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 ...
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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.
Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur; Zahra Parsaeian
Abstract
The upsurge of interest in the employment of instructional technologies in learning English has coincided with a growing interest in Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Considering the under-explored area of speaking skill, the present study investigated the participants’ microgenetic development ...
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The upsurge of interest in the employment of instructional technologies in learning English has coincided with a growing interest in Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Considering the under-explored area of speaking skill, the present study investigated the participants’ microgenetic development of speaking ability in terms of accuracy and fluency through informal participation in online activities. Through a stratified purposive sample selection, three adult male and female intermediate-level participants were selected and agreed to engage in some online informal activities such as emailing, watching online videos like TED Talks, participating in webinars, reading online news, etc. The participants’ microgenetic development were tested throughout the study in two-week-time intervals. The results of the audio recorded data highlighted the positive impact of the OILE activities on the development of the spoken accuracy and fluency. The results also suggested that each individual participant was on his/her own unique developmental trajectory and that accuracy and fluency development was not a linear process, and there was a trade-off between accuracy and fluency. The overall findings of the study suggested that learners’ speaking ability, particularly fluency and accuracy, can be enriched by interacting with online informal contexts. This study also confirmed that each learner is on his/ her own developmental trajectory. Learners’ developmental trends are various due to differing categorizations and entrenchments in their lives considering Usage-Based (UB) approach.
Reza Bagheri Nevisi; Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur
Abstract
Till recently, text difficulty has commonly been determined by employing readability formulas, however, major criticisms have been leveled against readability formulas (Graves & Graves, 2003).This research project aimed at determining text difficulty through readability formulas and Coh-Metrix. In ...
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Till recently, text difficulty has commonly been determined by employing readability formulas, however, major criticisms have been leveled against readability formulas (Graves & Graves, 2003).This research project aimed at determining text difficulty through readability formulas and Coh-Metrix. In other words, the study investigated the role of text difficulty in EFL learners’ pedagogic task performances. Since both males and females took part in the study, firstly the researchers aimed at finding out whether a different pattern of task performance existed for each. Secondly, all participants were provided with two different reading passages whose difficulty levels were determined by Coh-Metrix and readability formulas. Finally, a self-efficacy questionnaire was administered to delve into learners’ self-perceptions about their own performances on the pedagogic tasks. Descriptive statistics, paired samples t-test and repeated measures ANOVA were utilized to analyze the data. The results indicated that gender of the students had no significant impact on the learners’ performances on the pedagogic tasks. The findings revealed that text difficulty and the learners’ self-efficacy significantly affected EFL learners’ performance on the pedagogic tasks. The findings suggest that determining difficulty level of the texts through Coh-Metrix could be considered a step forward and will certainly assist language teachers and syllabus designers who strive to tailor the appropriate tasks and materials to learners at differing level of language proficiency. The results also imply that self-perceptions of learners might be a true predictor of their own performances on different tasks in general, and on pedagogic tasks in particular
Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur; Maryam Sarbandi Farahani
Abstract
Human beings are defined as an embodiment of social and cultural understanding which can develop by engaging in various social contexts. Cultural intelligence and cultural identity are thus accounted noteworthy in learning particular aspects of language which are culture-specific. The present study intended ...
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Human beings are defined as an embodiment of social and cultural understanding which can develop by engaging in various social contexts. Cultural intelligence and cultural identity are thus accounted noteworthy in learning particular aspects of language which are culture-specific. The present study intended to investigate the interaction effect of cultural intelligence and cultural identity on Iranian EFL learners’ use of politeness strategies. To this end, the participants were divided into two groups of high and low cultural intelligence and cultural identity. Moreover, regardless of their membership in the two groups, the participants were included in the assessment of the relationship between cultural intelligence and politeness strategies. Fifty two intermediate language learners whose proficiency level was determined through Oxford Quick Proficiency Test were required to fill out the questionnaires of Cultural Intelligence, L1 Cultural identity and Discourse Completion Tasks. Two-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation were used to analyze the research questions. The results of the two-way ANOVA proved no interaction effect of cultural intelligence and cultural identity levels on the use of politeness strategies. Moreover, the analysis of the relationship between the four factors of cultural intelligence and the use of politeness strategies yielded no significant relationship. The findings can inform of imminent obliterating L1 cultural identity among EFL learners. Broaching the subjects such as globalization, cultural homogeneity and English linguicism, the study calls for the need for further inquiries to revise already established findings such as the role of home culture, L1 and attitudes towards target culture in EFL domain.
