درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Although images are abundant and play significant aesthetic and pedagogical roles in today’s EFL course books, they are still one of the less explored areas of research. The present study is an attempt to examine the role and function of images in Iranian high school EFL course books; it also aims to cast a critical eye over their suitability and efficiency. To this end, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) model of visual grammar was adopted. The findings revealed that although the informative and/or illustrative functions of the images make them important resources in Iranian high school EFL course books, their full potential for language learning does not seem to be adequately exploited. This relates to flaws at the representational mode of meaning making, such as outdated portrayal of objects, gender stereotyping, and overdramatizing national identity as well as shortcomings at the interactive mode, such as poor modality due to grayscale printing and plain graphics with no contextualization or pictorial detail. These flaws make the images seem out of today’s world and hardly credible for high school students who are already adept at new technology. Since these shortcomings may sacrifice pedagogical objectives, the study calls for changes in both technical quality and underlying messages of images in the course books.

The importance of input has been a broadly documented concept in the field of second or foreign language acquisition. However, kinds of input and ways of its presentation are among the controversial issues in L2 classroom research. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the effects of three kinds of input-based instruction on intake and acquisition of the English causative structures by Iranian EFL learners. A total of 105 university students in four intact classes were randomly assigned to four different conditions: processing instruction (PI), textual input enhancement (TE), consciousness-raising (C-R), and control (CO). A pretest/posttest (immediate and delayed) design was used, where participants’ ability to interpret and produce the target structure was assessed through administering a multiple choice interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Moreover, a grammaticality judgment test was run to assess the amount of intake. Results revealed that learners in the PI group significantly outperformed learners in the other groups on both immediate/delayed production posttests. The findings also indicated that, C-R group could not retain the significant effect of instruction on delayed production posttest and TE tasks were not effective in improving the learners’ production of the target structure. Moreover, the PI group outperformed the other groups on grammaticality judgment test too. Based on these findings, we can conclude that PI which encompasses the most outstanding features of both focus on form and meaning instruction might be a more effective approach in helping EFL learners to acquire the target grammatical forms.

An overview of pedagogical interventions in the field of interlanguage pragmatics reveals the under-exploration of the processes in which changes in learners' second language (L2) pragmatic competence are established and that most of these investigations have focused on the product or final outcome of the learners' pragmatic development (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper, 1996; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006). This study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis of the microgenetic development of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' pragmatic knowledge of request speech act. A total of 140 male and female participants received instruction on request strategy types and internal and external modification devices for seven sessions (weeks) through consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks. The data were collected after instructional sessions during the first, third, fifth, and seventh weeks through discourse completion tests (DCTs). The results indicated that, in the course of time, the participants stopped using direct request strategies and employed conventionally indirect strategies more frequently in situations involving high-status interlocutors and high-imposition requests. Moreover, as time progressed, the learners became more preoccupied with pragmatic appropriateness rather than grammatical correctness. The results of the study suggest that C-R instructional tasks offer an effective means of teaching pragmatics. Considering request speech act, learners should become conscious of the significance of concepts such as status and imposition as well as internal and external modification devices in request formulation.

The study of compliment speech act has been under investigation on many occasions in recent years. In this study, an attempt is made to explore appraisals performed by native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners to find out how these two groups diverge or converge from each other with regard to complimenting patterns and norms. The participants of the study were 60 advanced Iranian EFL learners who were speaking Persian as their first language and 60 native English speakers. Through a written Discourse Completion Task comprised of eight different scenarios, compliments were analyzed with regard to topics (performance, personality, possession, and skill), functions (explicit, implicit, and opt-out), gender differences and the common positive adjectives used by two groups of native and nonnative participants. The findings suggested that native English speakers praised individuals more implicitly in comparison with Iranian EFL learners and native speakers provided opt-outs more frequently than Iranian EFL learners did. The analysis of data by Chi-square showed that gender and macro functions are independent of each other among Iranian EFL learners’ compliments while for native speakers, gender played a significant role in the distribution of appraisals. Iranian EFL learners’ complimenting patterns converge more towards those of native English speakers. Moreover, both groups favored explicit compliments. However, Iranian EFL learners were more inclined to provide explicit compliments. It can be concluded that there were more similarities rather than differences between Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers regarding compliment speech act. The results of this study can benefit researchers, teachers, material developers, and EFL learners.

В контексте гуманизации и гуманитаризации образования большое внимание уделяется индивидуальным способностям человека. Обучающийся становится активным участником образовательного процесса. Изучение языков является одним из основных компонентов, помогающих ребенку развить свою индивидуальность, сформировать межкультурную коммуникативную компетенцию, способствующую успешному общению с представителями других культур на изучаемом языке, это путь к ценностям цивилизованного мира. В связи с этим в статье представлены положения гуманистической педагогики, рассматриваются основные этапы изучения иностранных языков в мировом пространстве и в российской школе.

هدف از مقاله حاضر بررسی توانش شناختی مدرسین متخصّص زبان انگلیسی می باشد که برای نخستین بار به عنوان بخشی از جدیدترین مدل تحت پژوهش راجع به تعریف تخصّص در آموزش زبان انگلیسی در حیطه زبان شناسی کاربردی مطرح است. بدین منظور، تحقیقات پیشین در این زمینه مطالعه گردید که ماحصل آن استخراج ده تم شناختی بود که سپس از طریق مصاحبه هایی که با صاحب نظرانِ این رشته انجام گرفت مورد بررسی بیشتر واقع شد. مصاحبه شونده ها شامل اساتید دانشگاه در رشته زبان انگلیسی، تعلیم دهندگان معلمین زبان و نیز مدرّسین برجسته زبان انگلیسی در ایران بودند. ده تم استخراج شده مورد تأیید ایشان واقع شد که در نهایت شامل موارد ذیل هستند: سرعت در شناخت الگوها، توجه گزینشی، دیدگاه کلی نگر، حافظه برتر، سرعت در کدگزاری اطلاعات، قدرت پیش بینی، نگرش به نقش معلم، آگاهی از موقعیت-محور بودن رویدادهای کلاسی، آگاهی از سطح دانش، و برقراری ارتباط بین دانش پیشین و دانش جدید. در این مقاله هر یک از تم ها به همراه گزیده ای از سابقه تحقیقات پیشین و توصیفاتی از نظرات مصاحبه شوندگان به تفصیل آمده است. هم چنین بر این نکته تاکید شده است که ویژگی های شناختی مدرسین متخصّص تنها یک بعد از چند بعد مدل توصیفی تخصّص در آموزش زبان انگلیسی می باشد که در یک رساله تکمیلی دوره دکتری تخصّصی این رشته در حال تدوین می باشد.