APPLIED RESEARCH ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Year:2012 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

It is a great pleasure to be writing an editorial welcome for the first inaugural issue of Applied Research in English. Research on language, teaching practices, and communication patterns has been growing rapidly both nationally and internationally. Therefore, I believe the publication of Applied Research in English is timely. More specifically, research is growing rapidly in such areas as classroom discourse, gender issues in education, use of technology in language teaching, curricula innovation in language education and sociolinguistic practices in society, among others. Obviously, it was the intersection of these issues and the desire to reflect inter-disciplinary research paradigms that spurred the creation of this journal. Furthermore, the journal makes an endeavour to bring together researchers whose work falls within areas such as approaches to the teaching and learning of modern languages in higher education and cultural expression through teaching and reading literature. The journal welcomes potential contributions in any of these areas for future editions.

The Question Answer Relationship (QAR) strategy equips students with tools to successfully decode and comprehend what they read. An action research project over 18 days with twenty-three kindergarteners adapted exposure to QAR’s "In the Book" and "In my Head" categories with similar questions for each of two popular Aesop’s fables. The challenges and outcomes are presented with special emphasis on teacher-preparation, teacher-reflections, and a hands-on, day-by-day project-implementation. An oral pre-test, after reading The Tortoise and the Hare, served as a baseline assessment for student-comprehension levels. The QAR strategy was then explicitly taught, with opportunities to practice the comprehension skills in small and large groups with parental assistance. Students overwhelmingly scored higher on the post-test reading comprehension after the read-aloud of The Jay and the Peacock with some receiving perfect scores.

In this paper, the authors investigate whether Persians who have been exposed to Australian culture are still affected by their cultural norms- in particular by the politeness system taarof- in responding to compliments in an intercultural interaction. Compliment responses were elicited- through a Discourse Completion Task- from thirty participants (five males and five females in each of three groups): Persians in Iran, Persians in Australia, and Anglo-Australians. These responses were categorised according to Herbert's (1986) taxonomy and the results show that although there are similarities in the choice of compliment response types by Australians and Persians living in Australia, there are still some differences. This paper aims to contribute to knowledge of potential areas for miscommunictions in intercultural interactions, and also to find ways to improve language teaching and learning.

The present study investigated the effects of three methods of vocabulary presentation, i.e., picture, song, and the keyword method on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary recognition and production. The participants were 102 Iranian lower-intermediate EFL learners in Zaban Sara English language institute in Kermanshah. To make sure that they had no previous knowledge of the target words, a pretest was administered. Those words about which the participants had prior knowledge were excluded from instruction. After administering the pretest, the participants were divided into three groups. Each group was instructed through a specified method of vocabulary presentation including picture, song, and the keyword method for a whole semester. The participants' receptive vocabulary knowledge was tested through a multiple-choice test and their productive vocabulary knowledge through a fill-in-the blank test. The collected data were analyzed using two separate one-way ANOVA procedures. The results of both tests showed that the group instructed through picture had the best performance, followed closely by the group instructed through the keyword method. The group taught through the song method performed significantly worse than both the picture group and the keyword method group.

Teaching English in an Iranian and Islamic culture poses complex questions for both teachers and learners. In this paper, the authors intend to shed light on what it means to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL) in an Islamic-Iranian context. Having reviewed the colonial and postmodern views of English language teaching, the authors took a look beyond the current state of TEFL in Iran, which is marked by its continuing global tendency, and into the future with an emphasis on the importance of including the local specificities of the Iranian culture and religion. The status of the TEFL in Iran and the direction it should take in the future are accompanied by offering some solutions to inherent problems. Iranian TEFL is introduced as the successful assertion of Iranian local culture against the cultural and ideological domination of the West, which can be an antidote to the harshness of all marginalizations Iranians have suffered for centuries.

This paper describes how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers can bring reliable, valid, user-friendly assessment into their classrooms, and thus improve the quality of learning that occurs there. Based on the experience of the author as a an EFL teacher and teacher-trainer, it is suggested that the promotion and development of autonomy, intrinsic motivation, and self-esteem that takes place in a Classroom-Based Assessment (CBA) environment facilitates an holistic approach to language learning and prepares the students for the high-stakes tests that often determine their motivation for learning English. Rather than relying on the memorization of language code, form, lexis, and prepared answers, students who have learned in a CBA environment are able to self-assess, peer-assess, build portfolios, and edit their own work. Not only does this reduce the assessment burden on the teacher, but it also develops the skills of problem-solving, critical thinking, and summarization in the students, in addition to a heightened awareness of the language-learning process. By learning how to set goals, assess their achievements, and reflect on their future learning needs, students become more efficient language learners. While acknowledging the place of standardized, summative tests in contemporary society, it is suggested that CBA in the EFL classroom can enhance long-term learning and consequently enable and empower students to prepare for their future learning needs.

Persian learners of English often avoid attending to audience considerations, which brings them lower scores. The present study was conducted in a major university in Iran to help Persian learners develop a sense of audience awareness in writing. Thirty five Persian students of English were trained with a focus on process-oriented instruction. The intended task was a letter where student writers were asked to write to a government authority. Having submitted their first drafts, they received training on audience parameters and were asked to revise the drafts for style and audience considerations, and to resubmit the final drafts for scoring. Participants were interviewed on how they considered the reader in the written text, how they engaged the reader in the text, and what strategies they used for the task accomplishment. The interviews were analyzed qualitatively, and transcribed protocols were studied carefully, with two core categories (i.e. linguistic and non-linguistic considerations) emerging from the data. Also, participants implied attending to audience in three phases: pre-task, on-the-task, and post-task strategies. In sum, training Persian learners resulted in their enhanced awareness of strategies they can adopt for audience considerations.

James Joyce's Ulysses is one of the hall-marks of modernism in the realm of the novel. In this novel, Joyce breaks away from old patterns, employs new techniques, and presents the modern state of man as well as his soul-lacking indeterminate communication with others. Freud's theories on the unique and private quality of man's mode of consciousness and the meddling of the past with present, stressed the twentieth-century man's ill-condition and his position among his fellow beings. Joyce portrays the modern man in his favorite chapter, ‘Ithaca,’ which has certain features that make the narrative structure in complete step with Joyce's themes regarding the modern man. This paper is an attempt to show how the human race is perceived by Joyce, revealing how the employed elements depict a modern picture of the modern man. This chapter contains many questions and answers that can be discussed in class and students can be engaged in novel-based dialogues and class discussion as an EFL practice.