Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:2 Issue: 1, Winter 2011

As a culture-based phenomenon which involves both linguistic and social aspects, translation has been investigated from various perspectives. The present Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) based study is an attempt to probe into the manipulation of ideologies in translations of political texts. A CDA approach, based on Fairclough (1989), Van Dijk (2004) and Farahzad (2007), was adopted to conduct this research. Three English political books alongside their corresponding translations in Persian were critically analyzed both at micro and macro levels. At micro-level, lexical features based on Van Dijk's model (2004) and grammatical features based on Fairclough's (1989) framework were analyzed. This was followed by the analysis of macro-features (based on Farahzad, 2007) such as notes, prefaces, and footnotes in the translated books for the purpose of revealing the translation network's diverse world-views and ideologies. The results show that translators make use of certain grammatical and lexical strategies for the sake of ideological ploy, i.e. the basic strategy of positive self presentation and negative other-presentation. That is, all the lexical and grammatical deviations used by the Persian translators were in the employment of self (i.e., Iranian) interests. Also the analysis of macro-features revealed the translators’ ideological trends and judgments toward the source texts. More specifically, in the footnotes, the translators manifested negative attitudes towards the authors of the original texts by pinpointing their mistakes and false information about Iranian affairs as well as their hostility towards Iran. The findings are interpreted to have implications for syllabus designers as well as translation students and teachers.

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of modified cloze procedure on writing proficiency of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 110 participants studying at Semnan University majoring in English literature were tested on CELT proficiency test. 65 participants who were found to be homogenous were selected and assigned randomly to two groups of 32 and 33, one as experimental group and the other as a control group. Then, both groups were tested on a composition as a pre-test in the first session. During 15 minutes of each session the students in both groups were provided with explicit explanations about methods of paragraph development. After instructors teaching, the experimental group was provided with a cloze passage as a prewriting activity. Then they were asked to write their own paragraph similar to the cloze passage in terms of topic and method of development. On the other hand, the participants of the control group had no treatment. They were given a topic each session about which they wrote a composition. The given topics were similar to those of the experimental group. At the end of the term, the two groups were post-tested given the same topic of the pretest to write a composition (post-test). The papers of both groups in pre-test and post-test were assessed by the researcher and two other raters. In order to estimate the degree of relationship between the scores given by the raters to the first and last compositions of both groups, a correlation coefficient test (the Pearson product moment correlation) was adapted. Then the means of both groups were compared through the application of a t- test. The result indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the performances of both groups. It was concluded that the participants who received cloze passages on writing, outperformed those who did not in writing.

History of language teaching methodologies is characterized by variety of syllabuses equal to the number of teaching methods. Following the ups and downs in teaching methods, syllabuses have had the same destiny. In line with the humanistic trend in this arena, whole learner involvement received prime significance to the extent that many favor negotiated syllabus in language teaching and learning; however, empirical findings are not rich enough to have strong claims in this respect. To this end, this study was an attempt to explore possible corollary among application of the negotiated syllabus, development of learner's speaking ability and modification in their attitudes and motivation towards EFL learning. To do so, a sample of 54 subjects was selected through the administration of the KEY English Test (KET) and an oral interview. They, then, were randomly divided into two groups; one experimental and one control. The experimental group received the treatment based on the negotiated syllabus. The control group, however, was exposed to conventional speaking instruction as the teacher decided. To collect required data, six instruments including: the KET, oral interviews, the Attitude- Motivation Test Battery, a speaking test and a written protocol were employed. The data were triangulated from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The findings revealed that there was a slight difference between the mean scores of the experimental and control group in the posttests. The posteriori interview showed statistically significant difference between groups, while the posteriori speaking test indicated slight difference between the participant's mean scores. Contrary to the expectation, the participant's attitudes and motivation did not change significantly as a result of the treatment. Believing that the nature of the target traits (i.e. speaking ability and affective factors such as attitude and motivation) is not much amenable to quantitative research, the issue was triangulated from the qualitative perspective. To this end, a written protocol was also sought from the participants so that they could report their ideas on both development of speaking ability and change in their attitudes and motivation. The respective data analysis revealed roughly contradictory results. They totally claimed improvement, or at least positive impression of developing speaking ability and positive attitude and motivation towards language learning in the light of employment of the negotiated syllabus.

The phenomenon of how tests influence teaching and learning is commonly described as “wash back” in language instruction. Literature indicates that wash back effect is a complex concept that becomes even more complicated under different interpretations of the wash back phenomenon in teaching and learning. In the present study, some definitions of wash back and its two major types were introduced, and also the relationship between wash back effect of high school examinations and the learners’ language learning beliefs was investigated. To carry out this survey study, 120 female students were randomly selected from different high schools in Kermanshah. They were students of different grades in high school, 30% in the first, 35% in the second and 35% in the third grade. The participants were given two questionnaires to assess the wash back effect of high school examinations and their language learning beliefs. The wash back questionnaire selected from Nikoopour (2005) consisted of 42 items with a reliability of 0.82, which was designed based on a Likert scale. The second instrument was the so-called BALLI questionnaire selected from Horwitz (1987), including 34-items, and designed to assess the learners’ language learning beliefs (hereafter LLLB). The present study focused on the relationship between the wash back effect of high school English examinations and the students’ language learning beliefs. The results indicated that the students agreed on the wash back effect of English high school examinations. Also, they agreed with the correspondence between different factors of learners’ language learning beliefs and foreign language learning.

Black humor plays a crucial role in fulfilling Langston Hughes's anti-racist purposes as an integral notion in his poetry. Accordingly, translation(s) of his poetry are to benefit from the same indexes on the basis of equivalent effect principle. On this account, 33 black-humor-rich poems of Hughes, translated by Ahmad Shamloo, Yaghma Golruee and Hassan Fayyad, were selected to be analyzed contrastively in search of black humor indexes in the target text (TT). Then they were all analyzed based on the six-leveled Knowledge Resources (KR) hierarchy, including Language (LA), Narrative Strategy (NS), Target (TA), Situation (SI), Logical Mechanism (LM) and Script Opposition (SO), proposed by Attardo and Raskin. The result demonstrated that all the levels remained approximately intact through the translation except the LA and SO which appeared the most vulnerable. That is, mistranslation at the language level of a linguistic chunk which has a direct implication to specific scripts of black humor leads to the loss of black humor indexes in the TT.

The purpose of this paper was to see whether any significant relationship exists among EFL learners’ autonomy, left/right brain dominance, and reading comprehension of the Academic Reading and General Reading Modules of IELTS examination. To this end, 100 female EFL learners were randomly selected from those who were attending IELTS preparatory courses at a language school in Tehran. All participants filled out the brain dominance and learner autonomy questionnaire. However, 50 participants took the General Reading Module and 50 took the Academic Reading Module of IELTS. Correlation and regression analyses demonstrated that learner autonomy did not have a significant correlation with the participants’ performance on the General or Academic Reading Modules of IELTS. However, brain dominance significantly correlated and thus, predicted the participants’ performance on both the General and Academic Reading Modules of IELTS.

This study investigated 1) whether the effect of teacher-developed graphic organizers vis-à-vis student- developed ones was more significant on improving intermediate EFL learners’ writing, and 2) whether the use of both graphic organizers had any impact on their writing. The participants were selected in two stages: 130 students sat for a piloted proficiency test. Those who scored abovehalf of the total score (N = 93) took part in a writing test and, ultimately, 60 whose scores fell between one standard deviation above and below the mean were divided equally and randomly into two experimental and control groups. Both groups underwent a 20-session course of which 10 sessions were allocated to teaching writing with the experimental group receiving five sessions of student developed organizers first and, subsequently, another five sessions of teacher-developed ones. At the end of each series of five sessions, a writing test was administered to both groups. To verify the two null hypotheses, a mixed ANOVA was run (between-subject factor of having organizers in the experimental group and within-subject factor of organizer type in the experimental group). The data revealed that using graphic organizers had no significant impact on improving EFL learners’ writing; however, the use of teacher-developed graphic organizers did have a more significant effect than that of studentdeveloped ones.

This experimental study examined the effectiveness of using focused and unfocused tasks on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ performance in producing noun, adjective, and adverb clauses. In addition, the aim of this study was to explore the effects of form-focused instruction and the feedback students received from their teacher after doing focused grammar tasks. Data consisted of the scores of the pre-test and posttest as well as the data obtained through the administration of the tasks of translation to undergraduates at Islamic Azad University, North Tehran Branch over a period of one semester. After the administration of the Nelson proficiency test, 60 participants out of 106 were selected. Then all groups were given a sample TOEFL, which stood as pre-test and posttest to assess the clause performance of all groups. The focused and unfocused tasks were administered to the experimental groups, while the control group followed the exercises in the course book. Analysis of the data pointed to a strong correlation between implementing focused tasks, attention to form, and finally the performance of the learners in different types of clauses. The study also pointed out the relationship between the role of correcting errors and the subsequent consciousness-raising (C-R) on the part of the students. In conclusion, practicing focused tasks had an important role to play in promoting learners’ grammar performance.