فهرست مطالب

Teaching English Language
Volume:3 Issue: 9, Winter 2009

  • تاریخ انتشار: 1390/04/27
  • تعداد عناوین: 6
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  • Zia Tajeddin, Masoomeh Estaji Page 1
    Teaching enriches students’ learning contents, while assessment evaluates students’ learning results. In recent decades, assessment has gained increased attention in EFL education. One of the important issues in the practice of assessment is the washback effect of testing on teaching and learning (Alderson and Wall, 1993; Buck, 1988; Hughes, 2003). Washback effect on teaching and learning can be positive (beneficial) or negative (harmful). Much research has been focused on the washback effect of assessment on students’ learning or large-scale, standardized tests (Watanabe, 1996). Assessment has powerful influence on teaching, too. Wall (1998) claimed that high-stakes tests might induce the impact on teaching methodology and content.This study explored the washback effect (Alderson and Wall, 1993) of a high-stakes exam, TOEFL iBT. It focused on the teachers’ perceptions of the test and its washback effect on teaching. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the washback behaviors of teachers and, to a lesser extent, students in the high-stakes testing environment of TOEFL iBT. The study followed a group of five teachers, teaching TOEFL iBT preparation courses. To explore the washback phenomenon, this study employed various methodological techniques, including questionnaire surveys, classroom observations, and in-depth interviews. The results of this study have shown a multi-layered account of the washback phenomenon. Teachers’ different perceived levels of awareness of high-stakes exams and perceived students’ learning attitudes have a crucial influence on teachers’ perceptions of the impact of high-stakes exams on their curricular planning and instruction. However, several discrepant findings from this study further support that washback is quite context-oriented and complex. The results imply that simply examining one factor without a covariance analysis or examining the phenomenon in one context is not capable of explaining critical washback issues, such as how and why washback phenomenon influences some teachers but not others. It is recommended that longitudinal studies, such as long-term classroom observations, should be conducted in order to explain to what extent washback actually occurs to influence classroom teaching.
  • Majid Nemati, Masoumeh Ahmadi Shirazi Page 27
    Writing ability is perhaps one of the most challenging constructs to be defined. For writing assessment to be valid indicator of the ability in question, there is a need for a theoretical basis. The uncertainty about the theory underlying the writing construct has led to the development of rating scales, each of which focuses on a number of writing traits. This study is an attempt to provide a taxonomy of writing traits. The question this taxonomy brings into mind is: how can we limit the nature of such an all-encompassing construct? If purpose and practicality are among the justifying reasons for reducing the construct into a few features, then construct validity of writing assessment will remain under question.
  • Gholam-Reza Abbasian Page 65
    This study, first, attempted to explore the conflict between EFL teacher intuition or concepts and learner''s accounts of the distinctive features of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and second to investigate the latter''s «hidden agenda» (Nunan, 1989) of favorable ELT in relation to educational context. The study was carried out in the Iranian educational context conventionally categorized into three settings including; authoritarian, semi-democratic and democratic. Two groups of participants including 150 EFL learners and 45 teachers answered three triangulating and already validated questionnaires (Brindly, 1984 and BALLI of Horwitz, 1987a) addressing both the nature of language learning activities and their beliefs on language learning and teaching. Findings revealed that the learners hold variety of self-efficacy beliefs different from those of their teachers about learning language, many of which supported to be attributed to the educational context type and language planning and policy. While both sides generally agree on the virtues of CLT to language teaching, there are many areas of mismatch in their perceptions as to ELT agenda including lesson purposes, classroom activities, and learning outcomes. The findings are persuasive in that: reflective teaching-learning rests on teacher''s awareness of learner''s ‘maxims’ (Richard, 1996), participatory syllabus design is a necessity, the gap between their opposing maxims should be narrowed, and the teachers are required to be aware of imposition of negative psychological impacts on the learner''s side; resulting from any cognitive and intuitive mismatch.
  • Mansoor Tavakoli Page 99
    The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of motivation in ESP reading comprehension tests at the university level in Iran. For the study, 245 students from different majors (literature, economics, medicine, electronics and chemical engineering) participated in the project. In addition to the motivation questionnaire, the participants in each major took a battery of reading comprehension tests related to their own content area knowledge, namely, major-specific technical English (EST) tests. The obtained data were subjected to different statistical analyses. The findings revealed, First, that motivation is significantly related to the test performance of the participants, and second, the English literature major students had a higher motivation in test performance than those in other majors. The results have some implications for TEFL at the university level.
  • Ali Roohani Page 117
    Literature can establish a particular frame of emotion which allows deeper understanding into it as well as our social relations. Also, emotional intelligence (EQ/EI) which seeks to fuse cognition and emotion interlocks with social and interpersonal mechanisms involved in language learning. In light of these views and lack of empirical study, the present study is intended to explore the relationship between EQ and interpretation of literature among 345 Iranian EFL graduate and undergraduate participants from six universities. As an additional goal, participants’ major of study and gender are investigated to see how they relate to emotional intelligence skills. EQ has been defined in terms of two instruments based on two models and literature has been limited to stories and poems. To collect data, MSCEIT and EQ-Map measures of emotional intelligence as well as fourteen short stories and poems were administered among the participants, majoring in English Literature, Translation and Teaching of English. Pearson Product correlation procedures and multivariate analysis were conducted. The results indicated that there was a significant positive correlation between EQ (MSCEIT and EQ-Map) scores and scores from the interpretation of stories and poems. Furthermore, the female participants were found to have higher EQ than the male participants. However, the participants from three English majors did not differ significantly in terms of EQ scores. Finally, pedagogical implications and suggestions are presented.
  • Mona Hoorvash, F. Pourgiv, P. Ghasemi Page 143
    The Iliad of Homer is regarded as one of the major sources of Joseph Heller’s war satire, Catch-22. The link between the two texts is multi-faceted and multi-layered. The present study explores one aspect of this link, the relationship between the hero and the authority. To do so, the sources of authority in each case are pointed out as manipulative forces which threaten the individuality of the characters, demanding obedience and conformity. Yossarian, Like Achilles, is distinguished from his comrades as more a hero than an antihero mainly because of his unique sense of individuality and personal worth.