Teaching English Language
Volume:5 Issue: 15, Spring and Summer 2011

This study was conducted to examine whether raising the awareness of EFL listeners about the generic structure of news through portfolio approach may significantly enhance the subjects’ listening comprehension performance. To this end, around 97 advanced Iranian EFL learners participated in this study. The first experimental group received explicit teaching of generic structures of the genre of news. The participants in the second experimental group (i.e. portfolio assessment group) were helped to develop their awareness of the genre of news through completing their portfolios. The subjects in the control group listened to the news and completed some conventional activities. Instrumentation included a listening comprehension test and an attitude questionnaire. The results showed that explicit teaching of the generic structures of the genre of news as well as the application of portfolio assessment did not have any significant effect on listening comprehension performance of EFL listeners. It is concludes that only skilled listeners may benefit from genre-based pedagogy and portfolio assessment.

High-stakes tests are often used as agents for change, but attempts to introduce change in the classroom are not as effective as their designers wished they would be (Wall, 1997). The English for specific purpose (ESP) tests in Iran are such a case. The primary function of ESP tests in Iran is to select candidates for institutions of higher education (master and doctoral degrees). They are also designed specifically to promote changes in teaching ESP/ English for academic purposes at Iranian universities. This study was set out to examine washback effects of these tests on teaching ESP at Iranian universities. In doing so, data were collected through a questionnaire and classroom observations. The questionnaire was administered to 45 subject specialists teaching at Iranian universities. 10 other ESP teachers were also observed. The data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics. Surprisingly enough, the results indicate that the ESP tests have fallen short of the goal. That is, these tests do not lead to innovation in teaching ESP, not do they influence teacher's teaching activities and ESP contents.

The present study attempted to investigate the impact of sentence-level grammar instruction, explicitly and through consciousness-raising, on Iranian EFL learners’ lexical inferencing behavior and subsequent learning of inferred vocabulary. It also aimed at examining the relationship between the number of used knowledge sources and success in lexical inferencing. To address these issues, a quasi-experimental study with a mixed design involving two treatment groups and one control group was conducted. The participants were 47 adult learners at intermediate proficiency level. A counterbalanced design was utilized to eliminate the effect of the topic familiarity on the learners’ performance. Retrospective data were collected from eight participants, as well. Further, the eight participants were divided into two groups (successful and less successful) in order to identify the differences between the two groups’ lexical inferencing behavior. The findings indicated that sentence-level grammar instruction could place learners in a better position to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words more successfully and also could help them recall the inferred vocabulary better. The results are significant due to the controversy surrounding teaching grammar; moreover, they confirm the positive role of the number of knowledge sources in the lexical inferencing success.

Grammar teaching has always been subject to considerable controversy. With the advent of the post-method era, different options, principles and conditions have been proposed to guide the process of teaching which has led to the recognition of teacher cognition. The present study aims at delving into teacher's perspectives on different aspects of grammar teaching. Furthermore, it examines whether they correspond to the current principles of grammar instruction. 109 teachers from different language institutes responded to a Likert-type questionnaire adapted from Burgess and Etherington (2002). Then, the classroom practices of 5 of them were observed for more insights into teacher's perspectives on the current principles of grammar teaching. The results indicated that teachers had a good knowledge of different aspects of grammar instruction. Further, they valued all the current principles, but only applied the awareness principle in their classes. Finally, in the light of the results, it was concluded that the realities of classrooms should determine the content of teacher education courses.

To investigate the effects of synchronous and asynchronous interlingual and intralingual transcript presentation on L2 vocabulary comprehension and production, 120 first-year B.A students of English translation at IKIU (Imam Khomeini International) University in Qazvin and Islamic Azad university of Karaj were randomly assigned to 4 groups. Each group was presented with 50 minutes of a film with different transcript conditions – synchronous interlingual, asynchronous interlingual, synchronous intralingual, and asynchronous intralingual transcripts. The participant's vocabulary comprehension was tested using a multiple-choice test and their ability to produce the new words was assessed by utilizing a fill-in-the-blank test. The results of the comprehension test suggested that transcript presentation had no significant effect on the learner's comprehension, although descriptive statistics showed that the participants of the intralingual group performed better than the interlingual group participants, and in both groups, the students got better scores while transcript was presented asynchronously. In addition, the results of the production test indicated that neither the language of the transcript nor the time of transcript presentation had any significant effect on vocabulary production of the students.

Inconsistent rating seems to emanate largely from the application of different rating criteria. It follows that rater training programs may bring about higher rating consistency. This study aimed to explore non-native EFL teachers’ rating criteria for L2 learners’ speaking performance and to measure the impact of a rater training program on raters’ rating criteria. As many as 28 EFL teachers rated 10 monologs both before and subsequent to a rater training program and specified the criteria they applied in their ratings. The findings show they specified 10 common rating criteria, ranging from fluency to communicative effectiveness. However, they reconsidered the significance of a few criteria after the program. While there was a sharp decline in the significance given to the rate of speech and affective variables, the training program led to the rising importance of fluency, comprehension, and organization. The results reveal that the traditional skills-and-components-based perspective on language proficiency makes teachers lose sight of macro-level, higher-order components like fluency and organization. To conclude, the effective rating of language skills needs to be embedded in teacher education programs.

Magical realist fiction is considered a subversive mode in its commingling of the binary opposition (Reason/Imagination) with none at the upper hand. Because of its transgressive spirit, from the mid-twentieth century onwards many postcolonial, cross-cultural, and feminist writers have found magical realism an appropriate means of giving voice to their seemingly improbable ideals. Of the above-mentioned groups, women novelists around the world have done their best to create a sort of female empowering discourse through this kind of double voiced narrative. Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits and Shahrnush Parsipur's Touba and the Meaning of Night seem be to labors of this kind. The present paper is an attempt to answer two questions: (1) since their novels seem to emulate García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, do Allende and Parsipur really succeed in appropriating the work of the patriarch? (2) To what extent and in what ways Allende and Parsipur apply magical realist narrative techniques to express their protest against the status quo of women?