FOREIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH JOURNAL (PAZHUHESH-E ZABANHA-YE KHAREJI)
Year:2017 | Volume:6 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:11

Bilingualism is a branch of language sociology where different people and groups use different language codes in their interactions. This term was proposed for the first tome by Ibne-e Khaldoon, the Arab linguist, and also by German linguist, Karol Kermbakher. With regard to the role of bilingualism in literary creation by an author, this study aimed to investigate this phenomenon in contemporary Arabic poetry by Ahmad Shoghi through qualitative and analytic descriptive methods. The findings of the research show that bi- or multi-lingualism of Ahmad Shoghi caused a decrease in his self- cofidence and his relationship to noble Arabic identity and culture. His low vocabulary-building knowledge resulted in his lower ability to make phrases and or to use homogeneous phrases and synonyms. This, in turn, has caused many linguistic and prosodic errors. This phenomenon decreases activeness of his literary language and destroys his literary and artistic creativity not letting him enjoy the full potentials of the Arabic language.

Acquiring and promoting competency in literary translation has got evident importance in teaching literary translation and its aim is to make the students competent in translating content, linguistic style and functions of literary texts loyally into target language. To reach this goal, it is possible to help acquire and promote literary translation skills in students via different theoretical and practical prospects and various methods in teaching literary translation. The purpose of the present study was to strengthen the competence through evaluation and discussion of hedges and difficulties, problems and errors in literary translation and to propose translation strategies and provide didactic suggestions in a retrospective manner for the purpose of translating literary works, and subsequently, to suggest didactic solutions that can help teaching literary translation, as a skill, take place with more influence in academic atmosphere, and at the same time, lead to improvements in students translations. This article is concerned with the importance of language style and function of literary translation in the target language regarding Heinrich Kleists translation of anecdote Mutterliebe.

Professional development and professional identity have been interchangeably used in the research agenda on teacher education and teacher development. This study is an effort to examine the influence of teaching experience on past, present, and aspirational identity while focusing on the distinction between professional development and professional identity development. Data were gathered through a questionnaire from 180 English language teachers working within inner, outer, and expanding circle of language use. Statistical analysis showed that while there was a meaningful statistical significant difference between teaching experience with past and present professional identity, no statistical difference was found between teaching experience and aspirational identity. Spearman Correlation also showed that teaching experience had a direct positive relation with past and present identity. These findings imply that although teaching experience might develop some components of professional identity (past, and present), it lacks development of professional identity as a whole. These implications can provide suggestions for teacher development and education.

A critical issue in cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) lies in the dearth of research in developing tests for cognitive diagnostic purposes. CDA of formative language assessment that aims to inform instruction has not been conducted in foreign language learning contexts. During recent years, researchers have attempted to provide more practical results beyond a simple average grade in order to improve learning. This study explored how developing a reading comprehension test based on a cognitive framework could be used for diagnostic purposes. To validate the developed test items, a Q-matrix that specified the relationships between test items and target attributes was theoretically developed. Student think-aloud verbal protocols and content rater judgment were used to help construct the Q-matrix. Finally, to diagnose the participants’ strengths and weaknesses, the test was administered to 1986 students of a GE course at the University of Tehran and Fusion Model analysis was used to obtain learners' skill mastery profiles. The obtained results can be very beneficial for formative diagnostic feedback.

This study investigated whether formative and summative self-assessments have any differential effect on the writing performance and self- rating accuracy of Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, sixty homogenized intermediate EFL learners were assigned to two assessment conditions. After the administration of a paragraph writing pretest, the self-rating scale was introduced to the students of both groups. In the formative group, the students practiced self- assessment after each writing assignment during the term. Self- assessment error scores were, then, computed, and the students could see their accuracy extent in their self-assessment during the term. In the summative group, the students’ accuracy of self- assessment during the term was considered in their final term score. To check the students’ improvement in writing and rating accuracy, a posttest self-assessment was administered. ANCOVA results revealed under both conditions, equal improvement occurred in the students' writing. However, the summative group students improved much more significantly in self-rating accuracy.

This study focused on learners' idiom learning through Telegram, an online messaging service, and then the differences between the performances of the two genders were compared. To this goal, 90 freshman university students of TEFL were divided into three groups. One group received a list of idioms once a week through Telegram and other group received the idiom list once a week on paper and the last group didn’t get any treatment. After the procedure, their pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test results were analyzed. It showed that the Telegram group outperformed both groups in posttest and delayed posttest but there wasn't any significant difference among genders. To study their attitude toward MALL (Mobile-assisted Language Learning), a questionnaire was given to Telegram group which proved that learners are willing to use mobile phones as a means for learning and there was not any difference in their attitude based on their gender.

The role of psychological factors in learning a second language is no secret. The relationship between the variables such as ambiguity tolerance which means continued efforts despite uncertainty has been measured with vocabulary competence level in some previous research. The present study investigated the relationship of ambiguity tolerance, particularly with writing block and measures of writing quality in second language. For this purpose, 120 randomly selected participants at advanced level of English proficiency in two universities located in Tehran, responded to ambiguity tolerance questionnaire. The scores obtained were then related to their scores on writing block questionnaire and the mean score of writing quality. The latter was obtained through scoring three academic essays written by each student based on a well-known scale of writing quality by Nation which displayed a significant and positive relationship with ambiguity tolerance. Writing blocks had a negative significant relationship with ambiguity tolerance.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the cultural capital of senior high school English teachers with their self- efficacy. To this end, senior high school teachers of seven districts in Mashhad (N=607) were selected as the study population out of whom 242 were chosen through a simple random sampling as the sample population using Morgan sample size table. Applied research and survey method was used in this research. Self-efficacy and cultural capital questionnaires were used for the data collection procedure. SPSS and Amos software version 23 were used for statistical analysis. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results showed that there was a significant and positive relationship between the cultural capital of senior high school English teachers with their self- efficacy in Mashhad. In other words, teachers with higher cultural capital were more efficient. As a result, they achieve more success in teaching English to students.

The correct word order and the relation among them form a coherent utterance. This is possible according to certain rules in valency Theory (Tesniere, 1959) which are based on the centrality of the verb and the relationship between the verb and the constituents within the sentence. On the other hand, the better understanding of a coherent utterance which is based on the Frame Semantic Theory (Fillmore, 1976) associates with a specific frame for each linguistic expression and the relation between constituent elements of a sentence. The significance of contrastive analysis of syntactic and semantic valency of verbs in various languages in the proposed frames as well as its application in the fields such as manual and machine translation, natural language processing and language teaching motivated the researchers of the present study to develop a Persian- English verb valency (PEVV) dictionary. The present study provides the stages of developing this dictionary and its components via concentrating on some verbs of "Filling Frame" and shows how the valency of Persian verbs and their English equivalence differ.

Communication technologies such as phones, mobile phones, TV, the Internet, email... have a great role in today's world of knowledge and education. Email as a form of asynchronous computer- mediated communication extends what one can do in the classroom and has become the most popular communication tool in the professional and educational environment. The current study aimed to examine if email utilization to send and receive learners’ tasks has any significant effect upon their reading comprehension ability as well as their intrinsic motivation. In a quasiexperimental study, the performance of 56 students in experimental and control groups were examined to determine the effect of the treatment. The results confirmed the significant positive effect of using email as a primary communication technology on learners’ reading comprehension ability and intrinsic motivation.

The past decade has witnessed a renewed conceptual interest in higher education research, including applied linguistics discipline, which has led to the crafting of research as one of the most effective forms of professional development. This sequential explanatory mixed research study examines the conception of research the applied linguists’ faculty members have in a major site of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context by obtaining quantitative results from surveying a representative sample of 140 faculty members and then following-up with interviewing twelve purposefully selected respondents to explore those understanding of research in more depth. The quantitative results reveal that inquiry including experimental designs and mixed-methods research was more likely to be conceived of as research by the respondents. The respondents’ views also represent conceptions of research wherein there exist rigorous characteristics which are related to three important paradigms of research. The qualitative findings shed additional lights on the quantitative ones by providing a further understanding of how EFL faculty members think about research.