زبان پژوهی
سال:1398 | دوره:11 | شماره:33 |تعداد مقالات:19

In spite of the fact that the language learning strategy concept has been around for a long time, it is still appealing and vibrant as evidenced by its accumulated body of literature within the field. Research over the years has revealed that the employment of language learning strategies (LLSs) has a significant share of variance in language achievement and success and a number of studies have shown a significant positive correlation between strategy use and successful language learning. Therefore, many theorizers and practitioners in language teaching have embarked on Strategy-based instruction (SBI) approach which focuses on the training of strate gic learning by incorporating the strategy instruction into the regular language curriculum. The purpose of such SBI programs is to foster the use of LLSs by the second language learners and to help learners to employ more strategies and to apply them in a more appropriate way. Although many scholars have advocated the contribution of LLSs to developing second language skills and components, the empirical evidence supporting the role of SBI programs in enhancing particular skills in particular contexts through particular methodologies has not received adequate research interest in L2 research contexts. Self-regulation is another important variable which has been considered to be relevant to strategy use by a number of scholars (Oxford et al., 2014; Tseng et al., 2006). Educators have stressed the identification and instruction of learning strategies for self-regulation. According to Zimmerman (2000, 2008), self-regulation refers to planned self-generated thoughts, feelings, and activities resulting in the achievement of goals with the use of feedback from prior performance making the process cyclical. Because of the importance of the LLSs, and also given the significant moderating role of the context, as discussed above, in influencing the efficacy of SBI, and finally, considering the heightened significance of self-regulation as a viable construct in English Language Teaching (ELT), this study investigated the effects of strategy-based instruction (SBI) in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing course on enhancing self-regulated learning and writing performance. In so doing, a sample of 49 Iranian EFL students were recruited. The participants were the students of two intact classes doing their BA in the field of English Language Literature. They were randomly assigned to experimental group (n=26) and control group (n=23). To ensure the homogeneity of the two groups, the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) (Allan, 2004) was administered to all the students of the two groups prior to the initiation of the treatment. In order to compare the mean scores on OPT, an independent samples T-test was run to examine the existing difference between groups. The result of the independent samples T-test indicated that the groups were not significantly different in terms of language proficiency before the experiment. For the purpose of the current study, a sixteen-week metacognition training program was integrated into the writing course of the experimental group. The SBI framework employed in the study was CALLA framework developed by Chamot et al. (1999) which constitutes five basic stages of preparation, presentation, practice, evalua tion, and expansion. The students in the control group received the regular, traditional writing instruction. The data were collected through administration of Timed-writing Essays and Self-Regulated Language Learning Questionnaire (SRLLQ). To analyze the data paired-samples t-tests and Analyses of Covariance (ANCOVA) were conducted. The findings indicated significant differences in favor of the experimental students in the writing performance and self-regulated learning. The participants of the current study became more autonomous and self-regulated after receiving instruction in metacognitive strategies. A likely justification for the improved writing performance of EFL learners in the present study might lie in the contribution of the learners’ academic self-effi cacy which is the embedded in the belief system of self-regulated learners (Bandura & Locke, 2003). Those with high academic self-efficacy are confident that they will succeed; as a result, this sense of success and agency increases their academic motivation, thereby enhancing their academic performance (Zimmerman, & Schunk, 2008). The results of the current study also indicated that the experimental group students, who were taught the writing metacognitive strategies outperformed the students in the control group in self-regulation. The plausible justification is the fact that metacognitive strategy training has contributed to the development of self-regulation because metacognition has been considered as the chief element of self-regulation theory (Zimmerman, 1989). In other words, there is much overlap between the underlying nature of the two constructs in a sense that Zimmerman (1989) defines students’ self-regulation as “ the degree that students are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning process” (p. 329). Overall, this study provides strong empirical evidence in favor of SBI in enhancing learners’ writing ability and their self-regulation. The findings offer theoretical and pedagogical implications for both theorizers and practitioners. Given the nature of self-regulation and its contribution to language achievement, it is argued that strategy training should be more extensively integrated into the ELT curriculum. The empirical evidence obtained by this study might be an incentive for theoreticians, practitioners and teacher educators to pay more attention to SBI and take actions in explicit training of LLSs especially metacognitive ones with the aim of fostering their learners’ self-regulation.

Introduction Games have a variety of benefits for the all-inclusive development of children, such that some educators emphasize the use of educational games as the primary means of teaching children to learn. Many of the instructors suggest educational games as one of the most desirable educational tools. From the linguistic point of view, it should be noted that the enrichment and expansion of the vocabulary of the students depends on a variety of factors. In particular, language games have a special place because their main goal is to indirectly strengthen the infrastructural and superstructural structures of the language and facilitate the process of learning through its enjoyment. From the discursive point of view, researchers shifted their orientation from focusing solely on the psychological considerations of the language towards studies on context-foundation learning, meaning that the child’ s discourse was perceived in natural environments, activities, and everyday situations. Classroom discourse is one of the most prominent examples in this regard. Given the above issues, the main problem of the research is to answer the question of whether language games based on classroom discourse interactions have a significant effect on the vocabulary size of elementary students. Methodology The sample consisted of 44 elementary students in grade 2 who were studying in Qarchak city of Varamin in the educational year of 2016-2017. They were selected through available sampling method. The sample was divided into an experimental group (including 22 students) and a control group (including 22 students) by simple random method. To test the progress of the vocabulary size of students by classroom discourse-based games, a researcher-made test containing 35 questions was used as the pre-and post-test. The vocabulary used in this test was selected after a class discourse analysis over 10 sessions, so that the text of all class conversations was recorded and then written on paper. Then, the words that have a nominal, adverbial or adjectival role were classified and 40 words were randomly selected from these words. After this step, four options for each item were developed. After consulting with a linguist specialist and two primary school teachers, and through the item-objective congruence index, the validity of the questionnaire was confirmed. After deleting 5 items, 35 items were selected as the final test. In order to determine the reliability of this test, 20 primary school students were used. Using Cronbach’ s alpha coefficient, the internal consistency of the items was calculated to be 0. 84, indicating a high reliability. In order to collect data, the pre-test was taken from both groups at first. Then, the experimental group was trained with language games for 6 months and 3 hours a week. The control group was trained regularly in the same period. At the end of the training period, the post-test of linguistic progression was performed for both groups and the results were compared by independent t-test. Given the fact that the language of the teacher is the main source of input in the classroom and that teachers control the classroom through linguistic methods, in the present study, the concept of classroom discourse was limited to the input presented or set by the teacher and the interaction and communication between the students through games. Results The results showed that the difference between the two groups was significant in the post-test, and according to the mean difference, the vocabulary size of the experimental group, which used language games based on classroom discourse, had much more progress. As a result, it can be admitted that language games based on classroom discourse interactions have a significant and positive effect on vocabulary size of students. Conclusion Various reasons can be found for the effect of classroom discourse-based games on vocabulary size of elementary students. First, classroom discourse may have raised the level of learners’ attention to input. In other words, class discourse can increase the durability of words in long-term memory by highlighting the target vocabulary and creating a semantic network with classroom elements. Secondly, the interactive feature of language games, as well as the environment without anxious that these games create for learners, reduce stimulus filters and increase learning efficiency. It is very important for the teacher to organize the game for students. That is, the teacher should provide a model for children to play. It is better to design and apply this modeling to familiarize them with skills and methods. The findings and suggestions of this research can help teachers, planners and authors of textbooks in the educational system in order to increase the interest and willingness of students to learn by attention to daily discourse approaches and inclusion of related concepts of language games.

A scientific narrative examines the narrative techniques and structures of a narrative, as a report of related events presented in artistic forms. Narration is a way to combine linguistic units into larger structures in the same way as to cover secondhand meanings. Thus, narration is a way of reasoning and one way of its representation and its purpose is to describe the system of rules governing the production and processing of narratives. The narrative of texts such as the “ Persians” by Aeschylus, which has different historical, mythical, and religious aspects, creates a new horizons. As long as a person needs communication with others, the narrative is also present in their life; narrative is a way to combine language units into larger structures and almost all language uses. Narration is an inescapable and necessary condition of language, meaning and knowledge, and consists of a variety of genres, from myth and history to plays, and even news titles and conversations, and at any time there is a place and a community. Narrative is a linguistic action that translates meaning, and narration is the review of this transition. Barthes refers to the events of the story, which are logical and time-consuming, the “ story” and the word or the text in which that story was formed, “ text” or “ subject” . Each story begins with an expression of an incident, and each narrator expresses his perception of the story in such a way that the audience can understand it. Narrative analysis explores cognitive, socio-interactive and symbolic environments, and the structures are meaningful. For Barthes, critique was a process of structuring a text, and in his analysis, narration was the product of the combination of functions and themes. He believes reading narratives in a structured way is to illustrate how the meaning of narration is relying on a complete process. Functions are joined to actions, and actions ultimately join narratives themselves. Based on this, in a charting of Barthes’ speech, there are three levels of functions, actions, and narration of the main elements. He divides functions into two sets of “ special functions” that follow and give rise to complementary actions, and “ profiles” that divide the broad and indistinct concepts which are necessary for the meaning of the story. In Barthes’ theory, a function called “ distribution function” is also named, which Propp and Grimes termed “ prophet” . Purification means the logical sequence of functions that are interconnected with the correlation and brings the reader to the final text commonly found in classical stories, the result of the story and the writer’ s purpose of expressing it. At the level of actors, characters are narrated based on what they do, and they are usually formed with contrasts and contradictions. These dichotomies or bindings are an action structure that enables story analysis. At the level of narration, functions and actions find their integrity and discover the hidden meaning of the story. The narrative and structural analysis of various texts create a new horizon and decode the new meanings of the new window into the perception of the reader; therefore, the “ Persians” by Aeschylus, embraces various historical, mythical, and religious aspects. The main focus of the research was to make the reader understand the apparent meaning – a demonstration of the victory of the Greeks on the mighty Iranian army– which means that the authority of the Greek gods in the face of the Iranian God and the rule of law and democracy is attaining dictatorship and the kingdom. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to use the ideas of Roland Barthes to analyze the narrative structure of this play at three levels of functions, actions and narration, and also examine the functions of narrative, implications and hidden meanings of the narrative. The method of this study is descriptive-analytic with narrative cognitive approach. The research findings show: A) Barthes’ theory is also compatible with the texts and plays of the BC. B) The author at the level of the actions has been able to construct opposites of many human beings with each other and with the spirits of the dead, induce his religious concepts to readers, C) at the level of narration, dreams, horoscope, and peak news, suggests the humiliation of humankind against the virtues of the gods; D) following the narrative model of Barthes’ analysis reveals some of the hidden beauty of the story, a better understanding of the concept, the reason for writing, and the secret message of the text. The narrative narration of the Iranian play makes it clear that the structuralist theory of Roland Barthes can also be found in ancient texts. This will help to better understand the hidden concept and hidden creatures in ancient texts. In this play, there are many aspects of functionalism and narrative of story telling, as well as behavioral and psychological descriptions.

Slang language is an informal language which has been used among different social groups and entered literature, too. Considering the linguistic and cultural limits in the process of slang translation, this study was done to examine the translation of slang language in two children and adult picture novels, The Diaries of a Wimpy Kid, and The Brilliant World of Tom Gates. The first novel written by Kinney exploded in popularity and was considered New York Times bestseller in 2007. It has won many national and international prizes including “ Nickeldone” and “ The children praised book” . The second novel, The Brilliant World of Tom Gates, was written by Pishon. It has won several prestigious awards, including Roald Dahl funny Prize and the Water Stones children’ s Book Prize. It has also been translated into over 33 languages worldwide. This study was done to elaborate different types of slangs and translation strategies applied in the translation of slangs to show how much the translators were successful in translating slang words and how the introduced translation strategies were beneficial in translation of slang expressions. The data of this qualitative-descriptive study were collected by applying Partridge’ s theory about types of slangs and Baker’ s strategies for translation of slangs. Partridge distinguishes ten different kinds of slangs: a. Cockney: It is divided into two types used by educated and uneducated people; b. Public house: It refers to group words and phrases made up for the smallness of the recorded vocabulary by nature. It is the main, genial, cheery, materialistic, but not gross nor cynical one; c. Workmen’ s: Linking up with the public house is workmen’ s slang which is very closed to tradesman slang used to refer to family and financial matters in workmen’ s lives; d. Tradesmen: They are used between tradesmen; e. Commerce: it refers to slangs used in trade between tradesmen and customers; f: Public schools and universities: in these type students become the main source, because they are fresh, full of spirit to move forward for their future; g: Society: it is concerned with the spirit of universe, the world life; h. Art: The words and phrases of art are quickly adopted by the society; however, only few words of them are known; I. Theatre: It came to existence in the nineteen century and is related to slangs in art; and J. Church: Slangs not only appear from people in the street or in their daily conversation, but also can be found from a holy place such as church. Baker provides 8 strategies for translation of slangs: 1. Translation by a more general word: The translator uses a common word in the target language which expresses the same referential meaning and the same expressive meaning as those of the slangs in the source text; 2. Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word: It consists of data that are translated using common words or phrases of dissimilar meaning, both referential and expressive; 3. Translation by cultural substitution: This strategy involves replacing a culture-specific item with a target language item, which does not have some propositional meaning but is likely to have similar impact on the target reader; 4. Translation by loan or loan word plus explanation; 5. Translation by paraphrase using a related word: This strategy consists of data that are translated using words or phrases of similar referential meaning but dissimilar expressive meaning; 6. Translation by paraphrasing using an unrelated word: Means translation using words or phrases of similar expressive meaning but dissimilar referential meaning; 7. Translation by omission: The translator can omit one word or more to make the translation suitable to the target language structure, seems natural, and suitable for the target language’ s culture, 8. Translation by illustration: This strategy enjoys illustrations or pictures to convey the idea from the source text to the target text. Pictures can be helpful to the translator for translating slangs appropriately. According to Partridge’ s classification of slang types, there were three types of slangs of school and university (53. 27%), social (44. 26%) and workmen (24. 45%) in the first novel. In the second novel, there were also three types of slangs, namely, social (72%), school and university (24%), and artistic slangs (4%). For translation of these slangs in the first novel, eight strategies of translation introduced by Baker were used. They were translation by more general words (62. 22%), translation by more neutral/less expressive words (9. 76%), cultural substitution (15. 86%), translation using loan words and explanations (2. 44%), paraphrasing using related words (20. 44%), paraphrasing using unrelated words (18. 3%), omission (9. 76%) and translation by illustrations (6. 1%). In the second novel, six strategies were applied. They were namely, translation by more general words (4%), translation by more neutral/less expressive words (0%), cultural substitution (30%), translation using loan words and explanations (6%), paraphrasing using related words (26%), paraphrasing using unrelated words (30%), omission (0%) and translation by illustrations (4%) were applied. In the first novel, translating by more general words was the most applied strategy and in the second novel, cultural substitution and translation by unrelated words were the most used ones. By applying translation by more general words strategy, the translator of the first novel made the meaning of slang words change and transferred them to common words, so he did not transfer the exact meaning of slangs and did not produce the same effect on the target language. On the other hand, the second translator applied the cultural substitution strategy to find proper equivalences for slangs in the target culture and in this way succeeded in transferring the exact meaning of slangs, and producing the same effect on the target language. Another finding of this study was that pictures are influential in transferring meaning of slang language to children and adult reader. According to results of this study, pictures can help the translator in conveying the meaning of slang words in children and young adult literature.