Year:2002 | Volume:18 | Issue:1 (35)|Papers Count:13

The present article studies the semantic range of Persian words made up of numbers. These words can be defined as words a part of which is made by numbers. Studies carried out in this area in Farsi are mainly centered on the function of a particular number, i.e. number seven. From a linguistic point of view, the function of numbers in generating words with respect to their semantic domain has not been studied so far. Considering the fact that Persian texts, oral or written usually contain number- words, the significance of such words in communication process in linguistic studies deserves much more attention. To do this study, these words was collected and a corpus of 793 words were classified according to their different semantic range. This classification shows the most and the least semantic domain that number- words have in Persian.

EFL learners greatly differ in the way they use and comprehend L2 words. This variation, though taken for granted, results from the cognitive nature of L2 lexical processing and the environmental factors dominating the acquisition process. Consequently, such interactions evoke certain methodological and conceptual. issues that make research in the area of L2 lexical studies complicated. The number of factors influencing L2 lexical processing and acquisition are multivariate. The present study was designed (a) to investigate the functional role of linking strategies in processing L2 words, and (b) to discover the nature of interaction between EFL learners' language proficiency, educational background, and the conceptual demands associated with different word types.

This study aimed at analyzing the Humanities research papers as a specific writing genre, in order to extract their prevalent schematic and rhetorical patterns at macro -and micro-structural levels. For this purpose, 171 articles published in five Iranian University Journals of Humanities and Social Sciences were analyzed. The linguistic theories of Firth, Halliday, and were used as the theoretical framework of the study. The analysis of the articles was based on the models presented by Swales (1990) and Bruce (1983). The analysis of the schematic structures revealed that only the experimental articles followed Bruce's model. The interpretive articles followed a somehow different model, which is extracted and presented in the paper. The analysis of the rhetorical structure of the "Introduction sections" showed that all of the "Introduction Sections" contained the four move categories of Swales model. The analysis of the seven micro- structural elements revealed some considerable results as well. In many cases, the obtained results were similar to those of others. For instances results, in the case of the citation patterns, the results were similar to Swales in that the uses of the English citations were higher than Persian citations. According to the results achieved in the present study, the number of citations in experimental articles was higher than the interpretive articles. Only in the case of voice, the results were not similar to previous findings in English. All previous research reported that English scientific texts contained more passives than active verbs. While, the results of the present study showed that the use of active verbs was significantly higher than passive verbs in all the studied fields. This could be due to the nature of Persian language.

This study suggests that some of EFL learners' apparently reading problems are due to insufficient background knowledge. The research aimed at investigating the combined effect of content and formal structure of passages on reading comprehension. The hypotheses were: a) Familiarity with the content area of reading passages improves comprehension; b) Violation of the formal rhetorical structure of reading passages impedes comprehension. The sample of the study composed of 60 upper-intermediate students majoring in English translation or literature. They read and answered questions on texts which were either familiar or unfamiliar to them in terms of their cultural background and rhetorical format. The result of a two-way ANOVA on readers' scores on the questions revealed that content schemata influenced reading achievement to a greater extent than formal schemata. That is, the existence or absence of specific content schemata affected comprehension and inference-making ability.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether the attitudes of test takers improve toward the C-test as a result of systematic practice over a period of 5 weeks. The sixty-three participants who were involved in the study had not heard of the procedure and, therefore, were taken to be impartial toward it. They were given a pretest followed by a questionnaire prior to the practice. Then followed a 5-week treatment after which a posttest was given and the same questionnaire was repeated to see whether any changes of attitude would take place. Although the participants' performance on the posttest improved significantly, their attitudes remained unchanged. The article, also, includes the answers to a number of other questions related to the C-test.

The most common grammatical categories in the languages of the world are declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamative sentences, which are characteristically used to express semantic- pragmatic categories of statement, question, order and surprise, respectively. However, typological studies indicate that the relationship between syntactic and semantic-pragmatic categories is not one- to - one.For instance, it is not uncommon to use a declarative sentence or an interrogative sentence to issue a command. This paper aims at discovering semantic- pragmatic functions of interrogatives in Hafez' poems. His Artistic use of interrogative sentences in expressing different semantic -pragmatic categories multiplies the effectiveness of his poems and fascinates all readers. The results of the research indicate that 255 out of 366 interrogative verses, i. e. about 70% of the data, are used to express five semantic-pragmatic categories: surprise, negation denial, wish and negative command. The rest of the data is used to express 15 semantic -pragmatic categories. Surprisingly, it is found that the poet almost never uses an interrogative to express a question.

The aim of this study is an analysis of function or role of passive in Persian Language. The word "Function" stands in contrast to "Structure" and shows that the researcher's approach is top – down as opposed to previous researchers who have used bottom - up. In this paper, the function called passive has been defined and its different representations is Persian grammar are discussed. Such a macro look at passive makes it essential to consider structures other than "Partioiplet-shod" as belonging to the domain of passive. Halliday's functional approach has been used in this paper.

This study is an analysis of female characters of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the context of family, marriage, love and social status. References are made to other works of Orwell to show that, in contrast to his fame as a rebel and the huge impact of this novel on many different branches of literature, linguistics, sociology, politics, and criminology, he is an upholder of tradition, even in dystopia. It is argued that, except for Julia, the major female character of the early part of the novel, the portrayal of female characters in this novel is not much different from Orwell's other novels such as Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and Coming Up For Air. Marriage, love, family and women in all these novels follow Orwell's traditional view of a middle- class man towards women.

With the assumption that normal orthography is regular, the present study seeks to find rules that determine the contexts in which certain consonants occur but are not pronounced. Twelve such consonants are detected and the contexts in which they are mute are determined. Then the related rules are formulated and their pedagogical implications are suggested.

English language teaching in Iran has usually been considered an EFL model. This position, though common and widespread, seems to need revision on several grounds. Through comparing EFL, ESL and EIL (English as an international language) models based on Smith's (1978) comparative study, the present article reveals that the ELT in Iran no longer follows the EFL tradition. The comparative evaluation makes it clear that in terms of most categories; ELT in Iran shows the characteristics of EIL. Therefore, through characterizing it as a developmental process along a continuum towards EIL, the present study argues for instances of paradigm shift and thus claims that the ELT context in Iran is ripe for revision.

This study reports on a comparison between the M-C doze test and the C-test as measures of proficiency in English as a foreign langnage. Certain steps were taken to construct the M-C doze test and the C-test. Then they were compared as two measures of language proficiency. The criterion for empirical validity was the CUPT (Cambridge University Placement Test). Both the M-C Cloze test and the C-test proved to be reliable and valid measures of language proficiency. However, the M-C doze test was somewhat better than the C-test in terms of reliability, validity, item facility, item discrimination and ease of scoring.