PAZHUHESH-E ZABANHA-YE KHAREJI
Year:2008 | Volume:- | Issue:41 (SPECIAL ISSUE)|Papers Count:9

Inspired by the new trend in language teaching pedagogy in which more emphasis is placed on the role of teachers ( Kumaravadivelu, 1994; Brown 2001), the present study was conducted to find out if there is any significant difference between effective and less effective teachers in terms of their questioning and feedback behavior in class. The conversation classes of two effective and two less effective teachers, selected as such by the students, the Educational Office staff members and the manager of the English language teaching institute where the study was carried out, were observed. Each teacher’s class was observed two times. The question types chosen included “display” and “referential” ones and the feedback categories under investigation encompassed “explicit correction”, "recasts”, “clarification feedback”, “metaliguistic feedback”, “elicitation,”, and “repetition”. The analysis of the data obtained through the observation forms designed to let the researchers investigate the hypotheses of the study revealed that effective teachers not only ask significantly more questions than their less effective counterparts but also supply significantly more corrective feedback than less effective teachers do.

This experimental study investigates Persian learners’ clustering acquisition of the properties associated with non-pro-drop parameter in English as L2. Research has indicated that there are certain correlations between superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena in L1 acquisition that are interpreted as the clustering effects of one on the others within the Principles and Parameters framework. For instance, in German L1 acquisition, there is evidence for a clustering acquisition of subject-verb agreement and the decrease of (incorrect) null subjects (Clahsen, 1995; Clahsen et al, 2004). Likewise, there are general arguments that the same processing mechanism happens in L2 acquisition. Thus, the present research will report the results of a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) investigating the clustering appearance of L2 syntactic features related to non-pro-dropping parameter; such as obligatory overt subjects, V-S constraint and that-trace filter; in 60 Persian learners of English divided into two proficiency levels. Furthermore, each level consists of two different kinds of learners in term of the start age of L2 acquisition. They are referred to as early-starters who started L2 acquisition at the age of 7-8 and late-starters who first attended English classes at age 12-13. Our findings revealed that the three syntactic phenomena related to non-pro-dropping parameter cluster almost perfectly in post-intermediate learners indicating that proficiency level has a major influence on how bilinguals process L2 linguistic input. Moreover, we observed no difference between the performance of early and late starters with respect to clustering emergence of the above syntactic variables.

It is argued that task-based instruction creates more favorable conditions and facilitates L2 acquisition. For this reason task-based language teaching has recently been the focus of the attention of many L2 language instructors and syllabus designers. The main purpose of this paper is first to discuss the current views and three schools of syllabus design and then review three kinds of task-based syllabi: A) Procedural Syllabus B) Process Syllabus and C) Task-Based Language Teaching. Finally, the results of a classroom research in which two groups have been taught under different approaches will be presented. Preliminary results of statistical analyses revealed that task-based language teaching led to greater fluency and complexity than structural-based language teaching, as reflected in greater number of Words per Pause and greater number of Lexical Density. But the result ran counter to our hypotheses in terms of accuracy. Structural-based language teaching approach led to greater accuracy than task-based language teaching, as reflected in greater number of Error-Free T-Units. Pedagogic implications are discussed.

To investigate the effect of raising awareness of partial synformy on second language vocabulary perception and production, four groups of university students in a general English course were selected. Two of the four groups acted as experimental groups and the other two as control groups. The participants of the experimental groups were made aware of the orthographic similarities and contrasts whereas the control group participants were not. At the end of the experimental period, two of the four groups (one experimental and one control group) were given a multiple-choice test to compare their perception of words. To study the effect of partial synformy on vocabulary production, the other two groups were given a production task. An ANOVA procedure was applied, the result of which indicated meaningful differences between means. The follow-up Scheffe test showed that awareness of partial synformy positively influences both vocabulary perception and production.

This study investigated the relationship between motivation and the use of language learning strategies by university students. Furthermore, variables such as sex, the level of proficiency were also investigated. The instruments used in the study consisted of: (a) a questionnaire on motivation which was developed by Vallerand et al. (1992), (b) a questionnaire on language learning strategies developed by Oxford (1990), and (c) a TOEFL developed by ETS (Educational Testing service). The results of this study revealed that extrinsic motivation did not correlate meaningfully with the choice of language learning strategies. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation correlated meaningfully with the choice of language learning strategies. Also, there was no difference between males and females in terms of strategy choice and strategy use. Furthermore, the level of proficiency did not make any difference in the type of strategies students used. It was also found out that Iranian learners were intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated.

In the area of foreign language reading research not enough is known of the extent to which foreign language readers can comprehend the texts in which textual signals are explicitly or implicitly marked, and in which the discourse mode varies from one type to another. This research investigates how Iranian undergraduate readers of English approach narrative, expository, and argumentative text types in which propositional relations have been explicitly or implicitly marked through connectors. Participants read passages of each text type in both their explicit and implicit versions. The readability, length, average word frequency, and learner level which are hypothesized to have affected the results of the previous studies were controlled. The results demonstrate significant differences between learner level, and the explicit and implicit versions. The results confirm the contributory effect of these markers in comprehension. Therefore, language teachers, testers, and materials developers need to further consider the relationship between textual signals and text types in devising appropriate materials and techniques to improve foreign language learners’ reading comprehension.

Marta Ajala, the protagonist of l'Esclusa, (The outcast) , surprised by her husband in the awful act of reading a love letter sent by a man, is thrown out of the house even though she has done nothing wrong. But she will be accepted and taken in again, provided after she has actually committed the act which she was unjustly charged with in the first place. In this article I have focused on Pirandello's intention to demonstrate boldly the conflicts between the individual and social conventions which urge man to follow a determined social role. In order to avoid the assigned mask society imposes Pirandello’s character shows various reactions. At first the individual shows her unacceptable and absurd rebellious attitude demonstrating her own will to resolve her personal and social problems. But society does not accept Marta's attempt to deny her social role. In Pirandello's ideology if the individual does not accept his/her assigned social role certainly will not achieve Society’s forgiveness, and this will be a point of focus in this article.

This study investigates reading comprehension from the discourse point of view. It basically examined discourse knowledge of paragraph structure and the comprehension of academic/expository text. In this regard, it is assumed that it is the interaction between textual competence, including textual cohesion or rhetorical organization, and the text that can lead to discourse comprehension. Results of the study on 155 participants, consisted of two groups in two faculties of the University of Tehran, indicated that in terms of one group, there is a relationship between knowledge of text integration and text comprehension. The findings also revealed that the stage of discourse comprehension requires sufficient knowledge of discourse pattern to enable the readers to use clues for coherence and to focus on markers bringing logical relationship to the comprehension of academic text. However, regarding the results of the other group no significant differences between the experimental group and the control one was observed.