درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study aimed at providing learners with an opportunity not only to bring together their core and disciplinary knowledge to acquire major skills of learning English as a foreign language (EFL), and the intellectual challenge of these issues at the interface of media, language and religion, but also help the materials generators to produce suitable types of content to be delivered through the medium of mobile technology. Therefore, it sought to examine the new way of teaching EFL in the form of correspondence with respect to Iranian learners' native culture and language. For the purposes of this study, English was the target language for 680 Iranian students with pre-intermediate level of language proficiency whose native languages were Persian, Arabic, Georgian, and Turkish. This study took as its point of departure the existence of important differences between the two learning materials (off the shelf vs. Islamic culture) types; thus, applying the Qur'ānic criteria of intelligence, knowledge and virtue parallel with the digital representation of common textbook materials, materials delivery was adapted to the cellphone screen to be accessed by learners' in 18 virtual sessions. Learners took part in two summative and 18 formative components included in the assessment design of this study. Also, they all answered a questionnaire which yielded information concerning their attitude towards the target language, and learning through the wireless technology. Learners' short texting correspondence as well as their performance in battery and their answers to items of questionnaires formed the reference for analyzing the results. The gains from English Islamic materials were outweighed by the effects of obtaining materials which involved more categorized cases.

This study examined the differences among high، mid and low ambiguity tolerance groups in their reading comprehension ability and their metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. To this end، 123 first-year college students majoring in Engineering with an age range of 19-25 were stratified into three groups of high، mid and low ambiguity tolerance to participate in the study. They took part in the Nelson test of proficiency and a reading comprehension test and also filled out two questionnaires: the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory، and the Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale. The results showed significant differences between Low and High groups. That is، high ambiguity tolerance students scored higher on reading comprehension test، displayed higher metacognitive awareness of reading strategies، and showed higher perceived use of Global and Problem-Solving metacognitive reading strategies. However، no significant differences were found between the middle group and the other two groups in these variables. Also، no significant difference was found in the use of Supportive strategies among these three groups. The findings are interpreted to have implications for syllabus designers and EFL teachers.

The extensive research done on the interrelationship between different social factors such as social class، gender and age and different linguistic variables has shown that these factors have important effects on the way language is used. Among these factors a special importance can be placed on age due to the role it plays in revealing different patterns of language use، such as the age-grading pattern، the normal pattern of age differentiation and the important patterns of language change which can inform us about the emergence of a linguistic form or the death of some old form. This paper is intended to examine the interrelationship between age and the usage of Shirazi vocabulary or lexical items. Sixty respondents belonging to 6 age groups of Shirazi speakers answered a 60-item questionnaire. Each item included one Shirazi word with its definition and sometimes a short example to clarify its meaning. The respondents had to choose between two choices: either they used the item or they did not. The analysis of the results showed that age was an influencing factor on the speech of the speakers as the older people had a large collection of active Shirazi words (they actively used all the words) while the younger generation had two collections of more active and less active Shirazi words and as the age of the subjects increased their mean scores which represented their usage of Shirazi vocabulary items also increased. These words were also used less among the more educated Shirazi speakers.

The significance of error analysis for the learner، the teacher and the researcher is now widely recognized. Earlier studies of error analysis concentrated on intersystematic comparison of the “native language” and the “target language” and drew the required data largely from intuitions and impressionistic observations. This study was conducted on the basis of the following observations: (1) to restrict to the study of one area viz articles. (2) to avoid comparison in terms of the systems of native and target language. In this study the major areas of difficulties that students face in the target language، i.e. the occurrence of articles in different syntactic features was examined and an attempt was made to establish a hierarchy of difficulties 40 undergraduates faced in the use of articles. For testing the correct retrieval، a slightly modified version of Leacok’s essay ‘My Financial Career’ was prepared. It included sufficient examples of almost all the important uses of articles. The test was given to the subjects in the form of a running text. The responses of the subjects were analysed in terms of noun or noun phrases preceded by articles، noun or noun-phrases preceded by no article، and grammatical categories other than noun or noun-phrases proceeded by no article. The findings revealed that most of the errors the students committed were due to the nature as well as the grammatical complexity of the articles in English، i.e. L1 independent which cannot be explained in terms of transfer from the native language. It was also found that students’ competence using anaphoric reference is far greater than using cataphoric reference. The findings are interpreted to have pedagogical implications for syllabus designers and EFL teachers.