Teaching English Language
Volume:4 Issue: 14, Autumn and Winter 2010

Due to the importance given to the RAs as the preferred medium of exchanging knowledge among members of the academic community, a substantial body of research has been dedicated to explore the writers’ problems encountered in writing or publishing the RAs (Braine, 1995; Flowerdew, 2000; Li, 2006). Although, Iranian post-graduate students (IRPGS), like other non-native English language users, are most often seen to have difficulties in providing a well-written piece of research for publication, to date, few, if any, studies have investigated their difficulties in RAs’ writing for publication in established journals. To this end, a corpus of IRPGS’ rejected articles for publication was analyzed guided by a developed evaluation checklist to pinpoint their main difficulties. Furthermore, a sample of 180 Iranian post-graduates filled out a questionnaire containing in-depth details on the basic principles of doing and writing research papers so as to identify their main challenges in this respect. Through the questionair, subjects’ perceptions regarding observing RAs’ conventions were, also, evaluated. Analysis of the IRPGS’ rejected articles revealed that the writers had the poorest performance in writing the RAs’ Literature Review. The results of the questionnaire revealed that the respondents reported writing the Discussion section as their major concern in research writing process. There were some similarities and differences between the writing problems identified both in the analysis of the corpus and the perceptions of the subjects answering the questionnaire. Finally, the respondents demonstrated a moderate level of awareness concerning observing the RAs’ standard structure and maxims.

The role of depth of vocabulary knowledge in EFL writing performance has remained an under-researched issue. The present study was designed to investigate the role of depth of vocabulary knowledge and semantic set in making appropriate word choices in EFL learners’ writing performance. Participants were 70 lower-intermediate and upper-intermediate EFL learners. Instrumentation included Oxford Quick Placement Test, Word Association Test (WAT), and two writing tests. The results of MANOVA and independent t-tests revealed that: a) depth of vocabulary knowledge played a fundamental role in appropriate use of words in a semantic set in lower-intermediate level but not in upper-intermediate level, b) depth of vocabulary knowledge had a significant role in overall writing performance only in upper-intermediate level, c) using words appropriately in a semantic set played a significant role in writing performance of the lower-intermediate participants, while the opposite was found for the upper-intermediate group. The results may promise implications for vocabulary and writing curriculum development and instruction.

The power of print media in creating stereotypical ideologies for certain groups of people is an undeniable fact (van Dijk, 1998). From a multimodal discoursal perspective, an element of high importance in every print text is the visual paratext (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Along with visuals, an important social issue which has been the focus of many studies and invoked many debates is gender and the hidden ideologies by means of which a specific gender is shown to be superior. This study was conducted to identify and reveal the positioning of gender in the images of three international and local ELT textbooks: New Headway, Top Notch, and Iran Language Institute (ILI) English Textbook. Dimensions identified in Goffman’s Gender Advertisements (1976) were integrated with the image semiotic categories of Kress and van Leeuwen’s Reading Images (2006) to analyze the images at the elementary level of these textbooks. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to find gender presentation in ELT textbooks. The analysis was focused on finding the active participant, gaze direction, visual techniques, body display, and space in which the participants were shown. The content analysis of the images in the three textbooks revealed that men were represented to be more active, competent, socially important, breadwinners, and powerful. In contrast, women appeared as less active and more reactive, objects to be scrutinized, objects of desire, breadtakers, and socially less powerful. Although the findings for ILI English textbook were slightly different and apparently indicated more gender equality, the frequency of each gender representation in the images of the textbook revealed more power and better social status for men. The results have clear implications. They can raise the consciousness of materials developers, ELT instructors, and other stakeholders as to gender bias in the visual elements of ELT textbooks. They also indicate that, despite international feminist and women rights movements, locally developed and adapted ELT materials manifest comparatively less gender bias.

A yet unresolved debate among language acquisition researchers is the functioning of innate language principles in SLA. UG-compatible analyses of interlanguage representations are not sufficient for this purpose. A satisfactory rationale for the involvement of UG can be established by the "poverty of the stimulus" arguments. The study endeavours to contribute to the body of knowledge on the POS argument from the perspective of distributional syntax with regard to the morphophonological and semantic constraints in the acquisition of dative alternation structures. To this end, a grammaticality judgement task was administered to three groups of Persian L2 learners along with a native control group. The results reveal that the L2 learners can acquire semantic and morphophonological constraints on dative alternation structures. It is the knowledge of abstract Case and Case assignment which is restricting the hypothesis space of the L2 acquirers. This in turn implies the operation of a domain-specific learning system in SLA and adds plausible support to the "poverty of the stimulus" argument the evidence of which corroborates UG access view and theory development in L2 acquisition research.

Research on teaching and learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at the undergraduate level has largely overlooked the significance of learner's socioeconomic backgrounds. This important variable is also missing in discussions of individual differences in second language acquisition. This study examined the socioeconomic status (SES) of 196 English-major undergraduate learners of English in relation to their general proficiency and academic writing ability. All the 196 participants provided survey data on their socioeconomic backgrounds, took a proficiency test, and performed an argumentative writing task that was evaluated by two independent expert raters on the dimensions of content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. In spite of their similar background formal literacy experiences, the participants showed significant differences in both proficiency level and academic writing ability. Based on the analyses of variance, learners from high socioeconomic backgrounds significantly outperformed those from average and low socioeconomic backgrounds both in their proficiency test results (df= 2, 193; F=3.769; Sig=.025) and in their performance on argumentative academic writing(df= 2, 193; F=3.632; Sig=. 028). The findings of the study and the related analyses clearly imply that learners bring with themselves the sustained effects of socioeconomic backgrounds to English classes at the undergraduate level. Stressing increased awareness of English language learner's socioeconomic influences (instead of encouraging their total neglect in EFL instruction for possible risks of class and race determinism) is the major contribution of the findings of this study. Based on the results and discussions some remedial pedagogical measures in accounting for these differences for the benefit of the less advantaged learners are suggested.

Postcolonial studies analyze the power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized people and tries to show the dominance of the colonizer over the colonized people not only in political, but also in social, cultural, and psychological aspects of life. The aim of this paper is to show how Brave New World (1975), a dystopia by Aldous Huxley, is strongly in line with postcolonial approach, and how it reveals some traces of Britain postcolonial attitude toward the colonized people. One of the key concepts which Edward Said (1979) introduces to literary criticism is ‘othering’. This concept can be traced well in the novel about the character called John and also his mother Linda. The governors of England consider John and Linda as inferior, savage, and dangerous persons who is an alien and an “other” for their society. Exile is another postcolonial term which is well applicable to this novel. According to this postcolonial definition both John and his mother are in exile because both of them are separated from their true culture. Other postcolonial conceptions such as subaltern, and cultural diversity shed light upon the unexplained, but seemingly simple plot and structure of Brave New World. Finally, the conclusion focuses on the fact that in Brave New World both John and Linda are others who are sacrificed because of the imperial oppression of the World State.

Recent studies have demonstrated the effective role of direct and indirect written corrective feedback (WCF) in the use of grammar, but little research has investigated the role of WCF in the use of collocations. This study is an attempt to investigate the effect of both direct and indirect WCF on the use of grammatical collocations in L2 writing. The participants of this study included 90 EFL learners in Shahrekord University, randomly assigned into three groups: two experimental groups (i.e., direct and indirect groups) and one control group. To collect data, they were asked to write three distinct essays as pretests, posttests, and delayed posttests, in which they were given key words to make collocations with. Sheen’s (2007) techniques were employed to correct the grammatical collocation errors in the direct and indirect groups. The results of ANOVA showed that, first, both experimental groups performed better than the control group. Second, the indirect group outperformed the direct group on the posttests. Third, the effect of indirect WCF was retained in both immediate and delayed posttests.