IRANIAN JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS (IJAL)
Year:2003 | Volume:6 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

With the dissemination of a process-oriented approach to teaching writing, collaborative learning, which enjoys a constructivist theoretical foundation, has found its place in most writing classes and has shed light on interesting issues . This piece of research seeks to examine the impact of incorporating collaboration into Iranian EFL writing classes. The participants were 120 Persian-speaking English major students taking their writing courses, and 26 writing teachers, with minimum three years of experience teaching writing at university level. Data were gained from two pre-and post-course student and a teacher questionnaire surveys in order to evaluate the usefulness of different tasks and teachers perception of student preference, respectively. The findings indicated that the participants welcomed collaboration. There was not a high degree of correspondence between teachers perception of students preferences and their actual preferences. If carefully planned, implementation of collaboration, a concerted endeavor made jointly by the students, would allow for an interaction that is meaningful, authentic and supportive.

In a study of the effects of text familiarity, task type, and language proficiency on university students LSP test and task performances, 541 senior and junior university students majoring in electronics took the TBRT (Task-Based Reading Test). Variance analyses indicated that text familiarity, task type, and language proficiency, as well the interaction between any given pair of these and among all of them resulted in significant differences in subjects overall and differential test and task performances. In addition, regression analyses revealed that the greatest influence on subjects overall and differential test and task performance was due to language proficiency. The implications of the study are discussed.

In the present study, a new metadiscourse typology is presented with ten subtypes: connectives, topicalizers, reminders, intention markers, interpretive markers, hedges, emphatics, attributors, persona markers, and relational markers. The first five constitute textual metadiscourse, and the rest constitute interpersonal metadiscourse. This study also investigates the impact of language/culture on the use lf metadiscourse in the Masters theses of 3groups: native (Iranian) speakers of persian non-native (Iranian) speakers of English, and native (British) speakers of English. The introductions and discussions of these theses were compared for amounts and types of metadiscourse used, by means of a number of split ANOVAs. The different groups were found to use metadiscourse types differently; more specifically, they were found to use connectives, hedges, attributors, and persona markers differently from one another. This study has implications for a number of disciplines, in particular teaching English as a foreign language.

Using Michael Hallidays (1994) model f functional grammar, this paper reports on the findings from a large corpus-based study of scientific research articles all of which were published en English in 2001. The corpus comprises the Introduction and Conclusion sections of 100 scientific research articles from 10 disciplines, five from the social and five from the natural sciences.The texts have been analyzed quantitatively with respect to the realization of interpersonal grammatical metaphor, an aspect of the lexico-grammatical structure lf written discourse which has not been as thoroughly investigated as have other components of the Hallidayan model. The paper will present quantitative findings the realization of interpersonal grammatical metaphor in research introductions and conclusions a) within a particular research field, b) across research fields, and c) between the social and natural sciences. The analyses will show that the social sciences represent significantly more instances of interpersonal grammatical metaphor, Implications will be drawn for the Hallidayan model.

It has been known for a long time that L1 writers perform differently in different in different modes of discourse. Despite its importance, there has been little conclusive evidence to shed some light on the issue of ESL/EFL learners writing performance across various discourse types. There fore, this research study was designed to investigate differences resulting as the effect of four discourse modes, i.e. Narrative, Description, Explanation, and Argument, on EFL writing skill. To do so, in three different phases, the probable differences were evaluated in three dimensions of production(through eliciting compositions), recognition(through cloze tests derived from compositions written in different discourse modes) , and finally the learners and teachers attitude towards these types of writing (through questionnaires). Results show a statistically significant difference among these discourse types, ranking descriptive and narrative writing as the easiest and argumentative as the most demanding type of writing. The findings of this study confirm that the L2 learners follow the same pattern that has been established for the L1 writers, In other words, argumentative, compared to descriptive or narrative writing is more demanding, a fact which may have substantial consequences on language evaluation.

This study aimed at investigating EFL learners cognitive and affective factors, namely the use of Language Learning strategies (LLS), attitudes and motivation with special reference to linguistic background of students. It was an attempt to see whether bilingual and monolingual learners of English differ significantly in LLS use, attitudes, motivation, and proficiency in English. Further attempts were also to determine the best predictors of language proficiency and LLS use in the total sample. By employing an ex post facto design, 216 third grade high school female students were selected from among two groups of Armenian-Persian speaker and Persian speakers (110 Armenian-Persian speakers and 106 Persian speakers). One General English Proficiency Test (Nelson test, 150 C) with three valid and reliable questionnaires-SILL, attitudes and motivation-were administered to both groups. Statistical analyses of t-tests showed that there were no significant differences between the two groups regarding their proficiency in English as well as motivation. By contrast, statistically significant differences existed between the groups with regard to LLS use and attitudes to ward English and foreign languages .Further analyses showed that bilinguals differed from monolinguals in their use of metacognitive, cognitive and compensation strategies .The findings also revealed that the most frequent LLS used by two groups were metacognitive and social strategies while affective strategies were used at the lowest frequency. The two groups differed in the order of three other categories of LLS i.e., cognitive, compensation and memory .The results of multiple regression analyses also showed that the best predictors of language proficiency were years f study and use of LLS respectively . Moreover, attitudes and years of study for the greatest variation in LLS use.

The investigation of the role of L2 proficiency in L2writing ability continues to be revealing for the better understanding of L2 writing. This kind of study is also much needed in EFL settings like Iran for the better specification of the actual role of EFL writing instructors. The present article addresses the relationship between EFL proficiency and some qualitative and quantitative aspects of EFL writing performance. 140 college EFL learners, majoring in English as a foreign language in Iran, performed a letter-writing task. The quantitative and qualitative aspects of their writing performance were then quantified and studied un relation to their EFL proficiency. Correlation coefficients and analysis of variance showed that: 1) participants with higher EFL proficiency scores proficiency score produced texts of significantly better quality (R=0.42, P>.01); 2) text length, measured by the total number of words written per letter, was very weakly correlated with EFL proficiency scores (R=0.2, P>.05); and 30 the correlation between the fluency or speed of writing measured by mean number of words written per minute on the one hand and EFL proficiency scores on the other hand was not found to be significant . The results of this study suggest that although higher EFL proficiency may lead to the production of L2 texts with better quality and quantity - at least in some tasks - it does not necessarily affect the fluency and the processing requirements of the complex task of EFL writing. Instead, L2 writing fluency in its limited definition in this work was shown to be a function of L2 writing ability level.