sepideh rafiei sakhaei; biook behnam; Zohreh Seifoori
Abstract
Despite all efforts rationalized around the significance of grammar instruction, it remains a contentious issue in the fields of second and foreign language teaching. Grammar teaching requires the design of both implicit and explicit approaches. One of the main features of grammar is English passive ...
Read More
Despite all efforts rationalized around the significance of grammar instruction, it remains a contentious issue in the fields of second and foreign language teaching. Grammar teaching requires the design of both implicit and explicit approaches. One of the main features of grammar is English passive voice which is, for various reasons, a difficult subpart of grammar for Iranian EFL learners. This quasi-experimental study was intended to comparatively and empirically investigate the effects and probable differences of Traditional Explicit Instruction (TEI), Implicit Input Enhancement (IIE), and Guided Discovery Method (GDM) on comprehension of passive voice among Iranian EFL learners. To serve the purpose, 70 students from Payam-Nour University of Tabriz were selected and divided into three groups including TEI (N= 23), IIE (N= 25), and GDM (N= 22). The participants were exposed to three different treatments and the pre-test and post-test were used to extract information on the learners’ comprehension. The results of one-way ANCOVA showed that all three teaching approaches had positive effects on the comprehension of passive voice. Meanwhile, the GDM could lead to a better and more efficient contribution compared to the two other instructional techniques. Finally, some pedagogical implications have been presented for EFL teachers, students, and syllabus designers.
Habibollah Mashhady; Moslem Fatollahi
Volume 2, Issue 4 , November 2015, , Pages 10-1
Abstract
Markedness in linguistics is the state of being distinct, peculiar or complicated in comparison to a more usual or common form. Markedness has been widely studied in the literature. However, almost no study has ever explored the relationship between translators’ assertiveness and their preference ...
Read More
Markedness in linguistics is the state of being distinct, peculiar or complicated in comparison to a more usual or common form. Markedness has been widely studied in the literature. However, almost no study has ever explored the relationship between translators’ assertiveness and their preference of marked structures in translation. This article aims to investigate the relationship between the assertiveness level of Iranian undergraduate English students and their preference for using lexical and grammatical marked structures in their Persian translations. To this end, 60 undergraduate English students completed the Assertiveness Scale developed by Alberti & Emmons (1995), and rendered ten short statements taken from the story “Child by Tiger” into Persian. The translation test was scored by two raters, based on the use of marked lexical (e.g. wrong collocations, plurals) and grammatical (e.g. reduced clauses( structures in the students’ translation, and a high inter-rater reliability was achieved. Results revealed a significant positive relationship between the test-takers’ assertiveness and their preference to render English marked structures into Persian marked structures. The findings have implications for translation instructors.
Hamidreza Farajinejad; Aliakbar Khomeijani Farahani
Volume 4, Issue 1 , February 2017, , Pages 16-1
parviz Ajideh; Valeh Gholami
Volume 1, Issue 3 , July 2014, , Pages 17-1
Seyyed Ayatollah Razmjoo
Volume 3, Issue 3 , September 2016, , Pages 18-1
Abstract
Regarding the lack of consistency among ELT journals to evaluate papers, this research delves into how journal reviewers address the issue of determining the optimum paper to be published. In other words, this study aims at proposing a putative scheme to evaluate the papers submitted to ELT journals ...
Read More
Regarding the lack of consistency among ELT journals to evaluate papers, this research delves into how journal reviewers address the issue of determining the optimum paper to be published. In other words, this study aims at proposing a putative scheme to evaluate the papers submitted to ELT journals on a scientific and consistent basis. As such, 22 instructors and PhD students, selected through purposive sampling, were interviewed utilizing semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study were presented in the form of an evaluation scheme consisting of two major themes as two evaluation criteria: content-related and strategy-related criteria. The former includes paper originality, research contribution, innovation and novelty, and method inclusiveness; the latter consists of succinctness, scene-setting adequacy, critical synthesis and analogy, implicational justification, and efficacy and consistency. Implicationally, the results of this study demonstrates that reviewers across diverse ELT journals have substantial common criteria for paper publishing, that the ties uniting the ELT journals seeking to publish articles are strong, and that the potential for future ELT research regarding how authors inform one another on the criteria is correspondingly robust and consistent.
Mahmood Hashemian; Helena Mostaghasi
Volume 2, Issue 3 , August 2015, , Pages 19-1
Abstract
As far as making errors is an indispensable part of L2 learning process, appropriate and pertinent corrective feedback (CF) is a significant medium for L2 teachers to prevent their learners’ errors from getting fossilized and assist them progress along with their L2 learning process. There are ...
Read More
As far as making errors is an indispensable part of L2 learning process, appropriate and pertinent corrective feedback (CF) is a significant medium for L2 teachers to prevent their learners’ errors from getting fossilized and assist them progress along with their L2 learning process. There are various factors contributing to the efficacy of CF, but proficiency level is of paramount importance. In this study, various oral CF types preferred by L2 learners at intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency were considered. For this purpose, 20 participants were selected for each level. Different types of oral CF were identified, and their distribution in relation to the proficiency levels of the learners was determined. After conducting chi-square tests and comparing the significance values with respect to their preferred CF types, it is observed that the most significant CF types among the intermediate participants were paralinguistic signals and clarification requests. Moreover, for the upper-intermediate participants, recasts and repetition were the most frequent and significant types of CF that assisted them to reformulate their utterances. Finally, with regard to the advanced participants, the results pointed out that as they became more proficient in terms of their linguistic threshold, they would show no significant positive or negative attitudes towards any certain type of CF for treating their errors. The findings suggest that L2 teachers should adjust CF types and correction techniques to their learners’ proficiency levels and provide proper types of CF that can foster a more productive learning milieu to enhance learning quality and speaking ability.
Mohammad Zohrabi; Parya Kaashef
Volume 4, Issue 3 , August 2017, , Pages 19-31
Abstract
Spelling has become a remarkable aspect of learning and/or teaching English as a foreign language. This skill helps learners to write fluently without interruption in the flow of thinking caused by searching dictionary for the correct spelling. However, the number of practical simple strategies to learn ...
Read More
Spelling has become a remarkable aspect of learning and/or teaching English as a foreign language. This skill helps learners to write fluently without interruption in the flow of thinking caused by searching dictionary for the correct spelling. However, the number of practical simple strategies to learn and/or teach spelling is scant. This study was an attempt to introduce a simple strategy to learn spelling and to investigate its effects on learners’ progress in spelling. To this end, two groups of third grade students of secondary school were studied as control and experimental groups. A pretest was given, then the new strategy was used in the experimental group, and then a posttest was given, and finally the data were analyzed by using ANCOVA. The results showed that this new strategy of learning spelling has a positive effect on learners’ spelling performance. Findings show that this simple strategy can be effective in learning and/or teaching spelling.
Javad Zare
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, , Pages 20-1
Abstract
This paper was an attempt to explore the reading strategy use of Iranian M.A. students with general and discipline-related texts. More specifically, this was an endeavor to see if relation to discipline affects the reading strategy use of the students. To this end, a Nelson test and the reading comprehension ...
Read More
This paper was an attempt to explore the reading strategy use of Iranian M.A. students with general and discipline-related texts. More specifically, this was an endeavor to see if relation to discipline affects the reading strategy use of the students. To this end, a Nelson test and the reading comprehension section of TOEFL were used to select sixty-five power engineering and physics M.A. students at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) to participate in the study. Given the mixed-methods nature of the study, both quantitative, Survey of Reading Strategy Use (SORS), and qualitative, think-aloud protocol, procedures were followed. The participants based their responses to SORS and the think-aloud procedure on the reading comprehension section of TOEFL test and two discipline-related reading comprehension tests. By and large, analysis of these two procedures suggested that reading strategy use did not differ significantly across general and discipline-related texts, as long as power engineering and physics students are concerned. Additionally, whereas power engineering students used strategies more frequently with general reading texts, physics students resorted to strategies more frequently with discipline-related texts.
Saemeh Askani; Omid Khatin Zadeh
Volume 3, Issue 4 , November 2016, , Pages 25-1
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate patterns of encoding motion events in the sentences of ‘Reading Comprehension’ sections of English textbooks that are taught in Iranian guidance schools and high schools. To achieve this objective, all sentences that described motion events were collected from ...
Read More
This study aimed to investigate patterns of encoding motion events in the sentences of ‘Reading Comprehension’ sections of English textbooks that are taught in Iranian guidance schools and high schools. To achieve this objective, all sentences that described motion events were collected from textbooks. These sentences were examined on the basis of two factors: 1) The encoding of Figure, Manner, Path, Source, Goal, Cause, and Ground; 2) Metaphorical description of non-motion events in terms of motion events. Based on the obtained results, it was concluded that sentences of these books are the simplified versions of typical English sentences that are used to describe motion events. In other words, these sentences minimize the details of motion events and do not offer a complete picture of such events. Regarding the use of metaphors to describe non-motion events in terms of motion events, the obtained results showed that metaphors are underused in English textbooks that are taught in Iranian schools. Therefore, it is recommended that some modifications be made in these textbooks to improve the quality of teaching these aspects of language to L2 learners in Iranian high schools and guidance schools.
Samira kazempourian; Abbas Ali Rezaee
Abstract
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is one of the considerable programs in the world of English language teaching and research since it pertains to specific needs of various specialties. Meanwhile, university students’ ability to communicate effectively through English language can greatly affect ...
Read More
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is one of the considerable programs in the world of English language teaching and research since it pertains to specific needs of various specialties. Meanwhile, university students’ ability to communicate effectively through English language can greatly affect their career development in the target situation, namely in their future workplace. Moreover, ESP instructors play a conspicuous role in flourishing students’ English achievements, as they need to be equipped with the knowledge and awareness of their students’ English needs not only in the academic setting but also in the workplace environment. Thus, this study intended to investigate workplace English needs of Electrical Engineering (EE) students from ESP instructors’ point of view, together with the English requirements of EE employers in different Electrical companies in Iran. In doing so, data were elicited from 97 EE students, 39 EE employers from 15 well-reputed Electrical companies, and 15 ESP instructors. The results of t-test between instructors and employers indicated that ESP instructors were not fully aware of EE students’ future workplace needs. Therefore, having the rudimentary knowledge of the technical content in English on the part of ESP instructors can raise their awareness toward EE workplace needs Moreover, the findings of interview revealed that EE employers required their prospective workforce to be more proficient in speaking skills and to be more skilled in technical translation. The findings provide implications for ESP instructors and curriculum developers in order to be more aware of English needs of EE workforce.
Shirin Rezaei Keramati; Davud Kuhi; Mahnaz Saeidi
Abstract
Thanks to recent developments in metadiscourse studies, it is now increasingly accepted that metadiscourse practices are closely related to social activities, cognitive styles and epistemological beliefs of academic communities. Despite widespread interest and research among applied linguists to explore ...
Read More
Thanks to recent developments in metadiscourse studies, it is now increasingly accepted that metadiscourse practices are closely related to social activities, cognitive styles and epistemological beliefs of academic communities. Despite widespread interest and research among applied linguists to explore metadiscourse use, very little is known of how metadiscourse resources have evolved over time in response to the historically developing practices of academic communities. Motivated by such an ambition, the current research drew on a corpus of 4.3 million words taken from three leading journals of applied linguistics in order to trace the diachronic evolution of stance and engagement markers across four different sections of research articles (Introduction, Method, Result, Discussion/ Conclusion) from 1996 to 2016. Hyland’s (2005b) model of metadiscourse was adopted for the analysis of the selected corpus. The data were explored using concordance software AntConc (Anthony, 2011). Moreover, a Chi-Square statistical measure was run to determine statistical significances. The analysis revealed a significant decline in the overall frequency of metadiscourse resources in all sections of RAs. Interestingly, this decrease was entirely due to the overall decline in the use of stance markers particularly in result and method sections. It might be argued that, diachronic perspective on metadiscourse contributes to teachers and novice writers’ awareness of the malleability of academic writing and its sensitivity to context as well as providing access to current practices for the creation and delivery of teaching materials in EAP courses.
Puyan Taheri; Mohammad Abdollahi-Guilani
Abstract
This study compared teacher revision with peer revision on comprehension and production of relative clauses (RCs) in Iranian EFL students’ writing performance. Data were collected from 109 Iranian intermediate language learners studying at Imam Khomeini International University and Kharazmi University. ...
Read More
This study compared teacher revision with peer revision on comprehension and production of relative clauses (RCs) in Iranian EFL students’ writing performance. Data were collected from 109 Iranian intermediate language learners studying at Imam Khomeini International University and Kharazmi University. After being homogenized by taking Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP), they were divided into three groups (teacher revision, peer revision, and control). They all sat for the pretest. Then, the students in teacher revision and peer revision groups underwent eight treatment sessions, practicing teacher revision and peer revision respectively. The control group, however, did not receive any treatment. Then, the posttest was administered to all the groups. ANCOVA was employed to compare the performances of the groups. The results indicated that both teacher and peer revision were beneficial to students. However, peer revision led to better comprehension and production of RCs. The findings may carry implications for language educators, language learners, and language teachers.
Masoumeh Ahmadi Shirazi; Seyyed Mohammad Alavi; Hossein Salarian
Abstract
This study investigates some problems of PhD applicants in their entrance exams in the case of answering the reading comprehension questions. To this end, the researchers considered the item types and text types as main effects and their interaction effect using generalizability theory for examining ...
Read More
This study investigates some problems of PhD applicants in their entrance exams in the case of answering the reading comprehension questions. To this end, the researchers considered the item types and text types as main effects and their interaction effect using generalizability theory for examining the variability; the answer sheets of a mock-test from 321 applicants, from all parts of Iran, enrolled in an institute were randomly selected. Using a partially nested design of G-theory in the GENOVA program, the researchers identified five variance components in the two different passages with distinct items and investigated various sources of error that are involved in the measurement process. The results of the study showed that the main effect for items cannot be separated from the interaction between items and texts, and clarified that the items facet had a noticeable amount of variance, and therefore, they impacted the applicants' performance. However, the results of D-studies showed that the main effect for text types was zero, and both texts were at the same level of difficulty. Also, the persons had effects on the texts in their interaction. This study can motivate the researchers, test developers, and test designers to consider their work more carefully.
Mandana Zolghadri; Mahmood Reza Atai; Esmat Babaii
Abstract
The study investigated a second language teacher educator and teacher learners’ awareness of classroom interactional competence (CIC) to communicate pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on a teacher education course in Iran. Therefore, the teacher educator’s classroom discourse was scrutinized ...
Read More
The study investigated a second language teacher educator and teacher learners’ awareness of classroom interactional competence (CIC) to communicate pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on a teacher education course in Iran. Therefore, the teacher educator’s classroom discourse was scrutinized using classroom observation triangulated with an interview data with the educator to characterize the interactional features of his talk-in-interaction with respective discourse modes. The resulting 43 interactures represented four interacture types which mediated Effective Eliciting, Shaping Learner Contribution, Facilitating Interactional Space Focused on the Learner, and Facilitating Interactional Space Focused on the Teacher. The corresponding mode analysis revealed frequent mode integrity incorporating classroom context mode with a pivotal role in all except Facilitating Interactional Space Focused on the Teacher interactures. Later, the taxonomy was incorporated into CIC TLA questionnaires. 32 teaching candidates, and the educator completed respective ethnographically-developed questionnaire versions indicating their awareness of the teacher educator’s choice of CIC interactures. Besides, the interview data concerning the TLA deliberation was triangulated with a Spearman rho correlation results of the perceived CIC strategy frequencies. Consequently, the confirmatory evidence for the significant degree of correspondence (rho = 0.67, n = 33, < 0.01) between the educator and teacher learners’ awareness revealed the student teachers’ heightened declarative TLA. The findings urge language teacher educators to tune interactures in type, mode, and intensity to the professional content and the TLA they negotiate with teacher learners thereby.
Rajab Esfandiari; Ghodsieh Tavakoli Moein
Volume 3, Issue 1 , February 2016, , Pages 30-1
Abstract
The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to identify the most frequent 4-word lexical bundles and (b) to analyse the functions these lexical bundles may serve. To those ends, a corpus of 4,652,444 in Food Science and Technology (hereafter FST Corpus) was developed, using 1,421 research articles (RAs) ...
Read More
The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to identify the most frequent 4-word lexical bundles and (b) to analyse the functions these lexical bundles may serve. To those ends, a corpus of 4,652,444 in Food Science and Technology (hereafter FST Corpus) was developed, using 1,421 research articles (RAs) across 38 Food Science and Technology (FST) journals. Setting frequency and range as two criteria, we used AntConc to identify the most frequent lexical bundles. We also used Hyland’s (2008b) functional taxonomy to analyse the functions of the lexical bundles. The results of frequency and range showed 153 lexical bundles in FST Corpus. Functional analysis of the lexical bundles revealed 86 text-oriented, 63 research-oriented, and four participant-oriented lexical bundles, suggesting the central role text-oriented functions may play in FST. Implications for the explicit instruction of lexical bundles, for graduate students in FST, and for EAP curriculum developers and materials producers are discussed.
Alireza Ahmadi; Seyyed Abbas Mousavi
Volume 4, Issue 2 , April 2017, , Pages 31-1
Abstract
Testing has been so intrinsically bound to today’s modern life whose foregone consequences are often taken for granted and is accepted widely as unavoidable side effects or sometimes even desired effects of an inevitable social event. The aim of this study is to investigate the aspects of the impact ...
Read More
Testing has been so intrinsically bound to today’s modern life whose foregone consequences are often taken for granted and is accepted widely as unavoidable side effects or sometimes even desired effects of an inevitable social event. The aim of this study is to investigate the aspects of the impact of Iranian B.A. University Entrance Exam on the lifeworld of the students who are about to take it. To this end, the analysis was conducted using Habermas’s Social Theory. There were 349 fourth-grade students participating in the study from four different provinces including Zanjan, Alborz, Mazandaran and Shiraz. The data was gathered using a researcher-made questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with 10 students as well as classroom observation in two subsequent years qualitative and quantitative analyses of data revealed that the exam is regarded as an inevitable social practice by the participants whose life world is exploited and manipulated by the exam as a part of the system. The pressure for result-based accountability placed upon the test takers, on the other hand, leads to creation of some specific norms, provides system control tools, enhances instrumental rationality and establishes the social order of its own. The implications for language testing and teaching are discussed.
Shiva Kaivanpanah; Seyed Mohammad Alavi; Sara Rafsanjani Nejad
Abstract
The idea of encouraging awareness in classrooms is not new, but research into awareness is beginning to encourage those involved in language teaching to think more systematically about how language presentation facilitate language awareness. Awareness can be promoted through focus on form activities ...
Read More
The idea of encouraging awareness in classrooms is not new, but research into awareness is beginning to encourage those involved in language teaching to think more systematically about how language presentation facilitate language awareness. Awareness can be promoted through focus on form activities as it triggers important cognitive processes in L2 acquisition. The effectiveness of various input- and output-based focus on form instructions on the acquisition of different grammatical structures and the role of awareness in each type is a matter for debate. The present study qualitatively investigated the effects of Processing instruction, Textual enhancement, and Text editing on L2 learners’ cognitive processes and the relationship between the learners’ level of awareness and their abilities to interpret English inversion structures. To do this, learners’ think-aloud verbalizations during instruction were recorded, transcribed, and coded. Criteria to decide which level of awareness they would fall into were slightly adapted from Leow, Hsieh, and Moreno (2008) to fit with the type of tasks employed in the study. Pretest-posttests design was also employed to measure learners’ interpretive abilities. The findings indicated that each instructional technique promoted different levels of awareness and depth of processing. The findings also provided explanations for the non-significant differences in performances between the Processing instruction and Text editing groups on an immediate posttest and outperformance of the Processing instruction group on a delayed posttest. Given the benefits that Processing instruction and Text editing brought about in the present study, both might be incorporated into a curriculum and serve as complementary tools for language teachers.
Seyyed Mohammad Alavi; Davood Borzabadi Farahani; javad Muhammadi Savadroodbari
Volume 1, Issue 1 , March 2014, , Pages 1-18
Bahram Behin; Fatemeh Esmaeili; Rsoul Assadollahi
Abstract
A fundamental aspect of teacher socialization and development is the construction and maintenance of vivid and strong professional identity. As a multi-layered and dynamic phenomenon, teacher identity is affected by diverse range of social and institutional factors. With an aim to add to growing literature ...
Read More
A fundamental aspect of teacher socialization and development is the construction and maintenance of vivid and strong professional identity. As a multi-layered and dynamic phenomenon, teacher identity is affected by diverse range of social and institutional factors. With an aim to add to growing literature on teacher identity, the current study examined the effects of language teaching policies on an English teacher’s identity development. Following narrative strategy which is the dominant paradigm in identity research, the stories of an English teacher obtained through semi-structured interview were examined. The teacher’s narratives and accounts of his teaching experiences were analyzed through constant comparative approach which produced five main themes: lack of teacher autonomy, the effect of macro political concerns on language teaching, movement towards Communicative Language Teaching, lack of resources, and inappropriate student placement strategies. The results indicated that every single language teaching policy shaped and reshaped the teacher’s understanding of himself.
Volume 1, Issue 4 , December 2014, , Pages 21-36
Anahita Sheikhipour; Mahmood Hashemian; Ali Roohani
Abstract
The flipped teaching has nowadays become a new movement in teaching and is getting pervasive in the educational system. The goal of this study was to explore if there was any significant difference between L2 learners’ oral complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in flipped and traditional classes. ...
Read More
The flipped teaching has nowadays become a new movement in teaching and is getting pervasive in the educational system. The goal of this study was to explore if there was any significant difference between L2 learners’ oral complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in flipped and traditional classes. To do so, both traditional and filpped classes were resorted to in order to see which class matched the students’ needs. Moreover, this study was done to find out if it had any significant effect on the learners’ motivation, self-efficacy, engagement, self-confidence, and autonomy. Via an OPT, 40 homogenous, lower-intermediate students were chosen from a language school in Isfahan, Iran. Then, they were randomly assigned to experimental 1 and 1 control groups. Initially, all the students attended an interview session and their responses were audio-recorded; then, 2 teachers scored their responses to make certain the interviews enjoyed reliability. Afterward, the students took a pretest with 2 questions relevant to their actual life and the grammar they would acquire in the course of the treatment. After taking 4 treatment sessions, the students received a posttest to see how much they had progressed during the 4 treatment sessions. Also, a questionnaire was adapted from another study to figure out the students’ satisfaction regarding this type of teaching. The results revealed that the flipped class increased the students’ motivation, self-efficacy, engagement, self-confidence, and autonomy. However, no significant difference was seen between the learners in the flipped class and those in the traditional class, as far as oral CAF was concerend. Based on the students’ answers to the questionnaire, most were satisfied with the flipped model. To conclude, materials developers and syllabus designers should modify instructional materials and books taught in language schools and add some parts to them in line witth technology to satisfy digital natives.
Zari saeedi; Hossein Jajarmi
Abstract
Even though interactional competence (IC) has been in the center of attention recently, its constructs/sub-components and influencing factors still require a profound scrutiny. The features associated with IC have indeed been probed in various realms of language learning and teaching. However, the effect ...
Read More
Even though interactional competence (IC) has been in the center of attention recently, its constructs/sub-components and influencing factors still require a profound scrutiny. The features associated with IC have indeed been probed in various realms of language learning and teaching. However, the effect of language learners’ gender on their perception of IC remains to be addressed. To bridge this gap, the present research, as one of the stages of development and verification of the Learners’ Interactional Competence Questionnaire (LICQ) investigated how gender may affect IC and its sub-constructs as perceived by males and females. A total number of 407 male and female intermediate-level Iranian EFL learners, selected through convenience sampling from several language institutes, participated in the study and responded to LICQ. Subsequently, a two-group Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to measure the potential effects of students’ gender on perceived interactional competence, including conversational management, speech acts, register, nonverbal semiotics, and requests and complaints. The results showed that gender did have a small significant effect on learners’ perceived interactional competence as a whole; while scrutinizing sub-components, it was also revealed that this effect is not visible in conversational management. The study findings provide learners with a self-assessment scale to identify their present state of IC perception. Besides, language teachers could consider the different perceptions of male and female learners of IC as an influential aspect of IC realization and development in the language classroom setting.
Reza Bagheri Nevisi; Mahmood Safari; Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur; Reyhaneh Mousakazemi
Abstract
Recent research favors specific academic word lists over a general academic word list for preparing university students to read and publish academic papers in English. Although researchers have developed word lists for various disciplines, some academic fields do not enjoy a well-developed technical ...
Read More
Recent research favors specific academic word lists over a general academic word list for preparing university students to read and publish academic papers in English. Although researchers have developed word lists for various disciplines, some academic fields do not enjoy a well-developed technical word list. The present study aimed at developing and evaluating a specific academic word list for political sciences. A 3.5-million-word corpus of political sciences research articles was created and analyzed in order to develop the Politics Academic Word List (PAWL). The list consists of 2000 word families which were selected across and beyond the BNC/COCA word list based on frequency and range criteria. The word families enjoying an aggregate frequency of a hundred or more in the corpus and a minimum frequency of 10 in at least four of the seven sub-corpora were incorporated into the word list. The PAWL accounted for over 88% of the running words in the Politics Academic Corpus (PAC) and outperformed the list of GSL plus AWL words in coverage by 3 percent, despite containing 556 fewer word families. The study corroborates the value of a subject specific word list as a more fruitful source for academic vocabulary learning. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.
Sayyed Mohammad Alavi; puyan Taheri
Volume 1, Issue 2 , May 2014, , Pages 23-40
zahra faghiri; mehdi bazyar
Volume 2, Issue 2 , March 2015, , Pages 23-40
Abstract
In this study, the researcher attempted to investigate the effect of computer-mediated collaborative learning on Iranian advanced female English Learners' critical thinking and writing performance. In order to do this, initially 90 participants were chosen. To assure the homogeneity regarding language ...
Read More
In this study, the researcher attempted to investigate the effect of computer-mediated collaborative learning on Iranian advanced female English Learners' critical thinking and writing performance. In order to do this, initially 90 participants were chosen. To assure the homogeneity regarding language proficiency, they participated in a TOEFL exam which was used to select 60 out of 90 students whose scores fell between +1 and -1 SD for this study. Participants were then randomly assigned to two 30-member control and experimental groups. In this study, Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal-Form A (Watson & Glaser, 1980) was used as a pretest to see to what extent the participants think critically. A writing test was also administered to assess the writing performance of the learners as writing pre-test. This writing was adapted from TOEFL Writing section and the results were scored by 3 raters. Then, two groups participated in ten sessions. The experimental group was provided with 15 laptops as well as with internet access so as to be able to extract the necessary information for completing their writing. Finally, the critical thinking questionnaire was administered again. Also, a post-test writing was administered to investigate the effect of treatment on the writing performance. The results of data analysis indicated that computer-mediated collaboration led to better writing performance of the learners. Computer-mediated collaboration also proved to have a statistically significant effect on critical thinking level of the participants.
