FOREIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH JOURNAL (PAZHUHESH-E ZABANHA-YE KHAREJI)
Year:2014 | Volume:3 | Issue:1|Papers Count:10

Cognitive aspects of bilingualism have been recently studied by many researchers and lots of them have reported bilingual advantage over monolinguals in some aspects of cognition. Given the multitude of bilinguals in Iran, further and deeper studies of various aspects of this phenomenon seem to require. In order to study bilingualism in Iran from a cognitive point of view, the present study examines the effect of bilingualism on executive functions among Azari- Persian bilinguals. To serve this purpose, Wisconsin Card Sorting task was administered to 72 university students (36 bilinguals and 36 monolinguals). Results suggested bilingual advantage in executive functions in general and flexibility in particular. While the findings confirm those of previous similar studies, they can indicate that bilingual advantage is an outcome of bilingualism in general and is not dependent on the types of languages used.

The occurrence of miscues in the speaking of language learning students is an undeniable matter which can be a result of stress, lack of concentration, psychological factors, and inefficiency in the testing of the students’ learning.The manner of dealing with this issue and the effort to resolve it is crucial in different language teaching methods. A survey of the history of German language teaching shows that the most efficient and important method of language learning is “Analysis of Miscues” (Modell Didaktische Analyse) which, through standard testing, tries to prevent the language learners from making mistakes and thus, simplify the process of language learning. In this new method, the students’ knowledge and skills are studied through the analysis of miscues and explaining them. The more accurate and purposeful the test is designed, the easier it will be to evaluate the students’ learning and analyze it based on what they have and have not learnt. Considering the importance of speaking, writing, listening, and reading skills in the “Analysis of Miscues”method, tests are designed at proper times and conditions, either separately or merged. This essay attempts to analyze, with proper examples, each specific language skill so that through complete familiarity and by their aid, the language teacher can evaluate the knowledge and learning of the students and teach German to the researchers and students of this field.

The present study is an attempt to find common structural characteristics of honorific expressions in Japanese and Persian. To achieve this purpose, first we will focus on two parameters: “honorific as vocabulary” and “honorific as sentence” in recent researches on honorific expressions in Japanese. Then, we will compare the structure and characteristic of honorific expressions in examples from both languages. In addition, in this research we benefited from the English examples to clarify structural similarities and differences that Persian and Japanese have with languages such as English. After the analysis of the findings, it was found that Japanese and Persian both use “honorific as vocabulary” and “honorific as sentence” parameters systematically. Also in both languages “honorific as vocabulary” are abundant. In contrast, honorific expressions in languages such as English only have the second parameter and “honorific as vocabulary” are very scarce.

In German, a relative clause is marked by relative pronoun, which agrees with their head noun in gender and number. However, relative clauses in Farsi are always introduced by using a conjunction “ke”. This difference could be Iranian and German learners when learning languages, German and Farsi to confront difficulties. The present study focuses on relativisation strategies based on typological analysis and tries to show how relative clauses use these strategies and where the place of Farsi and German in these categories is? The results of this study will demonstrate that German using relative pronoun strategy which is a kind of pronoun-retention strategies. However, the syntactic role of head noun in relative clause in Farsi is marked with various strategies, including gap strategy and personal pronoun strategy.

To study the causes of difficulties in understanding the German short story by Persian learners from the perspective of text linguistics first we have searched the factors of cohesion and coherence in German texts in a short story. Then we have checked its translations by the students and observed that these people are familiar with the grammatical structure of each sentence and the vocabulary of this text, however, they can’t understand its meaning and most translations contains separated sentences. Indeed text difficulty rooted in lack of proficiency in deep structure and not in surface structure. Deterrent to understand the mentioned story more pertain to topic, isotopy, presupposition and particularly mismatch of frame and script, as well as in cases lack of recurrence and explicit text links.

The pictures of the textbooks play an important role in the transfer of concepts and values to students. However, no comprehensive studies have been done on the functions of pictures and their effects on the students from the gender perspective in the instructional language textbooks in Iran. Accordingly, the current study is an attempt to evaluate the pictures in Iranian high-school English textbooks concerning their learning functions as well as the presence and absence of gender bias. To this end, the pictures in the textbooks were analyzed regarding the instructional vs. non-instructional (decorative) functions.The people in the pictures were also investigated from the perspective of gender bias on the basis of the three criteria of the frequency of males and females, the type of environment surrounding the two genders, and the kinds of activities.The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results revealed that, from the viewpoint of functions, the majority of the pictures were instructional; from the perspective of the frequency of males and females’political and social activities and the type of environment, gender bias existed in favor of males; in terms of personal and educational activities, the representation of females was more remarkable. The findings have some implications for textbook writers, materials developers, English language teachers and other experts in the field of education.

Multiple-choice questions are commonly employed for testing language knowledge. However, since in the recently proposed systematic approach to item writing, using various item formats is desirable and there is very few researches on the possibility of using translation items for giving variety to items on a test. The present study aims at comparing reliability and item difficulty of translation and multiple-choice item formats on a test of grammatical knowledge. First, the specifications of the tests were composed of two sections: one with translation items and the other with multiple-choice items, and then reviewed by eight English teachers with some experience in language testing. Then, the specifications were revised according to the feedback. The test for the present study was prepared, and administered to 158 English learners with mixed proficiency levels. The data was analyzed using both classical test theory and Rasch model. The results indicated that both item formats had good reliability (r translation section=0.88, r multiple-choice section=0.84). Also, generally, the items showed good fit in Rasch model.Furthermore, an independent t-test did not find a significant difference between two formats in terms of item difficulty (t=1.696, df=58, P>0.95). Therefore, based on the finding of the study, it is suggested that, in a systematic approach to item writing, translation item format can be employed alongside multiple –choice item format for measuring grammatical knowledge.

Self-regulatory resource management strategies comprise a featured characteristic of successful language learners. The present study investigated the effect of two of these strategies including time management and effort regulation on learning English. The participants included two classes of second grade middle school students (n=64) who were selected from a school in Robat Karim based on convenient sampling and divided into control and experimental groups randomly. The study lasted for three months. Motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (Pintrich, 1991) as well as two language tests were used to measure learners’ resource management skills and language achievement, respectively. Data analysis showed no significant difference between control and experimental groups in their language post test scores, which shows that time management and effort regulation strategies had no significant effect on learners’ language learning in the experimental group. The potential role of some factors in language learning and academic achievement should be taken into account when interpreting the findings of the present study. These factors include schooling condition, English textbook content area, time of the study, the length of the study, socioeconomic status and identity of the learners, and cultural components of self-regulation.

The German translation of the Qur'an is one of the ways of understanding this Holy Book in German-speaking countries. But because there are deficiencies in the Translation of the Quran, the reader is unable to reach this goal. The main purpose of this study is to identify deficiency factors in the German translation from the beginning until now to reduce vulnerability by providing the necessary solutions. Results of this study show four major problematic factors of the German translation: 1. Structural damage (morphological, syntactic, grammatical, etc.); 2. Damage of Fiqh (jurisprudence failure to inform the translator of his inability to understand the verses of Ahkam); 3. Lexical Damage (vocabulary and maintain homogeneity and the detection of systematic translation); 4. Damaging the theological and doctrinal beliefs and assumptions (para-lingual factors). He present essay accurately reviews the problematic factors in the German translations of the Quran and provides some suggestions for solving these problems.

Causal prepositions Po and III-3a in Russian language are used for the expression of undesirable or inconvenient facts and conditions and carry negative charge and connotation. However, their usage requires different grammatical structures. Moreover, they are used with different nouns.Therefore, the sublties invovlved in some similar cases of the usage of these prepositions for the expression of cause means, more often than not, difficulty for Iranian students while speaking Russian as well as in translating Russian texts. The causal features of these prepositions have not unfortunately been investigated thoroughly enough. In this regard, the present article aims to address, in adequate details, the functional and usage differences and similarities of these two causal prepositions, Po and III3-3a, in Russian language and their equivalents in Persian language, in order to move toward the elimination of this problem and to be of practical help for translators through offering correct or more suitable equivalents in the translation of Persian texts into Russian and vice versa.