Research in English Language Pedagogy
Volume:3 Issue: 2, Winter-Spring 2016

Narratives provide a structured medium to construct and collect human experiences into a sequential word order. The current qualitative study employs the method of Narrative analysis to investigate such twenty-five narratives belonging to the Pakistani context, obtained from the collection of narratives archived on ‘The Humans of New York’ (2015) blog. Labov’s Natural Narrative Model (1972) has been applied to decipher the similarities and differences in structural foundation lying within these accounts as compared to those structural patterns outlined by the model itself. The findings reveal the abstracts of the stories to mingle the components of orientation and complicating action, instead of significantly separating them one-by-one. Furthermore, the orientation and complicating action portions are detailed structures, comprising of three and more statements, and include evaluation embedded within them. Such discovered patterns highlight the importance of investigating and learning about the structure of narratives, particularly for the English language teachers and learners it enables them to construct their stories, whether spoken or written, in accordance with the emerging patterns and makes them realize how different elements of the story bring about different functions.

The applicability of second language instruction to various situations including academic settings provides great opportunities for students and researchers to access fresh sources of knowledge. This is extended to the majority of Iranian students receiving courses such as English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) who may not find instruction compatible with their needs and aspirations. The present study intends to provide an insight into the current status of ESP and EAP courses within the Iranian context. To this end, 120 male and female university postgraduate students majoring in various non-English fields were selected and given a survey questionnaire to report on their needs and on the quality of the language courses presented to them. The results of the statistical analysis showed that 44.2 % of students believe that listening comprehension is the most required skill followed by reading, speaking and writing skills at 41.7%, 39.2% and 17% of frequency respectively. Meanwhile, the most satisfying ESP and EAP skills currently presented at universities were found to be listening, speaking and reading, in order of preference. In fact, it seems that the current instructional trend ought to be discontinued or modified in various ways. Finally, a comprehensive analytical analysis of the needs and components of each skill has been provided, discussing the potential of the current research for improving ESP and EAP instruction inside Iran.

One of the challenges of academic writing is the creation of a structurally and communicatively well-organized and coherent text. Metadiscourse enables authors of journal articles to achieve this goal by raising the writers‘ awareness about discourse features which can contribute to a better academic content production. Also, L1 background has always been a hot topic in applied linguistics and native versus non-native comparisons have been of particular interest in this field. The purpose of this study was to see whether native English speakers and Iranians use code glosses as a sub-category of metadiscourse similarly in their academic writings. To this end, the introduction section of 30 journal articles written by native and Iranian non-native English authors were investigated and the number of code-glosses in each group was counted and analyzed. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the research question of this study. The result of data analysis revealed that there was no significant difference between the frequency count of code glosses used by Iranian and native English authors. This study can have pedagogical implications for EAP course designers as well as academic writing instructors and students.

This study was an attempt to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ beliefs about effective teaching in foreign language classrooms. More specifically, the study addresses the need for a clear understanding of the role of teaching effectiveness in EFL classrooms by looking at Iranian EFL teachers’ own beliefs. To this end, 90 Iranian EFL instructors of the English language voluntarily participated in the study. A closed-ended questionnaire was employed as a prime quantitative data collection tool to investigate teachers’ beliefs about effective teaching in EFL classrooms. The respondents answered the three parts of the “Effective Teacher” questionnaire. The data analysis indicated 1) there was no significant difference in teaching effectiveness between male and female Iranian EFL teachers, 2) there was no significant difference between experienced and novice Iranian EFL teachers’ stated beliefs regarding their effective teaching, and 3) there was no significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ beliefs about effective teaching and their practice of effective teaching.

The significant effect of employing Readers Theater (RT) in reading comprehension, fluency, and motivation of English language students has already been established. However, this study was an attempt to investigate the effect of RT on the oral proficiency of Iranian learners of English as a foreign language. From among the learners studying English at a language school in Isfahan, Iran, a sample of 90 female intermediate EFL learners were asked to participate in this study. Having been taken Quick Placement Test to make sure they were all homogeneous regarding their level of proficiency in English, 75 learners were chosen. Afterwards, an interview served as one of the pretests of the study was run as the homogenizing test of oral ability and 60 homogenous preintermediate learners were ultimately selected as the participants of the study. They were then assigned to the two groups of control and experimental. During the treatment, the learners in the experimental group were exposed to RT, but the control group attended their regular classes. To gauge the oral proficiency development of the subjects, an interview was administered. The results of data analysis indicated improvements of fluency and complexity because of the learners’ exposure to the treatment. The results may provide further impetus for teachers to make attempts at extending the students’ active knowledge for real time communication as well as providing language which is both more complex and fluent.

Textbook design and evaluation has recently turned into a very important area in English Language Teaching. This paper evaluates the English textbooks taught in Iranian Junior high schools: Right Path to English which was the medium of instruction until 2013 and the recently designed textbook-Prospect- which replaced it. For this purpose, Tucker’s (1975) textbook evaluation model was employed to conduct the research. The advantages and shortcomings of the textbooks are discussed in detail with reference to three major criteria extracted from this model. The results indicate that even though Prospect does not cover up some of the inadequacies and deficiencies of RPE, the development of a textbook based on Communicative Language Teaching syllabus is, to a great extent, a step forward towards constructing an up-to-date series for teaching English in Iranian schools. Results of this study have implications both for teaching and materials development.

This study aims at investigating the effect of using cooperative learning (jigsaw2) and traditional learning on the reading comprehension achievement. In the present study, experimental research model consisting of pre-test, post-test with a control group was applied. The sample of the study consisted of 64 participants in grade three in Bonab high schools. To determine the effect of cooperative learning method on achievement in reading comprehension and the significance of difference between the scores of groups at 0.05 level were applied by analysis of covariance. the results of the analysis of covariance shows the effect of Jigsaw 2 ( control and experiment) on reading comprehension in post-test. The differences between means based on group members ( control and experiment) in post-test stage (the significant level α = .05) is significant. The amount of interaction effect is 18%. So these results confirm that Jigsaw2 learning method has significant effect on experiment group. Additionally, cooperative learning appeared to be more favourable for overcrowded classes. furthermore, the results indicated that cooperative learning enhanced student- student interaction.

Idiomatic expressions are considered as a part of everyday language. In other words, they are the essence of each language and one of the most problematic parts to cope with, especially in the process of interlingual translation. Furthermore, there is sometimes no one-to-one equivalent for the idioms of the source language (SL) in the target language (TL). This study aimed at investigating the applied strategies in the translation of idiomatic expressions in 2 American subtitled movies, namely Mean Girls (2004) and Bring It On! (2009), through using Baker’s (1992) proposed procedures in translating idiomatic expressions in translation studies. To this aim, the idiomatic expressions were extracted from the original versions of the movies and compared with the subtitled translations in Persian. Analysis of the relevant data indicated that the chi-square results were not significant at χ2 (3, N = 2) = 1.188, p = 0, considering p 0.05. Therefore, Baker’s (1992) strategies were not distributed equally between these two movies. Moreover, the “omission” strategy with the frequency of 40 was the topmost used strategy in these movies.