Iranian Journal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume:7 Issue: 1, Winter 2018

Despite the saliency of raising critical thinking not only in ELT but also in other aspects of life, there is still lack of studies in this regard that need to be filled. Previous studies dealt with Faiclough’s model not that of van Dijk, and besides, they weren’t concerned about CDA effects on different proficiency levels. The present study, however, examined the impact of critical discourse analysis (CDA) on EFL undergraduates’ critical thinking (CT) ability across different proficiency levels. To this end, 96 EFL undergraduates in three different proficiency levels of high, mid and low participated in this study to all of whom the “Watson and Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal” (WGCTA) was administered. They received treatment of van Dijk’s model practice over a period of an hour a week and for four weeks, once the model proved to be appropriate through expert judge. The results indicated that CDA has a positive influence on learners’ CT. Besides, the scores for the high group were significantly higher than that of low group, and the high group performed better than the mid-level group, but the difference was not significant for the mid and low proficiency level groups. The findings demonstrated that language proficiency has a positive mediating role in the extent to which a CDA model awareness can improve learners’ critical thinking ability.

Computerized dynamic assessment has been proposed as a solution to the practicality issues involved in ordinary dynamic assessment procedures. However, most of computerized dynamic assessment studies have addressed receptive skills (i.e., reading and listening). Responding to the scarcity of CDA studies of productive skills, the present study was an attempt to design and implement a computerized dynamic test of writing (CDTW) for 93 Iranian EFL university students. Moreover, this study investigated if learners’ willingness to communicate might have a facilitating role in their level of responsiveness to mediation. CDTW was designed following a sandwich-format interventionist approach.93 Iranian EFL learners took part in a six-week procedure that consisted of a pretest; a mediation procedure; a posttest; and a delayed posttest. Running paired sample t-test revealed that there was a significant difference between learners’ non-dynamic (pretest) and dynamic (posttest) scores indicating the fact that providing learners with ZPD-based mediations brings about significant changes in their performance. Moreover, learners’ learning potential score (LPS) proved useful in differentiating among learners with the same non-dynamic (independent) performance. In addition, comparing the posttest and delayed posttest scores revealed that learners could transfer their learning to situations outside CDTW. Finally, comparing learners’ performance through anova at three levels of L2 WTC (i.e., low, mid, high) showed that L2 WTC could have significant role in learners’ level of responsiveness to mediation in CDTW. This could be indicative of the fact that learners with high L2 WTC lend themselves better to the mediation provided in dynamic assessment procedures.

Demotivation is a relatively new topic in the field of second or foreign language acquisition which is in need of more rigorous research. In this regard, the present study was an attempt to investigate university students’ perceptions of seven demotivating factors in learning English as a foreign language across educational levels and fields of study in an Iranian context. To this end, three hundred and eighty two Persian learners of English were selected through stratified clustering sampling procedure to participate in this mixed method study. The data was collected through a 40-item Likert type questionnaire and a follow-up interview. The results of the study revealed that postgraduate students were significantly different from undergraduate students regarding their perception of inadequate facilities, lack of purpose to study English and class characteristics. The comparisons of four groups of field of study including social sciences, basic sciences, engineering, and medicine showed significant differences with respect to inadequate facilities, teaching methods, and reduced self-confidence. The findings had important pedagogical implications for curriculum planning and teaching English in tertiary education since diagnosing differences in perceptions of demotivating factors in learning EFL across educational levels and fields of study could pave the way in the procedure of removing and preventing such detrimental features.

The great shift of paradigm from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness has one major rationale in line with the definitions of autonomy, i.e., the capacity and willingness to act independently and in cooperation with others, so cooperation is looked upon as the manifestation of autonomy. In the present study, the researchers investigated the impact of training cooperative learning strategies in reading courses on inferential reading ability of EFL learners. The researchers used both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to collect data. The instruments were test, questionnaire, and interview. Sixty intermediate EFL undergraduates aged between 23 and 31 were selected from the subject pool of 197 participants and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The treatment group (n=30) received Student Team Achievement Divisions (STADs) strategy training as one of the cooperative learning strategies. The instructional material for both groups was identical. The control group (n=30), however, experienced an individualistic approach as common in traditional reading courses. An accredited autonomy questionnaire and an inferential reading comprehension test were administered at pre-test and post-test phases during the first semester of academic year 2016-2017. The treatment group was interviewed on their experience with cooperative learning. The analysis of the numeric data through descriptive statistics and one way ANOVA along with content analysis of the qualitative data confirmed that cooperative learning strategy training had positive influence on inferential reading comprehension ability of Iranian EFL undergraduates. This study also bears the implications of the findings for language instructors, learners and policy makers.

The present study examined the relationship between willingness to communicate (WTC) and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation among Iranian intermediate learners of English. It also attempted to identify the motivational orientations which best predicted learners’ WTC. Moreover, it measured Iranian intermediate learners’ willingness to read (WTR), willingness to listen (WTL), and willingness to write (WTW). To this end, 133 university intermediate English majors filled out a questionnaire based on which their L2 WTC and language learning motivation level were measured. All participants were then interviewed individually to elicit their attitudes towards L2 WTC and motivation in learning English. The results indicated that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were significantly correlated with L2 WTC. However, only intrinsic motivation predicted L2 WTC significantly, and extrinsic motivation was more dominant among Iranian learners. Results of the 7-item structured interview indicated that teacher immediacy, the teachers’ and peers’ judgment, and scoring, ranked in descending order, were as the top impetus to influence the participants’ WTC. Results also demonstrated that participants represented higher degrees of WTL and WTW than WTR. In light of the findings of the study, teachers are recommended to improve learners’ L2 WTC by recognizing individual and situational factors affecting WTC, strengthening their motivation and self-confidence, and decreasing their anxiety.

The present case study sought to investigate the application of dynamic assessment to an EFL writing context. It primarily aimed to understand the effectiveness of an interactionist dynamic assessment procedure through a web-based application in enhancing argumentative essay writing skill at the university level. The three participants of the study received mediational interactions in five consecutive sessions in an online environment where they revised their written drafts in a joint activity with the mediator. The analysis of the mediator-learner dyadic interactions uncovered traces of microgenetic development in the learners. Also, checking the frequency distribution of implicit and explicit prompts as well as the degree of learner responsiveness over the sessions showed a substantial change in the degree of autonomy and self-regulation in the learners. Ultimately, the participants were able to successfully transfer the learned materials from DA sessions to the transfer task. The study, after all, proved the efficacy of online interactionist dynamic assessment in the development and self-regulation of learners in argumentative essay writing skill.

For various reasons such as ideology of patronage, fear of censorial measures and specific cultural and literary plans, authors may present their original texts as translation, and sometimes translators manipulate the original text to the extent that it can not be considered as translation anymore. This research was aimed at investigating Bastin's adaptation as a kind of pseudo-translation. He considered two kinds of adaptation: local and global adaptation. In order to conduct this study, Zabihullah Mansouri's translation of A Year Amongst the Persians was compared with its original text by Edward Browne. 100 samples were extracted and investigated closely according to Bastin's procedures of adaptation. The results revealed that Bastin's procedures of adaptation were mostly applied in the selected corpus to the extent that it could be called a pseudo-translation. Intervention was so significant in the ST that out of 581 pages in the ST, 128 pages were omitted and the content of omissions was indicator of intentional intervention.Transformations, modifications and adjustments converted the book to a work that although could not be considered a text independent from its original, a considerable part of it was the translator's own writing.