درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study sought to investigate the evidence for cross-linguistic transfer in a partial English immersion and non-immersion educational setting. To this end, a total of 145 first, third and fifth graders in a partial English immersion program and 95 students from the same grade levels in a non-immersion program were chosen. Six different English and Persian tests were administered: the Cambridge English for Young Learners (YLE) Test for Reading, a Persian reading achievement test, the English and Persian Phonological Awareness Sound Detection tests and the English and Persian Rapid Automatized Naming Tests. Given the nature of the research question and the design of this study, linear regression analysis was run through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings suggest that there is an apparent cross-linguistic transfer between English reading achievement and Persian cognitive predictors in both educational settings. Relatively speaking, Persian cognitive predictors can moderately predict English reading achievement in Grades 1 and 5 and can weakly predict English reading achievement in Grade 3.

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has stood the test of time as a model of text analysis. The present literature contains a plethora of studies that while taking the ‘clause’ as a unit of analysis have put into investigation the metafunctions in research articles of a single field of study or those of various fields in comparison. Although ‘clause complex’ is another unit of SF analysis, by far there has been only one study on research articles where it was the unit of analysis (Sellami Baklouti, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to put into analysis the ‘taxis’, ‘expansion’ and ‘projection’ deployed in Applied Linguistics research article abstracts (RAAs) by native (N) and non-native (NN) writers. To this end, 20 Applied Linguistics RAAs (10 by N English writers and 10 by NN English writers on the sub-fields of Discourse Analysis and Language Assessment) were analyzed according to Halliday & Matthiessen’s (2013) ‘clause complex’ framework. The results indicated that there is a significant difference in the use of ‘projection’ by Ns and NNs, while the distribution of ‘taxis’ and ‘expansion’ is the same. The findings also showed what types of ‘taxis’, ‘expansion’ and ‘projection’ were deployed by Ns and NNs

Dynamic assessment (DA) which is rooted in Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory involves the integration of instruction and assessment in a dialectical way to achieve two main purposes: enhancing learners' development and understanding about their learning potential. However, the feasibility and appropriateness of mediation are two main concerns of DA. The former is concerned with the application of DA for a large number of students, while the latter is concerned with providing test takers with appropriate hints. The purpose of the current study was three-fold: to examine the difference between dynamic and nondynamic tests, to understand about test takers' potential for learning, and to find out how mediation works for high and low ability students. To achieve these aims, computer software was developed. The software is capable of both providing the test takers with graduated hints for each item automatically, and adapting the overall difficulty level of the test to the test takers' proficiency level. To test the efficiency of the software in employing dynamic assessment, 83 Iranian university students participated in the study. The results of the study indicated that the computerized dynamic test made significant contribution both to enhancing students' grammar ability and to obtaining information about their potential for learning. Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that the use of dynamic assessment can simultaneously lead to the development of the test takers' ability and provide a more comprehensive picture of learning potential. Accordingly, teachers are recommended to use dynamic assessment to make more informed decisions about their students.

The present study was aimed at examining concerns about the social effects of EFL learning, a challenging area of research which has not been discussed sufficiently. It tried to investigate the relationship between EFL learning and national identity. In addition, attempt was made to find a relationship between language motivation types and national identity. Furthermore, the role of two demographic variables, gender and age was examined. To this end, a sample consisting of 350 undergraduates studying at Allameh Tabataba'i University in Tehran took part in the study. A questionnaire on national identity and another one on language motivation types followed by an interview were the instruments used. The questionnaires had already been developed. However, there were some major modifications for the former which consisted of 30 items measuring national identity for all participants. The latter contained 42 items measuring language motivation types for only EFL learners. The Regression analysis, independent samples t-tests and a one-way ANOVA were run. The results revealed that claims over the harmful social effects of EFL learning were not arguably significant and it was found that among the eight language motivation types, going abroad and social responsibility were correlated with national identity. Furthermore, gender and age indicated significant differences among the participants' tendencies. The findings indicated that the social concerns about EFL learning are too pessimistic. So, materials developers, syllabus designers and teachers might consider the potentiality of some social elementsand demographic variables for the development of EFL learning.

The application of critical pedagogy in educational contexts has received adequate research attention over the last decades. The main focus of this strand of research has, however, been on raising awareness of the educators. Nevertheless, little is known about the consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy principles from EFL teacher trainers’ perspectives. To begin to address this gap in research, a qualitative (phenomenological) study was carried out to explore the main consequences of violating critical pedagogy in the higher education system of Iran. The participants were 15 faculty members of TEFL and English Literature at 10 Iranian state universities. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews and analyzed according to Radnor’s (2001) model. The results indicated that the main consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy were educational (related to teaching, learning, and testing), psychological, social, and ideological. Therefore, it was concluded that educators must follow the principles of CP in order to avoid the negative consequences and foster the learning and teaching processes more effectively.

A community of practice may shape and reshape the identity of members of the community through providing them with situated learning or learning environment. This study, therefore, is to clarify the salient learning-based features of the language teaching community of practice that might formulate the identity of language teachers. To this end, the study examined how learning situations in two communities of practice (English and Arabic) developed the professional identity of language teachers. The results of the semi-structure interviews with 5 language teachers highlighted some differences between English and Arabic language teaching communities of practice in terms of the situated learning activities they provide for language teachers to develop their professional identity. Furthermore, since the community of practice can be considered a potential curriculum that may be learned by newcomers with legitimate peripheral access, it would be considered as a main source of identity formation of both English and Arabic language teachers. The findings of the study can be used to better understand the nature of being a professional language teacher in non-native contexts. They have implications for novice and experienced language teachers as well as for teacher educators to review the content of the teacher training courses

The importance of demotivation in language learning has been overshadowed in the commonplace research on language learning motivation and even in mainstream psychology (Dörnyei, 2005). The purpose behind conducting this study was to investigate the relationship between students’ demotives for studying in general and English language in particular. Besides, the importance of educational context was investigated through explaining the changes in students’ responses based on the type of university and gender. In Iran, university education is highly important for youngsters and the type of university with their various contexts is determining for their future. There are popular state universities among which one technical university as well as its satellite campus were selected. Besides, a distance-education and a unisexual university were represented in the present sample, overall comprising 194 bachelor students of different majors. Consequently, the factors considered as demotives are ranked, elaborated on and analyzed in order to shed light on the educational context-specific demotives and the pros and cons of current practices of EFL instruction in the universities.

Reading comprehension (RC) and critical thinking (CT) are the two basic cognitive skills that should be developed through involving language learners in a carefully planned instruction. Multiple intelligences (MI) instruction may assist learners in developing RC and CT in L2 education. This study probed the effect of MI-based reading instruction on the Iranian EFL learners’ RC and CT skills. In so doing, it compared the effectiveness of an MI-based reading instruction with a traditional one. To this end, 4 intact classes from several English language institutes, comprising 56 Iranian intermediate-level EFL learners, were selected and randomly assigned to MI-based (experimental) and traditional (control) groups. A multiple- choice RC test, a reading summary test, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test were used as the instrumentations to collect data on the participants’ RC and CT. Analysis of covariance revealed a significant effect for the MI-based reading instruction. Furthermore, the RC scores increased more significantly in the MI-based group in comparison to the traditional one. However, the CT scores did not significantly improve in both groups. There was also no statistically significant difference in the CT scores between the two groups after the treatments. Iranian EFL educators are, then, encouraged to develop MI-based lessons and activities for diverse students and take explicit instruction for the enhancement of CT skills in EFL reading courses

The current study aimed at investigating the academic learning needs of Iranian undergraduate students of English Language and Literature from the perspective of 320 stakeholders including undergraduate students (n=252), graduates (n=51), English literature instructors (n=7), and language instructors (n=10). To this aim, atriangulation of the most important data collection instruments of needs analysis (i.e., questionnaires, class observations, and semistructured interviews) was adopted for data collection at eight different Iranian state universities. The results of data analysis revealed that the above-mentioned students are not adequately equipped with learning and communication strategies during their academic and preacademic studies. The results of the current study may promise implications for the provision of some extracurricular EFL courses at the tertiary and senior high school levels in order to enhance students’ sociocultural and strategic competence based on the shared decision-making process among different stakeholders in the course design community

Concerns over the phony nature of textbooks and artificiality of their contents in reflecting authentic language have been raised by a number of researchers. It has been argued that many language teaching programs result in the failure of learners of English to successfully communicate in the target language. The problem with these programs is that there is no general agreement about the success of these materials in developing the pragmatic competence necessary for interlocutors’ mutually intelligible communication[D1] . Hence, this study explored communicated requests for nonverbal/verbal goods and services (RNGS/RVGS) in the dialogues of 5 textbooks and 8 English movies. The utterances of the textbooks and movies were evaluated on six criteria deriving from research on speech act theory, politeness, and conversation analysis. These included whether the textbooks discussed second pair parts, the forms of requests, the context of request occurrence, the nature of the devices through which the requests are mitigated, and multi-turn request forms. The results of the analysis revealed that, except for re-requests and dispreferred responses of RNGS,textbooks’ strategies including forms, face, contexts of RVGS, and strategies of RNGSwere not realized through adequate examples compared to their variants in movies.Most importantly,except for bald on record, internal mitigators of RVGS, external mitigators, and direct and indirect forms of RNGS, the other request strategies in the textbooks showed less variety than those of their counterparts in the movies. Internally mitigated RVGS were the onlystrategies variouslyexploited in the textbooks.The findings revealed that textbook designers should improve their instructional materials by incorporatingmore accurate samples of communicated requests in their future textbooks.