FOREIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH JOURNAL (PAZHUHESH-E ZABANHA-YE KHAREJI)
Year:2021 | Volume:11 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

The present study aimed to explore the effect of EFL teachers’ autonomy supportive behaviors on Iranian EFL learners’ readiness for autonomy. To this end, readiness for autonomy questionnaire (RFAQ) was administered to 240 intermediate EFL learners at five language institutes in Kermanshah, Iran. Then, the researchers trained four EFL teachers based on eight autonomy supportive strategies of self-determination theory (SDT) and devided the participants to two groups of 120 EFL learners. Afterwards, trained teachers attended their classes using the SDT autonomy-supportive strategies. RFAQ was administered to both experimental and control groups for the second time six months later after the experimental group experienced autonomy supportive behaviors. The data analyses revealed that EFL teachers’ autonomy supportive behaviors resulted in an improvement in the five domains determined in the learners’ questionnaire: learners’ acceptance of more responsibility, knowledge about themselves as learners, better knowledge of learning context, a better command of learning process, and more self-initiated learning activities. Implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to find the difference between descriptive and research analysis in studies for comparing and contrasting languages. Comparison of languages is a linguistic approach for comparing languages with each other based on certain criteria and purposes. In other words, the comparison of languages is the analysis of two or more languages that are similar or different in terms of some criteria. In general, it is carried out in three different ways and with certain goals: 1-The purpose of the historical and comparative linguistics is to identify the language families, i. e. the group of historically relatedness languages, which are derived from a common proto-language. 2-The purpose of language typology is to classify the different languages according to the same grammatical structure and determine the pattern structure. Sometimes, the result of a comparing shows that languages do not differ from one another according to some criteria, which is interpreted in the framework of language universals. 3-The goal of contrastive linguistics is to contrast the structural differences between two or more languages, which can affect the teaching of foreign languages. Languages could be also compared in terms of diachronic (historical) and synchronic (structural) approach. Just only the historical and comparative linguistics is a diachronic study. Finally, the present paper provides a totally research-based approach to language comparisons.

The main purpose of the present study was to design and validate a framework of teacher competencies to be used in Farhanghian University. To this end, the researchers conducted a thorough analysis of relevant studies on teacher education, effective teaching, teacher competence, and teacher evaluation. Following this, they examined pertinent national documents, and explored EFL teacher educators’ and curriculum developers’ perspectives via in-depth interviews. The analyses of the collected data yielded a performance assessment rubric with six domains to be utilized in evaluating the EFL student teachers’ professional competencies. Results of this study can be of importance in explaining the role of teacher education in acquiring the required teacher competencies, as well as in providing EFL curriculum developers and Farhanghian University stakeholders with insights for improving assessment practices.

In line with the perspective that teachers are the most significant agents in language policy enactment, teacher agency in general and the pivotal role of agency in curriculum reforms, in particular, have received a surge of attention in recent years. This study aims to investigate the way a group of experienced EFL teachers exerted agency in the context of curriculum reform in Iran. Narrative enquiry was utilized to explore teachers’ agency by drawing on the ecological approach proposed by Priestley, Biesta, and Robinson (2015). Seven teachers (aged between 30 to 45 years) of English as a foreign language with more than 10 years of teaching experience at state high-schools participated in this study. Snowball sampling was utilized for selecting the teachers who had been involved in teaching both old and new books, designed by the Iranian Ministry of Education, for over five years. The results indicated that the teachers construct agency in order to cope with the changes in the curriculum by adhering to many past experiences, creating an image of the future, and enacting the curriculum despite the challenges. This study also highlighted the importance of teacher agency in professional development and improvement of education and learning in the time of curriculum reform.

Undoubtedly, English plays an important role as an interface language in the current world of conversations and interactions. Post method lets teachers share their experiences with others and be creative all the time. This paper brings new insights into identifying and determining priority of ten macro strategies of post-method as well as measurement, among 60 participants, male and female with at least five years of experience in the state schools of Sistan and Baluchistan province in Iran. In this research, the framework was descriptive-survey method and the final results were extracted through using the AHP comparative questionnaire among the experts in schools familiar with post method and the Expert choice software. The validity of the tool was confirmed by the experts, and its reliability was calculated by the inconsistency rate. Regarding the selected topic, this research is unique in its own right and place. Therefore, the researcher decided to remove the available gap by doing the presented study. The results showed that among the main factors influencing the appropriate selection of teaching methods around post-method issue, first of all, minimizing perceptual mismatches, then, maximizing learning opportunities were the most significant and valuable. Conceptualizing linguistic input, as well as activating intuitive heuristic prioritized at the bottom of the ranking order. It is hoped that this study will pave the way for experts and teachers in different educational settings.

The present exploratory research intended to investigate the coherence relations in intercultural communications in the process of translation. As a result, the manifestations of underspecification in translation strategies of the most frequent, complex, common, and apparently simple discourse marker “ and” were investigated. Research methodologies in discourse analysis and translation studies were combined through the data derived from parallel corpora in simultaneous translation. Instances of DMs were determined and sorted based on Mohammadi and Dehghan (2020) inventory of DMs. The results revealed that in 73% of the cases discourse marker “ and” was underspecified. Two manifestations of underspecification were discovered in the process of analysis: change and omission. The translator changed this DM into different DMs in 35% of the instances. And the instances of AND were deleted in 38% of the cases. However, in 28% the instances of “ and” were not underspecified. The bases and sources were discussed and different educational, research, and administrative implications were suggested.

Translation is a proper tool that provides opportunities for reading different texts including horror fiction all over the world. Vinay and Darbelnet are theorists who introduce seven strategies for translation. These strategies include: borrowing, calque, literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation (cited in Munday, 2012). Davies (2003) offers seven strategies for translating culture-specific words, and three strategies of footnote, dropping cultural references and equivalence, play important roles in translating the horror genre. In this research, attempts have been made to study “ The Graveyard” novel by Neil Gaiman using library research method and to study the translation challenges at horror works in Persian translation according to Vinay and Darbelnet and Davies; therefore, the following questions were raised: Which techniques the translator has used to translate the horror elements? Was the translator successful in applying translation techniques based on the features of horror genre to create the same effect as the source text? The results showed that the translator has used strategies of omission, adaptation, literal translation, transposition, and modulation and in many cases when selecting the strategies didn't pay attention to the features of horror genre and it makes the reader feel more horror when reading the original text. The results of this study, in addition to helping the translator to identify the strengths and weaknesses of his translation, will reveal the necessity and importance of paying attention to the features of the text for translators and English students.