سال:1391 | دوره: | شماره: |تعداد مقالات:7

Evidence occupies a paramount position in any logical endeavor and research article is consensually considered a predominant site of such an endeavor. One interesting area of rhetoric which addresses the source and reliability of evidence is quality metadiscourse. In this qualitative study, quality metadiscourse strategies (i.e., evidentials, hedges, boosters and disclaimers) are examined to investigate their contribution to evidentiality in research articles. Through analyzing authentic examples taken from research articles, it is concluded that evidentials mark the source of evidence and the other strategies are employed to condition propositions proportionate to the strength of relevant evidence. In fact, this study helps to argue that reliability markers demonstrate the author-perceived distance of propositions from the impact range of evidence. Contrary to the broad definition of metadiscourse, the paper concludes that without appropriate types of markers, propositions could lose their quality, and as such, they are an indispensable part of the propositions they modify in the broader pragmatic context. Thus, in addition to a contribution to the definition of metadiscourse, this conceptualization is hoped to facilitate teaching and learning quality metadiscourse in that it defines a more plausible base to the appropriate employment of quality-related metadiscourse strategies.

Group dynamic assessment (G-DA) grounded in Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory (SCT) is believed to have the potential to provide a context for capturing a group of learners’ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Poehner & Lantolf, 2010; Shabani, 2010). The present study aims at testing the applicability of G-DA in identifying the mediational strategies offered by a mediator during his G-DA interactions with a group of L2 learners in the context of listening. Moreover, it seeks to unravel the effects of G-DA-based instruction on the co-construction of knowledge among L2 listeners. A microgenetic, longitudinal and interactionist methodology formed the theoretical basis for the construction of the assessment procedures. The participants included a group of L2 learners ranging in age from 20 to 25.The materials used in the assessment sessions were authentic texts selected from the normal VOA broadcasts. The qualitative analysis of G-DA protocols led to the development of an inventory of mediational strategies consisting of different forms of implicit and explicit feedback. The analysis also showed how collective scaffolding (Donato, 1994) could pave the way for establishing distributed help among learners (Platt & Brooks, 1994) within the social space of the class in the course of which secondary and primary interactants mutually benefit from each other' s contributions (Poehner, 2009). The inventory of mediational strategies helped track the learners’ microgenetic and developmental trajectories over time. Finally, on the basis of the findings language teachers are suggested to use mediational strategies developed in this study as a reference to provision of feedbacks during interactions with a group ZPD.

This study presents an overview of the different strategies that Persian learners of English employ to deal with initial clusters. While vowel epenthesis appears to be the most widespread repair strategy to conform such clusters to Persian phonotactics, the location of the epenthetic vowel varies. In this paper, we investigate two approaches that seek to explain the epenthetic site. The first of these, based on the Sonority Sequencing Principle, does not offer a plausible account, in particular with respect to the repair of s+ sonorant clusters. The second approach, based on Fleischhacker (2001, 2005), argues that the epenthetic site is based on maximal perceptual similarity between input and output. An experiment with Persian listeners is reported which confirms the crucial role of perceptual similarity. Finally, we cast this approach into an Optimality Theory framework, which will be seen to make the right predictions for words with triconsonantal clusters.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive strategy instruction on English reading comprehension of Iranian advanced students. A total of 60 participants took part in the present study. The participants (n=20) in one experimental group were provided with the cognitive training condition only, while the participants (n=20) in the other experimental group were exposed to both a training and a verbalization requirement condition. The control group (n=20) did not receive any training. Students of the experimental group in both conditions received 10 hours of cognitive strategy training in their regular lessons. The findings in this study generally supported the view that the consciousnessraising of the cognitive strategies had a positive impact on the reading development of Persian-speaking students. Although students of both experimental groups made superior improvements in their comprehension performance, those participants who were given the opportunity to verbalize the learned strategies had more knowledge about strategy use and showed a more positive attitude toward the reading instruction than did their peers who received the cognitive training only. Unlike the experimental groups, the control group reported that their reading ability was the same as before. The results also suggest no statistically significant differences between male and female participants in the use of strategies after the training program.

Pair and small group work is infrequently welcomed in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes under the assumption that students tend to use their first language (L1), which is considered detrimental to learning the new language. From sociocultural perspective, however, students’ first language is claimed to play the role of an important psychological tool and can facilitate the learning process. Hence, the current study is an investigation to examine the impact of students’ L1 use on their collaborative interaction, specifically on the construct of language-related episodes (LREs), in completing form-focused editing tasks in pairs in an EFL context. The findings show that learners’ L1 can affect their interactional talk and can play certain socio-cognitive roles such as the provision of explanations for the suggestions made in pair, helping make sense of the utterances, sharing ideas instead of unilateral solutions to linguistic problems, and assisting one another in reaching solutions to the problems at hand. The functions were seen to be all conducive to the pair members’ target language development.

The present study aimed at finding structural variations in the translated abstracts from Persian into English and comparing them with abstracts originally written in English and published in international journals in the area of medical sciences. To do this, 64 medical article abstracts (32 in Iranian journals, 32 in international journals) were analyzed and compared on the basis of Swales’ model (1990). More detailed analysis was done in the Introduction unit regarding CARS model (Swales, 1990) and also language features of each unit were identified. The IMRC (Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion) sequence was considered as the structural conventions for the analysis. The results showed that in terms of structural units, there was a significant difference in using the Methods unit between the two groups of abstracts (p= 0.002). Some variations were observed in the Introduction unit and language features. The data revealed that the translated abstracts from Persian into English in research medical articles meet the determined criteria for scientific writing while the original ones often ignore the criteria, although they are linguistically superior to the original English ones.

Researchers state that grammatical explanation in the classroom relies on the assumption that rules learnt consciously can be converted into unconscious process of comprehension and production. Little research, if any, has been carried out regarding the role of explicit teaching of grammar in enhancing reading comprehension of ESP students. To make up for the dearth of research in this area, the present study was conducted to investigate whether explicit teaching of grammatical structures enhances reading comprehension of ESP students or not. To achieve this goal, two groups of students were selected, one as the experimental group and the other as the control group. Through a pretest it was found out that the two groups were to a remarkable extent homogenous. The experimental group received explicit instruction of grammatical structures as well as general reading comprehension instruction, but the control group received only general reading comprehension instruction. After the treatment, both groups were post-tested through a reading comprehension test on computer science. The results demonstrated a positive effect of explicit teaching of grammatical structures on enhancing the reading comprehension of our ESP students.