Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies
Volume:9 Issue: 1, Spring 2017

This study, on the one hand, investigated whether or not strategies like Lexical Inferencing (LI) and Morphological Instruction (MI) can significantly affect English as a Foreign Language (EFL)learners’ reading comprehension, and on the other hand, it examined their effects on the learners’ vocabulary retention over time. For this purpose, 60 homogeneous EFLlearners were randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group each one consisting of 20 participants. After the pre-test, participants of the first experimental group received lexical inferencing strategy training for six 45-minute sessions. The second experimental group was also provided with morphological instruction for six 45-minute sessions and as for the control group, the participants followed their regular reading comprehension course without any specific strategy training. After the treatment, two post- tests with a short time interval were administered to the three groups and the obtained data were fed to different statistical tests to spot the probable differences among the three group's first post- test performance as a measure of their learning differences and the second post-test performance as a measure of the learners’ vocabulary retention differences over time. Results of the paired t-tests for comparison of the within group differences showed that lexical inferencing instruction had statistically significant effect on EFL learner's reading comprehension development. On the other hand, it was found that morphological instruction had no statistically significant effect on EFL learner's reading comprehension development. The ANOVA analyses revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the effects of lexical inferencing and morphological instruction on EFL learner's reading comprehension development. Furthermore, no significant difference was found between the effects of lexical inferencing and morphological instruction on EFL learner's reading comprehension development over time.

In Construction Morphology (CM), a compound is treated as a construction at the word level with a systematic correlation between its form and meaning, in the sense that any change in the form is accompanied by a change in the meaning. Compound words as one type of complex words are coined by compounding patterns or templates which are called abstract schemas in CM. These abstract constructional schemas generalize over sets of existing compound words and specify how new compound words can be created. The schemas dominate the compounds so that these words inherit all predictable morphological and semantic properties from these schemas. In fact, this is mainly the constructional schema which determines the properties for every compound word not individual constituents of a compound word. Therefore, the form and meaning of a compound, as a whole, are affected by formal and semantic/syntactic properties of the construction itself. Also, the dominance of schemas and subschema as over the compound words reinforces the idea of hierarchical lexicon. In addition, CM adopts a paradigmatic approach to word formation; that is, the creation of new compound words is caused by the extension of a systematic form-meaning relationship in a set of existing compound words to new cases resulting in new compound words. Regarding these properties of CM, This paper aims to study one type of Persian compounds, that is, compound nouns in the framework of Construction Morphology. From this perspective, two types of compound nouns including endocentric and exocentric compound nouns are treated in a rather similar way because the compound noun construction as a holistic schema plays the main role in specifying the syntactic features, head(if any) and semantic content of compound nouns, not their constituents. According to findings of this study, the analysis of Persian compound nouns based on this model increases the degree of generality in compound noun formation and develops the concept of holisticity in the form and meaning of compound nouns as well as it highlights the paradigmatic relationship in Persian compound noun formation templates.

In a broad dichotomy, cultures are divided into collectivists and individualists. This difference between cultures is manifested in educational settings and the way students and teachers approach educational tasks and activities (Hofstede, 1986). This study investigated the way the dominant culture can affect the cognitive and affective load of classrooms and eventually account for the development of students` moral judgment. To this end, 400 Iranian university students majoring in English language and literature were asked to complete FAMC test (Javadi mehr et al., 2015a). This test measures the role of four factors of "focus, sharing, challenge and support" in the development of moral competency. The results revealed that there was a growth in the pattern of affective and cognitive factors from the first to the last year of studying in this major. The results also indicated that challenge was the least attended cognitive factor but support was always the most prevalent factor in all academic years. The findings are then discussed by taking into account the findings of other related studies conducted in individualist and collectivist societies.

The present study aimed toassess the target and present reading comprehension needs and abilities of Iranian medical students with different levels of Englishlanguage proficiency. A total of 283 medical students and 23 ESP instructors were chosen through cluster sampling. The data collection instruments included the Persian version of Atai and Nazari’s (2011) needs analysis questionnaire and a 40-item language proficiency test. The obtained results indicatedthat ‘general vocabulary’ and ‘medical terminology’ were considered ‘important’ in facilitating the comprehension of medical texts. In addition, the findings revealed that medical students need to improve all reading sub-skills. Furthermore, the respondents’ perceptions were significantly different with regard to students’ target needs and present abilities in reading comprehension. Finally, there was no statistically significant difference in students’ target and present needs and abilities across different levels of language proficiency. The findings have potentialimplications for the improvement of medical EAP courses.

This study examined the impact of Clear Pronunciation 2 software on teaching English suprasegmental features, focusing on stress, rhythm and intonation. In particular, the software covers five topics in relation to suprasegmental features including consonant cluster, word stress, connected speech, sentence stress and intonation. Seven Iranian EFL learners participated in this study. The study lasted for six weeks and both the teacher and the software were involved in teaching suprasegmental features. To measure the learners’ pronunciation and their degree of progress for both pre-test and post-test, the software itself was used. The software has the ability to generate report and score on learners’ performance at the end of any activity. So, the analysis of learners’ performance was based on the software reports on their performance. The results of the study showed that the learners had a significant level of progress in all aspects of suprasegmental features. They learned suprasegmental features effectively and the exercises of the software were helpful for them. The results provide empirical evidences on the value of using Clear Pronunciation 2 software for teaching English pronunciation. This software yield promising results for the field of language teaching and can provide inspiring results in future.

This study aimed at developing and validating a new model and instrument to explore attitudes of Iranian EFL learners towards English as an International Language (EIL).In so doing, the researchers followed several rigorous steps including extensive literature review, content selection, item generation, designing the rating scales and personal information part, Delphi technique, item revision, pilot testing, reliability estimation, and finally validation. In the first phase, five dimensions were identified for the new model based on the literature and interview with a panel of experts. An initial draft of the questionnaire consisting of 33 items was designed for investigating learners’ attitudes towards EIL. Then, it was piloted with a group of 170 Iranian EFL learners. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the obtained data revealed that the questionnaire consisted of a five factor structure. Consequently, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out with another 409 Iranian EFL learners to check the fitness of the proposed model. The result of CFA indicated that the model enjoyed a satisfactory level of goodness of fit, showing that the five-factor structure including cultural realism, linguistic cultural disposition (negative), (dis)ownership of English, EIL posture, and localization was not the result of random variance in the learners’ responses.

Listening is regarded as an interactive process involving decoding of information. This study was launched to find out the impact of bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD)techniques on Iranian lower and upper intermediate learners’ listening comprehension.We selected a total of 120 participants in six intactclasses, three lower intermediate and three upper intermediate. The proficiency level of the groups was further verified and groups at each proficiency levelwere randomly assigned as aBUgroup who were engaged in BUactivities during the pre-listening stage of each lesson throughout the eight-session treatment, aTDgroup who performed TD activities, and a control group (CG)for whom no pre-listening attention focusing activities were used. The One-way and Two-way analysis of variance of the listening post-test scores indicated that the lower-intermediate BU group and the upper-intermediate TD group did significantly better compared to the other groups.The findings suggest thatBU processing activities were more effective atlower intermediatelevelwhile TD processing activities played a more facilitative role for upper intermediateparticipants.The findings support the interaction between proficiency level and information processing techniques and imply a number of pedagogical implications.