JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION
Year:2014 | Volume:4 | Issue:1 (7)|Papers Count:10

Unlike teacher beliefs, there has been a dearth of study regarding EFL learner beliefs. The reason can be that Horwitz (1987) and the existing literature has predominantly been in an ESL context. The present study reports the development and validation of a scale to measure the learner beliefs about language learning in Iranian EFL contexts. Using a combination of verbal creativity method, interview-based method, and previously-established questionnaires to draw up the item pool for the scale, a 45-item scale was finally developed. It was administered to 319 randomly-selected students studying English at Islamic Azad University Roudehen Branch. The internal consistency was calculated to be 0.78 through Cronbach's Alpha Formula. The results of factor analysis yielded five factors with 33 items: mediatory beliefs, self-beliefs, attributive beliefs, traditional beliefs, and epistemological beliefs. Results indicated that self-belief among others is the strongest dimension of beliefs among Iranian undergraduate students.

Metadiscourse is a widely used term in current discourse analysis and language education, referring to an interesting, and relatively new approach to conceptualizing interaction between text producers and their texts and between text producers and users. Despite the growing importance of the term, however, it is often understood in different ways and used to refer to different aspects of language use. In the present study the metadiscourse markers used in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and the ones written by native (Americans) speakers are contrastively analyzed. The framework of this research was Ken Hyland's model (2005) proposed as interactional and interactive resources. The purpose of this study was to see whether interactional metadiscouse markers are different and/or similar in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and native (Americans) speakers and to what extent these interactional metadiscourse markers are different and/or similar. Moreover, this study also aimed at investigating whether interactive metadiscourse markers are differ-ent and/or similar in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and native (Americans) speakers, and to what extent these interactive matadiscourse markers are different and/or similar. The data collection procedure was carefully performed and the raw data submitted to SPSS (version 17.0) program to calculate the required statis-tical analysis in order to address the research questions and hypotheses of the study. The results of the research revealed that the interactive metadiscourse markers were not statistically different in texts developed by non-natives (Iranians) and native (Americans). But the interactional metadiscourse markers were statistically dif-ferent in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and native (Americans). Thus interactional metadiscourse markers were not statistically similar in both texts.

This study was an attempt to find out whether co-teaching model has statistically any significant impact on improving motivation and achievement of Iranian Young EFL Learners or not. The study was con-ducted at Salehin English Language Department in Tehran. To accomplish the purpose of this study, the researchers chose a sample of 91 participants which was reduced to 62 homogenous students through ad-ministration of YLE test. Then, these participants were divided randomly into two 30 and 32 participants groups as experimental and control groups. The participants in both experimental and control groups, were tested on test and questionnaire as pretests in the first session. In the following 10 sessions, the par-ticipants in the experimental group received co-teaching lessons, while the control group received tradi-tional teaching. At the end of the term, the same test and questionnaire were administered to the partici-pants of both groups as the posttests to check the effectiveness of the treatment. Finally, the means of both groups were compared through t-test (a=.05). The results indicated there were significant differences between the performances of both groups. It was concluded that participants who received teaching by two teachers, outperformed those who did not.

This study aimed at investigating the difference between male and female Iranian Upper-Intermediate EFL learners in terms of critical thinking, meta-cognitive awareness listening strategies, and selection of meta- cognitive listening strategies. To this end, one hundred and fifty language learners (including males and females with average age of 26.5) were selected through homogenised process to take part in this study. As a further step, the participants answered CTQ and MALQ questionnaires, which were 5-point Likert-type questionnaires. The results showed that there was no significant difference between males and females critical ability but there that was a significant difference between them in awareness and selection of meta-cognitive listening strategies. In other words, women were more aware than men in meta-cognitive listening strategies. Also a significant difference was found only in ‘planning’ and ‘directed attention’ but not in ‘problem solving’, ‘meta translation’, and ‘person knowledge’ between the male and the female Iranian Upper-Intermediate EFL learners. The results have some implications.

Teaching English for Specific Purposes (TESP) has been a controversial issue among EFL teachers and others. The question raised by many is whether the English language instructor or the subject-matter specialist should teach ESP courses. The main purpose of the present study was to re-address this issue. To this end, 60 second-year students majoring in Feqh and Islamic Law at Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch were randomly selected. Then, they were divided into two classes with 30 members in each. The classes were taught by two lecturers – an EFL instructor and a subject-matter specialist – for an entire semester. At the end of the course, two types of measures were used: an achievement test and an attitude questionnaire. Analysis of the results represented that the EFL instructor's class scored higher than the subject-matter specialist’s class on the achievement test, and that they expressed greater satisfaction with their classes on the attitude questionnaire. Implications of the findings are discussed, accordingly.

The importance of vocabulary learning has been underlined in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) because non-English majors who require reading English texts in their fields of study have to expand their English vocabulary knowledge much more efficiently than ordinary ESL/EFL learners. Since academic vocabulary instruction in Iranian universities is realized through the use of General English (GE) textbooks, the present study pursued a dual purpose of evaluating Iranian engineering undergraduates’ knowledge of academic vocabulary, as well as conducting a comparative corpus analysis of the academic vocabulary content of GE textbooks, electrical/electronic engineering Master’s Entrance Examinations, and authentic electrical and electronic engineering texts. The participants were 520 engineering students from ten universities. The corpora under study comprised a total of 1,180,000 running words. The results revealed an inadequacy of academic vocabulary knowledge among Iranian engineering undergraduates, as well as the fact that GE textbooks for engineering students do not have sufficient coverage of academic vocabulary as compared to M.S. examinations and authentic electronic engineering corpora. There was also insufficient correspondence between academic words in M.A. entrance exams and the authentic texts.

This paper is mainly intended to explore the two practices of interpreting and translating so as to spot any possible differences between them. It should be noted, however, that the focal point of the present study is interpreting and consecutive interpreting in particular which seems to create a good many problems for novice interpreters as well as interpreting trainees. To achieve the objective, 46 M.A. students of translation participated in three different tests administered in the form of TOEFL, interview, and interpreting. These tests were meant to exhibit the participants’ language proficiency, their performance as interpreters, and above all the types of problems awaiting each one of them while interpreting. The results indicated that the top three main problem areas for interpreters as arranged hierarchically according to the range of frequency are the choice of lexicon, syntax and semantics respectively. It was also observed that syntactic and semantic problems arose from inappropriate choice of lexicon in seven areas of noun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, and pronoun on the basis of the frequency of their occurrence.

Corrective feedback (CF) and its different types have long absorbed many scholars and practitioners. As Ellis (2009) mentioned some experimental studies need to be carefully designed to discover the relative effectiveness of each of these CF techniques. The goal of this qualitative study was to discover whether the employment of different CF strategies could bring about an attitudinal shift. To this end, 132 learners were randomly assigned to six different groups each receiving a different kind of corrective feedback. The participants' responses were compared before and after the treatment to find out how their attitude changed over the course of correction. The results suggested that different kinds of feedback strategies have their own proponents. The participants voiced their views on those feedback strategies. The implications of the findings are discussed at the end.

To enrich our understanding of the attitudinal/motivational basis of foreign language learning at junior high school level, this study investigated the students’ status of L2 motivation, the relationship between motivational factors, and the possibility of predicting their motivated learning behavior in light of Dornyei’s (2005, 2009) theory of L2 Motivational Self System. To this end, 1462 junior high school students classified as private language institute-goers and non-goers filled in the Persian version of L2 Motivational Self System questionnaire. After applying independent samples t-test, correlation, and regression analyses, it was found that all students enjoyed positive attitudinal and motivational dispositions although to a different extent, attitude toward learning English was the main predictor of their motivated learning behavior, and Ideal L2 Self was particularly stronger in the institute goers, while Ought-to L2 Self was rather the same for both groups.

This study aims at investigating voices in the Persian translation of Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party. In so doing, after a stylistic analysis of the voices in the original is done, it is argued by the authors that the polyphonous nature of the story is to a great extent due to the deployment of various sociolects in the story as well as the choice of Free Indirect Discourse (FID) as the mode of narration. Then, considering these stylistic features, a comparison is made between the original text and translation. In the light of the comparison, it is revealed that the range of voices heard from the translation is limited compared to the original. This diminishing of the voices in the translation is argued that is partly attributable to the observed decrease in the range of sociolects in the translation as well as the partial failure in reproducing the grammatical features of FID. All in all, this study adds one more piece of evidence to the hypothesis made in the discussions of voices and ideology in translation as to the tendency of translators to bring voices together.