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.
Mohamad Baghr Shabani; Samira Moharrami
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, Pages 41-21
Abstract
The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between language learning strategies and learners’ anxiety among high school students. The participants of the study were two groups of high school students (N = 100). The first group consisted of 50 students with hearing problems and the ...
Read More
The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between language learning strategies and learners’ anxiety among high school students. The participants of the study were two groups of high school students (N = 100). The first group consisted of 50 students with hearing problems and the second group consisted of 50 normal students. To this end, two questionnaires were used: (a) screen for child anxiety-related emotional disorders (SCARED) and (b) Schmitt’s vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire (VLSQ), both of which were translated into Persian. After collecting data, two oneway MANOVA procudures and a correlation were run to see if there is any difference between students with hearing problems and normal students in terms of language learning strategies and anxiety. Results showed that there is a significant difference between the normal group and the group with hearing problem. The results also showed that the normal students used more strategies for vocabulary learning and each group experinced different types of anxiety.The results of the current study may have implications for language learners. Being familiar with anxiety and learning strategies and how they affect learning help learners use different strategies to overcome their anxiety.
Saeed Rezaei; Masoumeh Estaji; Mahdi Hasanpour
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, Pages 71-43
Abstract
One of the most salient written academic outputs a university student has the opportunity to create is a thesis which is regarded as “a complex student-produced research genre” (Lee & Casal, 2014). In order to compare the rhetorical features and preferences of distinct discourse communities ...
Read More
One of the most salient written academic outputs a university student has the opportunity to create is a thesis which is regarded as “a complex student-produced research genre” (Lee & Casal, 2014). In order to compare the rhetorical features and preferences of distinct discourse communities and evaluate academic writing, a special and long-term attention, on the part of the writers, is required for analyzing the metadiscourse features of the texts (Hyland, 2004). To this end, the present study examined the differences in the use, type, and frequency of interactional metadiscourse markers in theses written by M.A. applied linguistics graduates including 10 males and 10 females from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The selected corpus was analyzed using Hyland’s (2005) interactional model of metadiscourse. The data were explored through a manual corpus analysis method using Adobe PDF reader software. Moreover, a Chi-Square statistical measure was run to examine whether there were any significant differences in the use of metadiscourse markers in different thesis chapters and across different genders. The results revealed that although there were some subtle differences in the frequency and types of these metadiscourse markers, there was no statistically significant difference between two genders in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers. Besides, it was concluded that there was a significant relationship between the chapters of theses and the use of metadiscourse markers. The findings of this study render some pedagogical implications for writing courses at M.A. and PhD levels in the realms of TEFL and ESP.
Nargol Mokhtari
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, Pages 84-73
Abstract
Professionalism in communication is a matter of concern for speakers of all languages. Awareness about some features such as face-threatening property of refusal speech acts leads language users to apply some specific linguistic forms. Considering the significance of cultural and social variations in ...
Read More
Professionalism in communication is a matter of concern for speakers of all languages. Awareness about some features such as face-threatening property of refusal speech acts leads language users to apply some specific linguistic forms. Considering the significance of cultural and social variations in performing refusal speech acts and the importance of preserving “face”, this study tried to find differences between native-Persian and English speakers. To collect the data, 60 native Persian and English speakers were asked to complete a two-phase questionnaire, a discourse completions test (DCT) and a self-report, including four different situations and Beebe's classification of refusals, was used. Great tendency toward using indirect forms between both Persian and English participants was taken as an indicator of noticeable consideration of face-preserving in refusals, although Persian speakers seemed more concerned about it. The differences between two groups of participants were inferred as cultural variations’ reflection. Some implications for language teaching were discussed.
Reza Abdi; Parisa Ahmadi
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, Pages 99-85
Abstract
Metadiscourse refers to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text. It is based on a view of writing as a social engagement. This study draws on an interpersonal model of metadiscourse to examine disciplinary influences on the use of interactive metadiscourse in research ...
Read More
Metadiscourse refers to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text. It is based on a view of writing as a social engagement. This study draws on an interpersonal model of metadiscourse to examine disciplinary influences on the use of interactive metadiscourse in research article introductions. The study examined the distributions of interactive metadiscourse markers in a corpus of 120 RAs representing four academic disciplines. Physics and medicine were selected from hard discipline, applied linguistics and Economics were selected from soft science to shed some light on the ways academic writers deploy these resources to persuade readers in their own discourse community. No statistically significant difference was found in the use of interactive metadiscourse markers across disciplines. The findings suggest how academic writers use language to offer an accurate representation of their work in different fields, and how metadiscourse can be seen as a means of uncovering something of the rhetorical and social distinctiveness of disciplinary communities. The findings are attributable to the knowledge-knower structures characteristic of the disciplines and the epistemologies underlying the research paradigms. These findings might have implications for the teaching of academic writing and for novice writers who would like to publish their research in academic journals.
Mahmoud Qaracholloo; Mohammad Reza Ghorbani; Farhad Ghiasvand
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, Pages 118-101
Abstract
This study investigated various testing conditions for their influence on long-term retention of reading materials. To do so, 84 English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners were randomly selected from a total of 746 and were randomly divided into two equal groups to participate in two experiments. In ...
Read More
This study investigated various testing conditions for their influence on long-term retention of reading materials. To do so, 84 English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners were randomly selected from a total of 746 and were randomly divided into two equal groups to participate in two experiments. In each experiment, the participants studied some texts and participated in some initial testing conditions before taking a 10-day delayed final exam. The testing conditions of the first experiment were 1) study + simultaneous open-book test, 2) study + open-book test, 3) study + closed-book test + feedback, 4) study + closed-book test, 5) no study no test, and 6) study with no test. The second phase was a replication of the first 5 testing conditions of the first phase accompanied by 3 more conditions, namely, 6) study + study, 7) study + study + study, 8) study + study + study + study. Analysis of variance results showed that different test types, feedback on test, and restudying could differently influence long-term retention. It was found that feedback on test had the highest effect on retention. Similarly, taking a test after study was more influential than restudying. Finally, open-book testing worked better than closed-book testing.
