بهروز عزبدفتری

A controversial issue in language teaching is the extent to which engaging learners in the learning process may enhance various aspects of learners’ writing. The current study set out to examine the impact of employing evaluation rubrics as self-assessment devices on advanced EFL learners’ writing features. The current study probed the interactive effect of criteria-referenced self-assessment and task type on the accuracy, lexical resources, and coherence. The participants included 60 advanced EFL learners distributed into two experimental groups (30 male and female learners each). The instruments were two writing tasks as pre-test and post-test, assessed based on IDP rubrics evaluating lexical resources, task response, grammatical range and accuracy, and cohesion and coherence. Two-way ANCOVA was administered to analyze the data. The findings revealed significantly more accurate and coherent writing of the criteria-referenced self-assessment group compared to the teacher-assessment group with no significant difference in lexical resources. Moreover, the findings indicated that the participants performed significantly better on shared tasks compared to independent tasks. However, task and assessment types were found to have no significant interactive effect on the writing features in question. The findings emphasize the practical benefits of criteria-referenced self-assessment and shared tasks in promoting Iranian advanced EFL learners’ writing accuracy and coherence. The implications will be discussed.

Behrooz Azabdaftari is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at University of Tabriz. Born in 1938 in Tabriz, Iran, he received his BA in Language Education from Tehran Higher Education Institute in 1963 and his MA in English from University of Beirut in 1970. He was granted a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics by the University of Illinois, USA in 1980. During nearly 50 years of academic work, professor Azabdaftari has taught graduate courses at University of Tabriz, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University and Islamic Azad University. With an interdisciplinary approach to language studies, Dr. Azabdaftari has regularly published on the cross lines of Applied Linguistics, Translation and Literature. By translating a few key works on Vygotsky’s thought, he has had a significant role in introducing Sociocultural Theory to Iranian community of language teaching researchers.  He has also translated selected poetry from well-known Persian contemporary poets, including an excellent translation of Shahraiar’s masterpiece of “Hayder Babaya Selam”. He has joined an interview with Davoud Amini.

Sandwich and cake formats of interventionist Dynamic Assessment suffer from two problems: both are time-demanding, and the intervention presented to the learners varies from one learner to another.  To suggest a solution to the above problems in teaching and assessing reading strategies, the present researchers have introduced ‘sauce’-format mediation through which intervention is provided for the learners within ‘mediation boxes’ along the test. Thirty Iranian intermediate EFL learners participated in the study. They were first given a non-mediated reading pretest, and then they took the same test along with a ‘mediation box’ following each question to observe the probable effect of ‘sauce’-format mediation.  To measure the transcendence of the given mediation, the participants answered a non-mediated delayed posttest at the end.  Comparing the means of the mediated posttest and non-mediated pretest on the one hand and those of the non-mediated delayed posttest and the pretest on the other revealed that the learners benefitted significantly well from the ‘sauce’-format mediation and could transfer their learning to a novel context. Findings of this study are consistent with the previous research on DA that intervention supports learner development.

There is still controversy over the organization of the two languages in a single brain and the degree of similarities and differences in linguistic processing across the two languages in a bilingual brain. In the present study, the researchers aimed at comparing L1 and L2 lexical richness and speech fluency in aphasic bilinguals. Fifteen right-handed Bilingual (Azari: L1 – Persian: L2) female patients within the age range of 30 and 70 years who were diagnosed with a specific type of aphasia due to cerebrovascular accident and head trauma were selected for the study. Neurolinguistic assessments of the patients were done once at the time of onset of aphasia and also three weeks after the onset of aphasia with the use of Azari and Persian versions of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT). The extent of damage to lexical systems and speech fluency in both L1 and L2 at the mentioned time points were compared for each individual. According to the results, different degrees of impairments and different patterns of recovery of L1 and L2 lexical system and speech fluency were observed in aphasic bilinguals. Indeed, most of the patients improved in the measured categories three weeks after the onset of aphasia. However, the difference was not statistically significant between L1 and L2 lexical richness and speech fluency in aphasic bilinguals (p>0.05). The results of the present study are probably in favor of the notion which advocates that bilinguals have differentiated linguistic systems. However, further larger studies are suggested.

This paper seeks to elaborate on the notion of 'grammatical metaphor' intended by M. A. K. Halliday (1983) in his Functional Systemic Linguistics (FSL). 'Metaphor' in linguistic parlance is 'a process of mapping between two different conceptual domains - the source domain and the target domain'. Halliday draws on this definition of lexical metaphor and applies the concept to syntactical structures, a gimmick whereby a particular grammatical structure is converted into another structure while the original meaning is preserved. A good many examples are supplied to illustrate the points in case. Also, this paper deals with different kinds of metaphors. The key argument in this paper centers on the methodology of teaching writing to English majors in the author's English composition classes which we applied some years ago in the English program in the University of Tabriz. The claim we make is that the methodology of teaching writing which we used in our composition classes was indeed the practical realization of the tenets of grammatical metaphor intended by Halliday in his FSL.

This paper seeks to throw light on the concordance between man’s mental structure and the structure of narrative with regard to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. In so doing, the author first provides the backdrop of the literature on the topic by first explaining Vygotsky’s approach to the genesis of mind, and then gives a synoptic account of the views expressed by the men of letters regarding the structure and function of short stories. According to Vygotsky, man’s higher mental development is mediated by cultural inheritances – the process whereby man wins over his biological constraints, manages to control his internal processes as well as the external world, and accumulates his cultural assets throughout history. In literary studies, views regarding the effect of structure and function of story on shaping up the child’s mind are rampant. Almost all of the literary critics are committed to the belief that the formal structure of story (a) affects the child’s emergent mind, (b) helps him to store, organize, and recall events in the story, (c) aids him, as he grows up, to understand the working of social life, and (d) serves as a means for the child to record events and things in the fashion of narrative when receiving any data. All these points attest to the viable fact that man’s mind is genetically attuned to order and organization.

This paper represents an attempt to search for the implications of Vygotsky’s approach to ‘the genesis of mind’ for second language acquisition (SLA). In so doing, the present author has adopted first a retrospective view - what has already gone in the field of foreign language instruction, and a prospective view - what is contingent on the current speculations on SLA while drawing on Vygostky’s sociocultural theory (SCT) bearing on the methodology of L2 instruction. Hence, the paper consists of two major parts: the first part casts a rapid glance at the theories and practices of L2 teaching which were in vogue in the past. The second part focuses on the implications that Vygotsky’s SCT holds for SLA and, as a sequel, to the training and education of L2 teachers. Vygotsky’s approach to the genesis of mind, indeed, entrusts the educationists with a grave task regarding the amelioration of social systems of the community in general, and improving second language methodology, in particular. After all, the shaping of man’s mind is an indication of the ways the society has historically and culturally developed.

The ways individuals use words can reflect basic psychological processes, including clues to their thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and personality. This paper seeks to determine whether there is a relationship between Iranian EFL learners' writing styles and their personality and gender.  It focuses on gender and two key dimensions of personality (Neuroticism and Extroversion), which were assessed using Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (revised version). The concept of formality/contextuality was suggested as the most important dimension of variation between linguistic expressions. An empirical measure of formality, the F-score, was suggested, based on the frequencies of different word classes. Nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and articles are more frequent in formal styles; pronouns, adverbs, verbs and interjections are more frequent in contextual styles. The frequency of positive and negative emotional words was calculated by the program Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. The result shows no significant relationship between these variables. The reason is supposed to be other non-linguistic determinants of formality (e.g. situation and educational level) which may have a stronger effect on EFL writing styles.