فصلنامه متن پژوهی ادبی
پیاپی 32 (تابستان 1386)

Despite being a component of communicative competence, pragmatic competence has only recently become the focus of attention. This paper addresses the historical evolution and the models of pragmatic competence. Next, it gives an account of the categorization of speech acts. Finally, it provides a review of the studies related to the instruction of pragmatic patterns in conjunction with internal/learner and external/environmental factors underlying the acquisition of pragmatic competence.

This study examined the potential inter-relationship between three language learning strategies (Formal, Functional and Monitoring), proficiency level and reading comprehension ability in a foreign language. The data, obtained from 60 male and female Iranian EFL students, was collected through the questionnaire on learner strategies, derived from Rubin-Stem inventories, reading comprehension test, derived from Carrel (1991) and Nelson Test. Results indicated that students mostly used monitoring strategy. It means that learners pay more attention to the use of linguistic forms and modify language responses the most. Also this study found that Iranian EFL learners do not employ the Formal, Functional or Monitoring learning strategies differently as far as their proficiency levels or reading comprehension ability are concerned. Based on this statement, the researchers can claim that although almost all the learners unconsciously use a lot of strategies in their learning experience, the idea of learning through strategies, especially what they can expand out of the classroom, was quite new for the subjects in this study. In the analysis of learner's language learning strategies reported in this study, it was shown that the students of the high level of proficiency mostly used reading activities and students of the middle and lower levels of proficiency used listening activities more often. This result indicated that they used more receptive skills than productive skills.

Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronun ciation, his grammar and vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. Listening is a psycholinguistic process in that it starts with a linguistic representation encoded by a speaker and ends with the meaning that the listener constructs. There is thus an essential interaction between language and thought in listening. The speaker encodes thought as language and the listener decodes language to thought. However, listening, particularly in second language learning, is problematic for learners. As a result, second language teachers must recognize and implement effective listening approaches in their classrooms. One of the most commonly used strategies in listening is "concept mapping". The concept maps are visual instruments to comprehend the content of the text. The concept map technique can be introduced to the students in different forms. Variation in tasks, response formats, and scoring systems produce different mapping techniques. Fill-in the-map is one of them. The present study is an attempt to understand whether this concept map technique has any significant impact on listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The study was conducted on 60 female EFL learners at Kavosh English Language School in the first district of Tehran. After ensuring the homogeneity of the students by using a standard achievement test, they were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. A listening pre-test was used to determine the student's level of listening comprehension. Thereafter, the students in both groups were trained in listening in accordance to their treatment conditions; namely the experimental group with a concept map technique, fill-in-the-map, and the control group with no concept mapping. Following the training sessions, a parallel test as a post-test on listening comprehension was given to all students. A t-test between the obtained means of the experimental and Control group on the post-test revealed that there was a signifi cant difference between the performance of the experimental and control groups. As a result, the null hypothesis was rejected and it was concluded that the employment of the fill-in-the-map technique has a positive effect on Iranian EFL learner's listening comprehension.

This research is aimed at finding out whether Iranian EFL learners of English at the pre-intermediate level would prefer bottom-up or top-down processing in their listening comprehension. There were 90 students, 72 girls and 18 boys. All were in term 2 studying English translation and English literature at Islamic Azad University of Hamedan. Three experiments were carried out. In experiment, they heard a list of related words in each question and were asked to write down the last word, the onset of which was changed to tum it into a similar word which did not belong to the set, in each. In this experiment the learners were able to recognize the target words correctly and used bottom-up processing. In experiment2, a semantically constraining sentence was provided in place of a list of words in each question. A highly predictable word at the end of the sentence was replaced by one which differed from it by one phoneme. This substitute word was much less predictable but nonetheless acceptable in the context. In this experiment the learners were constrained by the sentences and could not realize the target words correctly and used top-down processing. In experiment 3, low frequency words were chosen which were unlikely to fall within the vocabulary of the learners but which phonologically resembled high-frequency words they were likely to know. Sentences were designed in a way to provide a meaningful context for the low-frequency words. Here, the learners neither preferred bottom-up nor top-down processing; they also wrote a lot of non-words, and the difference between using the words'' onset and the words'' offset was not significant.

Intercultural differences and their role in teaching English have been a point of research for decades. While some believe that it is useless in structured setting, some others consider it advantageous without having the disadvantages such as anxiety in the real context. The present study tries to investigate some significant cultural differences between Iranian and American/English culture some of which are selected from Brook's (1986) list and some others based on the researcher's experience. The results indicate significant differences in 15 out of 17 head categories. The information may help some 86 researchers including teachers interested but not knowledgeable enough in the intercultural differences.

This paper describes a study of EFL lexical attrition/retention among groups. It was also revealed that, irrespective of receptive/productive dichotomy, the students with higher level of proficiency retain acquired nouns more than others did. However, the research did not end in any significant effect of the initial proficiency level on the attrition/retention of receptive vs. productive word knowledge.Iranian learners after three months of disuse. Specifically, the present study examined the impact of initial proficiency level on the attrition/retention of receptive vs. productive word knowledge of 99 the acquired nouns. The participants were 60 freshmen majoring in English translation or literature. Through the end of spring semester, their initial proficiency as well as their acquisition of the nouns, which were covered in their Reading Comprehension course they have just taken, was assessed. Both receptive and productive word knowledge of these nouns were tested through a receptive/productive test modeled on Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1983, 1990; Laufer and Nation, 1995). After summer interval and at the beginning of fall semester, this very test was administered to them again to measure their retention/attrition of acquired nouns over this interval. It was found out that, on the whole, receptive word knowledge is more resistant to loss than productive word knowledge in all proficiency.

In this study two modes ofreading (CAR and traditional print mode) were compared in regards to their effectiveness for L2 reading comprehension. A group of 120 English major students were divided into three classes: CAR, Traditional, and Control. Based on the English proficiency scores each class was divided into two groups (high and low levels of proficiency). Three classes were taught by the same teacher and covered the same materials in their weekly four-hour reading lesson over one semester. From the three classes only CAR and Traditional groups received reading strategies instruction. This study also investigated the effect of gender and role of the teacher in CAR class. The data came from English proficiency test, reading comprehension test (pre-test), questionnaire, reading comprehension test (posttest), observation, and student's emails. The results indicated that strategy instruction had an impact on reading comprehension. In other words, CAR and traditional mode evoked better reading comprehension than the control group and Car resulted in better performance when compared to the traditional mode. Interestingly, EFL students with a higher proficiency level showed a significantly higher level of reading comprehension of the text when compared with those students with a lower proficiency level. Regarding the gender the findings indicated that gender played no significant role in CAR class. Finally, based on the observation and students emails the researcher concluded that the nature of the EFL teacher's role changed in CAR class when compared with the traditional class.