Hamidreza Farajinejad; Aliakbar Khomeijani Farahani
Volume 4, Issue 1 , February 2017, Pages 16-1
Manoochehr Jafarigohar; Saeed Kheiri
Volume 4, Issue 1 , February 2017, Pages 31-17
Abstract
Integrating the triplex notion of evidentiality into its theoretical framework, this study aimed at contrastively scrutinizing the ELT academic papers authored by non-native Iranian and native English researchers in terms of the utilization of evidentiality, focusing on the adverbial and epistemic-modality ...
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Integrating the triplex notion of evidentiality into its theoretical framework, this study aimed at contrastively scrutinizing the ELT academic papers authored by non-native Iranian and native English researchers in terms of the utilization of evidentiality, focusing on the adverbial and epistemic-modality types. To this end, the discussion sections of 20 online papers were randomly selected from both groups. Then, postulating Ifantidou’s model (2001) as its analytical framework, this investigation identified the other evidentiality types in the collected corpora, and then classified them into appropriate subtypes based on the subcategories of the model. Furthermore, the frequency and the rate of evidentials in each group were compared and contrasted to see their rate differences. The findings indicated that the “adverbial” type of evidentiality enjoyed the first-ranked frequency, and the “epistemic modality” was the fourth frequently-used type of evidentiality in both native and non-native ELT papers. The other frequent types of evidentiality in these papers included “inferring,” “reported,” “memory,” and “propositional attitude,” respectively, which were not the types this study concentrated on. Finally, it was observed that there were subtle differences in both the degree and the way these authors draw evidentiality in their papers.
Yalda Shahmoradi; Siros Izadpanah
Volume 4, Issue 1 , February 2017, Pages 68-33
Abstract
Since needs analysis firstly introduced by the publication of Munby's communicative syllabus design in 1978, many researchers carried out on the needs analysis of university students majoring different courses in order to prepare for their target language needs. The purpose of this study was to identify ...
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Since needs analysis firstly introduced by the publication of Munby's communicative syllabus design in 1978, many researchers carried out on the needs analysis of university students majoring different courses in order to prepare for their target language needs. The purpose of this study was to identify the English language needs of the Persian literature university students. To this effect, five female and five male specialist English teachers in three universities in Tehran and two universities in Zanjan were picked by purposive sampling to be data sources of the study. All the teachers had the Ph.D. level of education, teaching M.A. students of Persian literature. The data were collected using a five-point Likert scale English Language needs questionnaire (Chan, 2001), answered by specialist English teachers. The study was experimental and quantitative in nature. In order to analyze the data, mean and Chi-Square test were attained using SPSS, version 16. As the results had shown, reading skill was the most important skill in academic studies of the Persian literature university students, speaking skill was the most essential skill in their future profession, and writing skill was the main skill that would be important in their private/social life. Furthermore, the female specialist English teachers’ perspective was different from male ones regarding Persian literature university students’ learning needs and target needs. In conclusion, the implications of the findings of the study can be presented for language researchers, specialist English teachers, test designers, and materials developers.
Research Paper
Natasha Pourdana; Mehdi Shahpouri Rad
Abstract
Language teachers are usually faced with the challenging classrooms wherein the students with mixed language abilities sit together. One solution to deal with this situation is to apply differentiated instructions in terms of tiered task strategy. By definition, tiered tasks are extracted from the same ...
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Language teachers are usually faced with the challenging classrooms wherein the students with mixed language abilities sit together. One solution to deal with this situation is to apply differentiated instructions in terms of tiered task strategy. By definition, tiered tasks are extracted from the same material or skills, and personalized according to students' readiness, interest and preferred modes of learning. In the same vein, this experiment investigated the role of tiered listening tasks on 46 mixed-ability Iranian EFL learners in 9 intervention sessions. The participants were pre-assessed and assigned in to 3 divisions of high, mid and low achievers. While the control group in this research experienced the conventional one-size-fits-all instructions to listening comprehension, the divisions in the experimental group received open-ended, multiple choice and true-false tiered listening tasks. Moreover, upon the individual’s performance on tiered tasks, their division arrangement changed every 3 sessions so that they either remained or to be removed to higher or lower divisions. Findings statistically implicated the effectiveness of the tiered tasks on the participants’ listening comprehension improvement. However, the observed matrix of multiple correlation coefficients failed to show any powerful association between the participants’ mixed-levels of language proficiency and their successful performance on tiered tasks. The researchers’ concluding remarks on the assessment and teaching benefits of differentiated instructions in EFL contexts were provided too.
Farid Ghaemi; Giti Sabadoust
Volume 4, Issue 1 , February 2017, Pages 108-89
Abstract
Meta-discourse as a self-reflective linguistic tool has received considerable attention in recent years. Besides, it plays a leading role in exploring variations in the way authors pen a manuscript. The present study aims at investigating variations in the use of both interactive and interactional meta-discourse ...
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Meta-discourse as a self-reflective linguistic tool has received considerable attention in recent years. Besides, it plays a leading role in exploring variations in the way authors pen a manuscript. The present study aims at investigating variations in the use of both interactive and interactional meta-discourse markers among ISI and non-ISI articles written by Iranian authors in the field of Applied Linguistics. The corpora in the present study comprised a total of 8 Research Articles (RAs) in ISI and non-ISI journals published in 2016 and 2017. We described the distribution of interactive and interactional markers in Method sections using Hyland’s (2005) model as a framework. The results of the quantitative analysis disclosed that genre expectations of journals had a determining role in the writers’ choice of some meta-discourse markers. Owing to this fact, similarities were found in the use and distribution of meta-discourse markers across ISI and non-ISI data. In addition, a significant difference was found between the types of interactive meta-discourse markers as used in ISI and non-ISI journals. Moreover, the findings revealed similarities in employing the type of interactional meta-discourse markers in our corpora. Our study may promise some pedagogical implications for material development and English for Specific Purposes (ESP).
Tahereh Movahedi; Seyyed Abdolmajid Tabatabaee Lotfi; Seyyed Amir Hosseyn Sarkeshikian
Volume 4, Issue 1 , February 2017, Pages 123-109
Abstract
The current study intended to investigate the attitudes of Iranian intermediate EFL learners toward using British Council video clips and podcasts for listening comprehension. The participants were selected from among 132 intermediate learners based on their performance on an English proficiency test. ...
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The current study intended to investigate the attitudes of Iranian intermediate EFL learners toward using British Council video clips and podcasts for listening comprehension. The participants were selected from among 132 intermediate learners based on their performance on an English proficiency test. 90 female EFL learners were selected and divided into three groups of 30 participants (i.e., one control group and two experimental groups). One of the experimental groups practiced British Council video clips while the other experimental group was instructed through British Council podcasts. The control group went through the same lesson plan without any video clips and podcasts. Once the treatment was over, the attitude questionnaire was administered to all groups. Based on the results of ANOVA and Scheffe test, it could be concluded that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the three groups on the attitude questionnaire. More specifically, the video clips had the most statistically significant effect on the positive attitude of intermediate learners in comparison with the other groups.
