IRANIAN JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE TEACHING RESEARCH
Year:2017 | Volume:5 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:10

Second Language Research: Methodology and Design (Second Edition) is an introductory, yet comprehensive, volume in the field of second language research. The goal of the book as authors put is "to acquaint readers with the basic issues, problems, and solutions involved in conducting second language research" (p. xvi). The volume provides a very readable, practical account of different approaches to research drawing skillfully on published research into second language learning and use, providing the reader with a lot of practical examples from published studies. The book also adds some discussion and data-based questions throughout each chapter and some activities at the end of each chapter aiming to promote better understanding of the concepts. In spite of its many advantages, some suggestions may be made to correct, revise, and improve the volume for the next edition according to Brown’s (2001) textbook evaluation criteria, as shown below.

Teaching and Researching Writing (3rd ed.) is a thoroughgoing revised new edition with its coverage of key issues in this area. The edition has been produced with an intention to provide the readers with recent findings in the area to address the novel directions and to incorporate discussions of technology, identity and error correction. In the introduction, the author clearly specifies the main objective of this volume as a complete guide to writing research and teaching. This reader-friendly volume (with its 11 chapters in four sections) features boxes (Concepts and Quotes), to further reinforce readers’ understanding of key points and claims to be an ideal resource for language teachers, practitioners and writing researchers.

Susan Gass is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages at Michigan State University. Her research is in Second Language Acquisition and includes the areas of Input and Interaction, Language Universals and Language Transfer. More recently she has become interested in the area of attention and how it relates to acquisition. She has written/edited a number of books on second language acquisition and has taught and lectured in various parts of the world. Currently at MSU, she is the Director of the English Language Center, Co-Director of the Center for Language Education And Research, Co-Director of the Center for Language Teaching Advancement and Director of the Second Language Studies Ph.D. Program. She recently served as President of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (2002-2008). In the following interview, Susan Gass (SG) answers questions asked by Karim Sadeghi (KS) on her role as co-editor of SSLA.

With the increasingly growing technological advances and their consequences for societies, the public has the right to be engaged in the outcomes of science. On the one hand, the public are interested in acquiring information about the results of scientists’ experiments. On the other hand, the scientists are willing to share their feelings about their discoveries with the public in order to achieve wider audience. These all have prompted popularizing of science within the last few decades. The current study aimed to explore the frequency of evaluative resources of Appraisal in English popular science articles (PSAs hereafter) in the field of Nutrition. A total of 40 English popularized articles published in four popular sources, WebMD, Better Nutrition, Science Daily, and New York Times, were analyzed in terms of three main categories and subcategories of Appraisal Theory. The results of the analysis revealed that authors used more Attitude resources followed by Graduation and Engagement resources. With regard to subcategories of three main categories, the authors of English PSAs included more cases of appreciation, force, and heterogloss resources. The findings indicated that the authors of PSAs tend to insert their feelings about their discoveries through employing Appraisal resources. The results might be used to embed Appraisal resources in EAP materials in order to equip the would-be scientists with a helpful tool to meet the expectations of another group of their intended audience, i.e. general public, in addition to fulfilling the requirements of their academic discourse community.

The present study explored the characteristics of 147 Iranian EFL teachers teaching at senior secondary schools (N=62) and those teaching in private language institutes (N=85). Data were collected through a Likert-scale teacher characteristics questionnaire mainly adapted from Borg (2006). Also, for data triangulation purposes, 20 teachers from each group (i.e.40 in total) were randomly selected and attended a semi-structured interview. The results of Independent Samples t-test indicated, overall, there was a significant difference between the characteristics of senior secondary school teachers and those of language institute teachers. Moreover, the results of Chi-square analysis and content analysis of interviews revealed that EFL teachers of language institutes and senior secondary schools were significantly different regarding some specific characteristics commonly ascribed to successful teaching including good command of aural-oral skills, ʻbeing disciplined and punctualʼ, ʻbeing open to criticismʼ, ' respecting the personality of studentsʼ, ʻlistening to students’ opinions and letting them express themselvesʼ, and ʻshowing interest in students and their learningʼ. The findings of the study might prove fruitful for syllabus designers, teacher educators and pre-service EFL teachers as discussed in the paper.

A key objective of education is to prepare individuals to be fully-functioning learners. This entails developing the cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, cultural, and emotional competencies. The present study aimed to examine the interrelationships among adaptability, tolerance of ambiguity, cultural intelligence, learning approach, and language achievement as manifestations of the above competencies within a single model. The participants comprised one hundred eighty BA and MA Iranian university students studying English language teaching and translation. The instruments used in this study consisted of the translated versions of four questionnaires: second language tolerance of ambiguity scale, adaptability taken from emotional intelligence inventory, cultural intelligence (CQ) inventory, and the revised study process questionnaire measuring surface and deep learning. The results estimated via structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that the proposed model containing the variables under study had a good fit with the data. It was found that all the variables except adaptability directly influenced language achievement with deep approach having the highest impact and ambiguity tolerance having the lowest influence. In addition, ambiguity tolerance was a positive and significant predictor of deep approach. CQ was found to be under the influence of both ambiguity tolerance and adaptability. The findings were discussed in the light of the yielded results.

Lexical profiling has yielded fruitful results for language description and pedagogy (Liu, 2014), and particularly highlighted the significance of academic vocabulary for EFL learners in this process. This investigation, likewise, attempts to comparatively profile the vocabulary, more particularly the academic vocabulary, in the ‘abstract’ section of scholarly articles in Iranian and Anglo-American refereed journals in psychology. Iranian journals under study publish articles in Persian but also include an English abstract whereas the latter publish papers in English. For this purpose, a corpus (consisting of 307, 126 words), with two sub-corpora of almost similar size and characteristics, was collected from Iranian and Anglo-American journals and analyzed through the software Range. The analyses conducted show a coverage of over 15 percent and the use of over 500 words of the Academic Word List (AWL) in both Iranian and Anglo-American sub-corpora. However, there are variations in academic and nonacademic vocabulary use in abstracts across the two sub-corpora above. Most of the academic words used belong to the beginning AWL sub-lists. Pedagogical implications are made for reading and writing, particularly in EAP contexts.

This study aims to provide foreign language professionals with a sound methodology for selecting a suitable lexicon apropos of their students’ level in the language. The justification of said selection is, herein, rooted in a cognitive argument: If we are able to observe the manner in which words are organized within the mind, we will be better able to select the words needed for the natural process of communication. After analyzing over lists of lexical availability compiled by previous analyses, this study puts forth a glossary filtered by way of an objective procedure based on the mathematical concept known as Fuzzy Expected Value. I begin first by rigorously defining the concept of lexical availability and then thoroughly examining and explaining the manner in which I have obtained the results. Next, I employ the cognitive theory of prototypes to expound upon the organizational apparatus which arranges words within speakers’ minds. Subsequently, and in accordance with objective criteria, a lexical selection is proposed. To end, I contemplate and muse upon the significance of a program that would enable us to identify the most appropriate vocabulary according to the students’ level of linguistic competence. In order to further substantiate this study, it will be juxtaposed with the specific notions outlined by the curriculum of The Cervantes Institute. Moreover, it will relate to the teaching levels proposed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

The present narrative study examined the purposes that language teachers pursue in their research studies. The study also explored the opportunities and challenges that teachers experience while doing action research. Data were collected through a survey of narrative frames among 68 teachers, reflective essays written by 9 teachers and individual interviews with 12 other teachers. Analyzing the content of the data and sorting out the main themes showed that teachers are mainly concerned with practical aspects of their profession such as developing their teaching skills and improving students’ knowledge in particular language areas. In addition, teachers believe that action research broadens their understanding of language education, provides them with a framework for reflecting on their practice, empowers them to play more important roles in educational systems and heightens their awareness of students’ needs. The findings also point to teachers’ consensus that their time limitations, their lack of specialized knowledge of research, administrative restrictions and lack of collaboration are among the main challenges they experience when undertaking action research. The study concludes with the discussion of the broader implications of the study for promoting action research in language teaching profession.

The study aimed at measuring the perceived Professional Self-esteem, Emotional Exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP), and Personal Accomplishment (PA) of Iranian (n=230) and Turkish (n=156) EFL teachers and determining the prediction role of Professional Self-esteem in EE, DP, and PA processes. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) was used to measure the perceived burnout levels of the participants, and a shortened English version of Professional Self-esteem Scale developed by Aricak (1999) was employed to measure the participants’ self-esteem perceptions in five dimensions of satisfaction, knowledge development, commitment, adaptation and communication. The internal reliability of the professional self-esteem scale was r=0.821. The results revealed that professional self-esteem was strongly correlated with EE, DP, and PA burnout. They also showed that EE, DP, and PA processes were better predicted by Satisfaction, Commitment, and Knowledge Development dimensions of Professional Self-esteem in the case of both Iranian and Turkish teachers, respectively. Moreover, the EE and PA prediction variances of Iranian group were greater than that of Turkish group, whereas the DP prediction variance of Turkish group was greater than that of Iranian group. The study highlights the significance of professional self-esteem in education and offers strategies for teachers and authorities to combat burnout for better teacher productivity.