Iranian Journal of Language Issues
Volume:2 Issue: 1, 2016

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of three common techniques of input enhancement, namely, visual input enhancement, semantic input enhancement, and input flooding on female Iranian EFL learner's comprehension and production of lexical collocations. The participants were 80 learners, aged between 16 and 40, studying English in two private institutes in Karaj. To begin with, the participants were given an ECCE test of general language proficiency to determine their proficiency level. After taking a pretest, comprising 110 collocations items, the participants (in three experimental groups and one comparison group) received 10 reading passages over 10 sessions in which lexical collocations were presented in the above-mentioned conditions. At the end of the experimental period, the participants took two posttests of comprehension and production of collocations. Two One-way ANOVA procedures were used to analyze the obtained data, and the results showed no significant differences among the effects of the three input enhancement techniques on the comprehension and production of lexical collocations.

Intercultural communicative competence plays an important role in business communication. English for business course books need to provide students with the opportunity to explore, acquire, and compare various features of the cultures of different countries. The present paper reports a content analysis of three English for business purpose (EBP) course books published by two main academic publications in Iran. The aim was to find out cultural representation of center and circle English countries. Also the potential for fostering intercultural competence was investigated. Two checklists were developed for the data collection in the study, namely, Cultural Representation and Intercultural Experiences Checklist. Content or document analysis was applied to identify inner circle, and the outer and expanding circle cultural contents of the EBP textbooks under analysis. The data was quantified as the frequency of occurrence both in the texts and illustrations of the three books if any. Also the coverage of activities was recorded that allow for multiculturalism and foster interculturally competent EBP learners. The findings suggest that the texts were generally de-cultured and no provision was made for developing an intercultural personality in the students.

This study examined the role of phonological short-term memory (PSTM) in L2 reading comprehension at three proficiency levels. For this purpose, overall 140 EFL learners were employed at beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. They were all studying English as a foreign language in a private language school. All participants completed an English non-word recognition task, as a measure of PSTM. They also completed measures of reading proficiency, including a cloze test, a short- answer comprehension test, and a reading recall test. The data at three proficiency levels were collected and analyzed. The results of this study indicated that PSTM may employ a different type of cognitive resources and this is consistent at three different proficiency levels suggesting that proficiency level cannot play a role between PSTM and L2 reading comprehension.

A political discourse contains some features that must be constant in them to be recognized and understood by the audience as such, and it must, at the same time, fulfill the purpose of persuading the addressees. The paper investigated persuasive strategies as well as the ideology of moderation enshrined in the public speaking of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran H. E. Dr. Hassan Rouhani before the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly. It is grounded in Norman Fairclough’s assumption in Critical Discourse Analysis that ideologies are located in texts and that it is not possible to separate them from the text, so texts are open to different interpretation (Fairclough, 1995). Thus the selected ideological and persuasive components were examined, revealing Rouhani’s Persuasive techniques in terms of argument regarding nuclear issue. Searle’s typology of Speech Act Theory was applied as a framework to investigate the illocutionary force of sentences in the speech. Furthermore, the use of Aristotle’s three appeals, Ethos, Logos, and Pathos were examined with regard to the Persuasive strategies. A careful detailed investigation of the communicative role of pronouns showed that Rouhani made use of strategic deixis to unite himself with the addressees and ordinary people as well as to exhort western countries toward cooperation and dissuade them from excessive demands in nuclear negotiations.

The purpose of this research is to study the processes of dissimilation and insertion in Sistani Balochi Dialect based on Generative Phonology. A central idea in the theory of Generative Phonology is to find the underlying representation of phonemes according to the phonetic representation. In order to ensure the reliability of the data, a data corpus was collected from 50 SB speakers.The results show that the phonological process of dissimilationoften occurs between two phonemes of /l/ and /r/ because these two sounds belong to the same natural class. In addition, the results show that the process of insertion occurs both in consonants and vowels. Consequently, it causes the change of syllable structure and re-syllabification in SB. Insertion may occur in word-initial, word-medial and word-final positions.

Constructivism, the cognitive meaning making theory, is still of interest among academics. It plays an important role in translation competence of translation studies students. However, few studies have been conducted to reveal a significant relationship between these two. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the translation competence and constructivist classroom environment. A sample of 300 translation studies students were selected randomly. Two used instruments were Constructivist Translation Classroom Environment Survey (CTLES) and Translation Competence Questionnaire(TCQ). The results showed that the higher the students of translation studies constructivist classroom environment (CCE), the higher their translation competence (TC). Accordingly, there is a significant positive relationship between the students TC and CCE.

Some studies have tackled the issues of describing Sorani Kurdish and its lexical and syntactic features. Little, however, has been done with regard to comparing syntactic development in this dialect of Kurdish language with other languages. Taking the “focused naturalistic” (O` Grady, 2005) approach and through exploring the acquisition of the interrogative and negation in Sorani Kurdish, this case study investigates the agreement of the its syntactic development with other languages including English. Literature review and what came up through observing and video recording of the linguistic productions of a baby son from 6 to 37 months of age indicate that, irrespective of their first languages, children undergo the same developmental processes in learning these syntactic features. The study highlights the role of the innate capability of language acquisition and goes for the generative side of the extreme has been proposed for investigating the first language syntactic development. The study recommends taking these developmental stages into account in teaching and learning processes.