonstrating that the learners in the experimental group benefited significantly more than those in the control group in terms of improving their writing CAF. To this end, it is recommended that CDA instruction be incorporated more frequently in writing classes following of course adequate syllabus design and materials development.

This study attempted to systematically inspect the impact of direct and indirect corrective feedbacks on the writing ability of EFL learners when using product/process based instructions. To do so, 110 female EFL learners, between the ages of 15 and 18, were randomly assigned into four experimental groups to receive four different kinds of treatments, namely product-based instruction with direct feedback, product-based instruction with indirect feedback, process-based instruction with direct feedback, and process-based instruction with indirect feedback. The treatment took 10 sessions. Analyzing the results of the two writing tests (pretest and posttest) showed that direct feedback had significant effects on EFL learners' writing in process-based instruction and product-based instruction but indirect feedback failed to show any significant effect on EFL learners' writing in both process-based instruction and product-based instruction. The results also indicated that direct feedback had significantly better impact on EFL learners writing in the process-based instruction than product-based one. 

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among Iranian EFL university lecturers’ professional and institutional identity, and their teaching efficacy. To this end, 100 EFL university lecturers from different branches of Islamic Azad Universities, including Kermanshah, Isfahan and Hamedan, took part in the study by completing the Professional Identity Questionnaire, the Institutional Identity Questionnaire, and the Teachers’ Efficacy Scale. The sampling strategy for selection of the participants of this study was convenience sampling. To answer the research questions, Pearson product-moment correlation and Multiple-regression analyses were run. The results showed that there exists a statistically significant positive relationship between EFL university lecturers' a) professional identity and teaching efficacy, and b) institutional identity and teaching efficacy. 

This study attempted to compare typed and handwritten essays of Iranian EFL students in terms of length, spelling, and grammar. To administer the study, the researchers utilized Alice Touch Typing Tutor software to select 15 upper intermediate students with higher ability to write two essays: one typed and the other handwritten. The students were both males and females between the ages of 22 to 35. The analyses of the students’ scores in the three mentioned criteria through three paired samples t-tests indicate that typed essays are significantly better than handwritten ones in terms of length of texts and grammatical mistakes, but not significantly different in spelling mistakes. Positive effects of typing can provide a logical reason for students, especially TOEFL applicants, to spend more time on acquiring typing skill and also for teachers to encourage their students with higher typing ability to choose typed format in their essays. 

The present research tries to show how race, class, and gender and intersectionality in general, have their decisive impact on the black- American women; and how Alice Walker as a womanist, in her selected short stories, tries to show that black women in the U.S. suffer two-fold acts of oppression and discrimination, i.e. male violence affects all women in social life, irrespective of age or social standing, and at the same time being black has exacerbated the black American women’s situation. In the present study, the mentioned socio-political, socio-cultural and institutionalized intersectionality have been analyzed from the perspective of Alice Walker’s selected short stories. Full analysis have been carried out, from applied linguistic point of view,  in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and “Roselily” while Alice Walker’s other short stories have been consulted for further analysis and discussion. The method used to analyze the data is descriptive research method.