RESEARCH ON FOREIGN LANGUAGES (JOURNAL OF FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES) (TABRIZ)
Year:2008 | Volume:51 | Issue:206|Papers Count:7

The present article intends to investigate the current situation of vocabulary learning strategy use among Iranian Farsi-speaking and Armenian-speaking third grade high school students. It also attempts to examine whether there is a relationship between vocabulary strategy use and proficiency level in English. Two instruments have been used in this research. First, a 56-item vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire was employed to elicit students' strategy use. Then, the Nelson English Language Test was administered to the same students to determine their proficiency level in English. The data obtained from 94 Farsi-Speaking (FS) and 57 Armenian-Speaking (AS) students on the vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire were analyzed and it was revealed that the use of various vocabulary learning strategies is not very widespread among Iranian high school students, both in FS and AS groups. The same results also showed that there are significant differences between Farsi-speaking and Armenian-speaking students. Furthermore, no significant relationship was found between the students' proficiency level and the frequency of their vocabulary learning strategy use.

Among new approaches, semantics can, to some extant, help text exegesis at1d familiarize the reader with text perception. In semantics studies of understanding and interpretation of text, to familiar with the palce of meaning in literary tradition and new approaches of criticism, the acceptance of multi meaning in interpretation texts are necessary. Yet, literary traditionalism prevents the reader from accurate text perception. Particularly, it is said, that ultimate tradition is reflected in meaning. It is believed that man's perception of meaning is dependent on his world- view. Meaning absoluteness and one- dimensional traditional look has forced man to criticize and analyze "meaning on a boarder- line between tradition and modernity. The author tries to refer to notions such as text mystery, relation of meaning and text perception, deconstruction, decentralism etc.The purpose of this study is to introduce certain standard for appreciating the fundamentals of understanding and interpretations of text.

In our educational system, the problems relevant to language testing need to be reconsidered. One issue is developing and validating a Nationwide TEFL MA Entrance Examination. The current version of this test, a knowledge test consisting of 80-100 items, suffers from deficiencies related to reliability, validity, and efficiency. Being too long a test, it basically consists of memory-based and/or trivial items. The very feature which makes the test comprehensive, i.e., its length, renders it as impractical. In this research, an attempt was made to develop a test of 30 "conceptual" items and verify if it correlates with its criterion measure which is itself, according to the experts' opinion, deficient. The results of the validation stage of the newly-developed test showed that the reliability and validity indices of the test were .35 and .95, respectively indicating that the new test cannot be used interchangeably with its criterion measure due to its low reliability. However, given the implications offered at the end of the study, some steps can be taken to lessen the problems.

This paper seeks to present an area of investigation into the notion of American Dream with regard to some fundamental bases upon which it constructed. In this respect, the political, economical, moral, cultural Condit relevant to the issue of the American Dream are taken into account. Each of t elements has an organic and indispensable relation to the creation, flourish, finally the subversion of an entity called the American Dream. Fitzgerald's ideology revealed in his works is a serious criticism on the Amer Dream which is an important value system in the trait of American thinking. Real feature of this notion is disclosed by Fitzgerald who illuminatesthe real na of American life and reveals the truth of the American identity.

This paper focuses on a parametric difference concerning modifier placement between Persian and English. The lack of noun movement in English causes a learn ability problem for Persian speaking learners of English. The hypotheses are that there are some effects of input on learning English as a foreign language in short and long-term periods. The question is whether or not negative evidence plays any role in learning a foreign language. 104 Iranian students learning English as a foreign language participated in this study. The experimental group was taught the English word order through providing negative evidence. The control group was taught the same structure by providing just positive evidence. Right after the instruction, both groups were given the first post-test. This test was re-administered about 12 weeks after the instruction to test the long-term effect of negative evidence. The findings of T-tests indicated that there was a significant difference between the performance of the experimental group and the control group in the immediate posttest. The experimental group outperformed the control group rejecting the inefficiency of negative input at least in the short-term. In the delayed post-test, both groups performed relatively the same. The findings of this study did reject the role of negative evidence in the long-term.

Like the playwrights of the 1930's, Arthur Miller's imagination was fired by the Great Depression which he regarded as one of the national catastrophes in the history of the United States. It gave him what he calls a sense of the invisible world and an understanding of life beyond the purely individual and the psychological. Miller's interest in the subject of guilt is traditional and follows the usual pattern of wrongdoing and its consequences especially, alienation, disillusionment, and hatred. Miller in his plays involved himself with the strange family relationships in the complicated milieu of society in America. The hero, finding himself at odds with the immediate social circumstances, gets alienated and lonely with suffering. By the way of discussing the effects of this heightened representation of mass trauma, i.e. the Great Depression and its aftereffect alienation, this paper intends to picture alienation in most of the prominent plays of Arthur Miller.