درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study investigated comparatively the impact of two types of input enhancement (i.e. textual vs. compound enhancement) on developing grammar ability in Iranian EFL setting. Sixty-five female secondary high school students were selected as a homogenous sample out of about a 100-member population based on Nelson language proficiency test. Then, their grammar ability was measured based on a researcher-made diagnostic test prior to the experiment. The sample was randomly divided into two equal groups; one group received text-enhancement-based instruction of grammar, while the other received compound-based enhancement. Finally, they received an achievement test of grammar as a posttest to measure their progress in light of two different types of input enhancement mechanisms. The pertinent statistical analyses of the results indicated that a) the effect of textual enhancement-based instruction of grammar is not significantly meaningful, while b) the compound enhancement-based instruction has significant effect on learning grammatical structures. Comparatively speaking, therefore, c) compound enhancement-based instruction of grammar is more significantly effective than that of textual in developing grammar ability. It can be safely concluded that grammar instruction and its resultant development are subject to intervention type, which, pedagogically, bears promising messages for both teachers and syllabus designers to incorporate parameters of input enhancement in both teaching and materials development, respectively.

An understanding of language as ‘open, dynamic, constantly evolving and personal encompasses the rich complexities of communication (Shohamy, 2007, p.5). Knowing about the important role of culture as well as psychological aspects of language can give us a broader view of languageteaching and learning. In order to obtain a better understanding of different aspects of language teaching, the present study aims to investigate the possible relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’home-culture attachment and its underlying components, with their emotional intelligence. To this aim two questionnaires namely: Home culture Attachment/dependency and Bar-On EI test were distributed among 80 EFL teachers, both men and women who taught at different levels in state schools in Birjand, Kermanshah and Zabol. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple regressions. Finally results of the study revealed no significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ home culture attachment and its underlying components, with their emotional intelligence. The most important result of this study is bringing about awareness for EFL teachers, EFL syllabus designers, teacher educators and policy makers about the important factors in cultural attachment or detachment of Iranian EFL teachers that consequently affects their teaching and transfer of cultural values into their students.

An interesting area of psycholinguistic inquiry is to discover the way morphological structures are stored in the human mind and how they are retrieved during comprehension or production of language. The current study probed into what goes on in the mind of EFL learners when processing derivational morphology and how English and Persian derivational suffixes are processed. 60 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency whose proficiency level were determined through Oxford Quick Placement Test, participated in masked priming experiments using E-prime software. Two separate priming tasks in Persian and English were conducted during the course of this study. The target words were primed in three ways: identity (careful""careful), related (care""careful) and control primes (desire""careful). Participants’ reaction times were measured by E-prime software and were fed into SPSS software for further analysis. The results indicated that Proficiency plays a role in the way derivational morphology is processed, because at lower proficiency levels more decomposition was detected while more proficient participants utilized more whole-word representation. Furthermore, Persian learners of English processing of the derived words could not be assigned strictly to decomposition or whole-word representations in the mind. What seems more plausible to assume is that highly frequent words (whether base or suffix frequency) as well as derived words with more productive suffixes are stored as whole words but lower base and morpheme frequency ones and those with suffixes having less productivity are decomposed. These findings lend further support to dual route model.

تحقیق حاضر نظریه ویگاتسکی در مورد حوزه رشد تقریبی و استعاره وی در مورد کمک تدریجی و مبانی هویت اجتماعی فرهنگی نورتون را به عنوان اساس نظری استفاده می کند. این تحقیق به بررسی دقیق مکانیسم های کمکی اجتماعی فرهنگی اتخاذ شده در مشارکت های بین دانشجویی و دانشجو و معلم می پردازد. این بررسی تغییرات رفتاری فرهنگی اجتماعی زبان آموزان و همچنین چگونگی شکل گیری هویت اجتماعی فرهنگی آنان از طریق مشارکت در نگارش راهنمایی شده را مورد مطالعه قرار می دهد. برای این منظور معیار درجه بندیلیدز برای تعیین دقیق گفتمان های کمک کننده به هویت فرهنگی اجتماعی استفاده شده است. این گفتمان ها بین 32 دانشجوی سال دوم زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی در دانشگاه شیراز صورت گرفته است که در نگارش گروهی مشارکت کرده اند. تحلیل گفتمان کمکی صورت گرفته در این مشارکت ها اطلاعات مفیدی را در رابطه با چگونکیشکل گیری هویت اجتماعی فرهنگیزبان آموزان آشکار می سازد. نتایج این تحقیق به طور ویژه حاکی از آن است که گفتمان های صورت گرفته بین زبان آموزان و معلم که ازابزارهای زبانی بهره برده انداساسی ترین نقش را در شکل گیری هویتی جدید و رسیدن به استقلال یعنی تکامل هویت اجتماعی فرهنگی ایفامی کند که برخی از این ابزارها عبارتند از: رفتارهای عمدی و هدفمند، توجه مشترک، مشارکت عاطفی، چرخ ارتباطی، واکنش وابسته، رفتار میان-فردی، و استفاده از زبان اول در تکالیف نگارشی مشترک.

This study was aimed at investigating the effect of collaborative assessment, as compared to that of static assessment, on the EFL learners’ reading comprehension, metacognitive strategies, and critical thinking. In this mixed-methods research design study, 62 intermediate EFL learners out of a population of 79 English language learners, were randomly selected and divided into two groups of experimental and control with 31 participants in each group. They were both female and male, who were administered a meta-cognitive strategy and critical thinking questionnaire and a reading comprehension test at the pretest and posttest stage of the study. Furthermore, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants and six sessions of the course were picked for observation. A multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) test was run and the obtained results revealed that the students in the experimental group showed statistically significant gains on the reading comprehension and metacognitive strategy as compared with the participants in the control group but did not show any significant difference on their critical thinking. Similarly, the analysis of the interviews and classroom observations provided important themes which revealed that the students found collaborative assessment a very fruitful and practical way of promoting their reading skills and strategies mainly metacognitive strategies.

This study was an attempt to examine the relationship between EFL students’ EI, their gender, and writing performance. To this end, 30 female and 27 male English B.A. students, studying at Allameh Tabataba’i University, participated in this study. After checking the homogeneity of the participants through a TOEFL test, Bar-On EQ-i questionnaire (Bar-On, 1997) was administered in order to measure the participants’ emotional intelligence. Besides, their writing performance was measured by their writing course final grades. Three Pearson product moment correlation coefficients and a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) were run to analyze the relationships and interactions among the variables of emotional intelligence, gender, and writing performance. The findings revealed that there was a positive relationship between the participants’ EI and their writing performance. Furthermore, the female participants had a higher emotional intelligence compared to the male participants. However, no difference was found between the male and female participants’ writing performance. The obtained results of this study have had several implications in the fields of English teaching, language testing, and syllabus design and materials development.

Iran's National curriculum standards represent the guiding blueprints which provide direction for instruction and assessment nationwide. Iran's official university curriculum standards were designed by Iran's Ministry of Sciences, Research and Technologyto provide a frame of reference and guidance for the instructional materials used and decisions made by university instructors. Using a widely accepted measure of describing cognitive processes, that is,Bloom's revised taxonomy of educational objectives, thispaper aims at comparatively investigatingIran's B.A. official curriculum standards of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and ET (English translation). Thestandardspertaining to TEFL and ET fieldswerecontent analyzed in terms of Bloom's revised taxonomyby using a detailed checklist developedbased on the respective classification of cognitive objectives.The findings showed slight differences between both fields in terms of critical thinking skills and that lower-order cognitive skills were more prevalent than higher-order ones. Furthermore, the English translation standards pertained to critical cognitive skills in general and evaluation and creation in particular to a larger extent. Results of this study have implications for policy makers, curriculum designers, materials developers and instructors involved in language education.

Teacher supervision plays a pivotal role in the improvement of education system and the way in which teachers and student teachers perceive it. Consequently language teacher supervisors can utilize appropriate supervisory models to keep teachers update and promote them professionally. The present study investigated the role of language teacher supervisors in student teachers and in-service teachers’ professional development in Iran. To have a representative sample, some 210 EFL teachers practicing in the secondary schools and a total of 215EFL student teachers studying English at some Iranian state and Azad universities participated in the study. A 43-item questionnaire regarding EFL teachers’ attitudes about the impact of supervisory practice on their professional development with a format of a 5-point Likert-type was distributed among them. Also, ten percent of the participants were interviewed. Then the frequencies related to each item were calculated and a Chi-Square was used. Subsequently, qualitative data were transcribed. The results indicated that in-service and pre-service teachers have the same perceptions towards the role of their supervisors in their professional development. However, according to the findings it was concluded that the models of language teacher supervision in language teacher education are different from the models practiced in in-service classes where mostly traditional models are common.

In order to be autonomous, teachers should enjoy teaching and be satisfied with their teaching. Teacher autonomy, therefore, may be related to teacher burnout and job satisfaction. The present study investigated the relationship between job satisfaction, teacher burnout, and teacher autonomy. Two hundred and seven language teachers at language institutes in Karaj and Tehran were given three questionnaires to complete. Convenience sampling was used to select language teachers in this study, and IBM SPSS (version 22) was used to analyze the data. Three non-parametric statistical tests were used to analyze the collected data. According to the findings of this study, job satisfaction had a weak negative relationship with teacher burnout, and teacher autonomy correlated negatively with job satisfaction. Moreover, no relationship between teacher autonomy and teacher burnout was found. Although the findings should be interpreted with care because of sample size, the paper ends with implications for language teachers and policy makers.