seyed foad ebrahimi

This study investigated the effect of implementing Computer-Assisted Autonomous Language Learning (CAALL) on the development of self-regulation in Iranian EFL learners through a mixed-methods design. Convenience non-random sampling was run to select the participants. A sample of 220 advanced EFL learners from four private English language institutes in Iran participated in this study. A quick placement test, a self-regulation questionnaire, and a learners' perceptions semi-structured interview were used to collect the required data. The learners' self-regulation questionnaire was administered to all the participants. Teachers, both autonomous and non-autonomous, separately implemented CAAL practice for 110 participants (experimental and control groups). Two teachers trained the experimental group on how to be autonomous in their reading performance, and they received CAALL in virtual mode. The control group underwent virtual reading practice. However, the control group did not receive the CAALL practice and instead received traditional reading instruction. The practice was presented through WhatsApp Messenger for 16 ninety-minute sessions. Following the instructional phase, we conducted interviews with the participants to explore their perspectives on the effectiveness of CAALL practice and autonomous learning. They were required to answer some semi-structured questions in a 20-minute interview, after which their answers were transcribed completely. The findings revealed that CAALL developed Iranian EFL learners' self-regulation. Moreover, Iranian EFL learners perceived CAALL as an effective approach to their learning development. This study offers valuable pedagogical insights for EFL teachers, learners, and designers of language teaching syllabuses.

This study investigated the effect of CAALL on Iranian EFL learners’ self-efficacy and reading skill development. A convenience sampling was run for the selection of the participants. A sample of 220 advanced EFL learners from four private English language institutes in Iran, participated in this study. Three instruments were used including quick placement test, self-efficacy questionnaire, and reading test. The learners’ self-efficacy questionnaire and reading test were administered to all the participants. CAAL practice was implemented by autonomous and non-autonomous teachers separately for 110 participants (an experimental group and a control group). The experimental group members received CAALL in virtual mode. They were trained by two teachers on how to be autonomous in their reading performance. For the control group members, the reading practice was executed virtually. But they did not receive the practice of CAALL. They have followed the conventional teaching of reading. The practice was presented through WhatsApp Messenger. The treatment of the study was followed for 16 ninety-minute sessions. After the instructional phase, learners’ self-efficacy questionnaire and reading test were administered to all the participants again. This study has some pedagogical contributions for EFL teachers, learners, Language teaching syllabus designers, and language teaching curriculum developers.

This study scrutinizes the rhetorical moves and sub-moves in corpora of literature review sections of 20 research articles published in prestigious journals and 20 literature review chapters of Iranian Ph.D. dissertations from English language teaching (ELT) discipline aiming to compare expert and novice writers’ practices and products. The move analysis approach was applied to fulfill the aims of this corpus-based discourse study. To this end, Kwan’s (2006) literature review move model was employed for the move analysis. The results indicate discrepancies in the length and frequency of use in several rhetorical sub-moves. Yet, both novice and expert writers almost followed a holistic schematic structure, including a novel strategy identified in both sets of corpora. In addition, the findings shed light on the significance of the disciplinary realization of the schematic structure and explicit writing practices for student writers. The pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed for designers and instructors to produce more appropriate academic materials for inexperienced and novice writers in terms of communicative purposes. 

The present study examines the application of metadiscourse markers according to Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model in laboratory sections. The researchers manually searched an 80580-word corpus of eight laboratory sections collected from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English to identify different types and functions of metadiscourse markers. As shown by the findings, interactional metadiscoursal markers had a higher frequency in laboratory sections than interactive ones. More specifically, the speakers relied mostly on engagement markers (a metadiscourse marker with interactional function) followed by code glosses (a metadiscourse marker with interactive function). As implied, audience involvement through engagement markers and facilitating their comprehension through code glosses are the primary functions of metadiscourse markers used in a laboratory. It is possible to incorporate this finding into the syllabus designed to teach academic spoken genres, including laboratory sections.

Cohesion, particularly through sentence boundaries, makes up the principal semantic features providing the text with the required unity. Cohesive relation is both helpful in the text unity and the readers’ textual interpretation. Among the different cohesive relations, encapsulation contributes significantly to developing the text, by which textual segments, including clauses, sentences, sequences of sentences, and paragraphs, are condensed and synthesized using cohesive markers. This study aimed to identify the frequency, textual segments encapsulated, and syntactic structure of encapsulated segments by the demonstrative pronoun “this”. Hence, 20 research articles from the discipline of Civil Engineering from five top journals published by Elsevier were selected and analyzed. Results showed that a) “This” was more frequent in the sentence-initial compared to other positions; b) “This” was utilized more to serve the function of “Encapsulation” than point-to-point cohesion; and c) “This” was used to encapsulate two syntactic structures, namely one sentence and one clause structures. The results of this study could provide a practical guide for writers (especially novice writers) of research articles in Civil Engineering and disciplines close to it about how to use the pronoun “this” to serve the function of encapsulation.

One of the methods of persuasion in academic linguistic interactions is the use of metadiscourse markers. These markers are a tool to facilitate communication, increase the readability of the text, establish a relationship with the readers and involve them, and avoid rejecting the author's interpretations. The purpose of this study is to explore meta-discourse markers in academic correspondence between students and professors. To this end, 200 student e-mails (13,103 words in size) were randomly selected between 2019 and 2022, and were analyzed based on Hyland's (2005) model of meta-discourse markers with two categories of interactive metadiscourse markers (including transitive markers, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses) and interactional metadiscourse markers (including hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions and engagement markers). The relationship between the frequency of either of interactive or interactional markers with one of the Aristotle's rhetorical triangle (i.e., logos, ethos and pathos) (Hyland, 2005) is also discussed. Results show that the use of interactional metadiscourse markers was more than interactive metadiscourse markers in the corpus. Also, the engagement marker as an indicator of appealing to pathos was the most frequently used interactional markers in the corpus. In addition, transitive markers, as an indicator of appealing to logos, has the highest frequency among interactive metadiscourse markers. The results of this study conform to the previous findings that the use of metadiscourse markers depend on the context and genre in which it is used.

PhD examination is a unique type of assessment with examiners playing a key role in it. Despite extensive research on various modes of academic genre, research on the examiners’ language representing oral review genre is yet underrepresented. One important way to identify this genre is to unpack the metadiscursive features that constitute this type of academic discourse. Using a metadiscourse framework, developed by Hyland (2005), this study investigates the metadiscursive markers that constitute Iranian and International examiners’ language of PhD dissertation evaluation. The data include the transcriptions of Iranian and International examiners’ evaluative discourse in eight PhD dissertation defenses, taken place in Iran and the US (MICASE corpus), representing English for Academic Purposes. The results indicate that the examiners use a variety of interactional as well as interactive metadiscourse markers to convey the effective and appropriate evaluation of the PhD dissertations at hand. Further breakdown of the metadiscourse devices and the comparison of the two sets of data are provided. The results unpack an aspect of oral academic review as a specific genre with implications for both EAP-user examiners and PhD candidates to become aware of the discursive features of the examiners language.

Reporting Verbs have gained considerable attention in corpus-based studies during the previous years. It is necessary to utilize reporting verbs appropriately to establish the writer’s claims and situate them across formerly published studies. Given the importance of the reporting verbs, the current study explored the rates and the differences of reporting verbs across science disciplines. Hence, a total number of 200 Results and Discussion sections of research articles consisting of 50 excerpts from the four science categories introduced by Science Direct web of science, namely Life Science, Social Science and Humanities, Physical Science and Engineering, and Health Sciences were gathered and used as the corpus and analyzed based on Thomas and Hawes's framework. The results showed that authors in Life Science and Health Science used more reporting verbs in comparison to the other two science disciplines. Furthermore, the tentative reporting verbs had a higher frequency than certainty reporting verbs. The research findings have several implications for novice researchers within various science disciplines in reporting their claims using reporting verbs and for course designers to treat crucial problems of the students in their academic writings.

This study aimed to examine the realization of the semantic and syntactic functions and types of verbs in the introduction section of research articles (RAs) from English literary studies. The functions and types of verbs were investigated in a corpus of 20 published research articles in literary studies written by experts with English as L1. This qualitative study was built on a corpus purposively selected and analyzed from each article to specify functions of verbs by various patterns of the semantic and syntactic structures and determine the types and frequencies of verbs in the introduction sections of the RAs. The analysis of semantic and syntactic functions of verbs indicated the semantic and syntactic features and type of verbs, revealing how verbs were used in the introduction section of RAs in literary studies. Data analysis also highlighted different functions and types of verbs (syntactically and semantically) purposefully used in these studies. Students can benefit from the results of the present study to enhance their linguistic and writing skills in writing for academic purposes (EAP) and promote various strategies used in the production, comprehension, and reproduction of discourses in ELT.

The present study investigated the tense and aspect from morphological and phonological perspectives in the Bakhtiari dialect as a linguistic variety of the Persian language. This dialect is used in four provinces of Charmahal and Bakhtiari, Isfahan, Kohgiloye and Boyerahmad, and Khuzestan. The method of the study is descriptive which has been conducted through field study. Data were collected in Charmahal and Bakhtiari provinces and the north of Khuzestan province. About 10 hours of peoples' daily conversations were recorded and analyzed based on Katamba and Stonham (2007). Results showed that the future and past tenses of this dialect have attached auxiliary verbs of "be "pronounced as "bid", "vi" or "bi". The bound morpheme of /e/ is initially attached to the verb stem which shows no perfect aspect of this structure. Thus, the perfect aspect cannot be seen in this dialect; therefore, simple past or past perfect tense is used interchangeably. Past perfect aspects can be seen as a frequent structure in this dialect. The results of this study can help linguistics arrive at a complete picture of Bakhtiari's verbal constituents. It also may be a guide for investigating other Persian language dialects regarding their grammatical structures.

The interaction between the writers and the experts while using citations is one of the main features of academic texts. For the integration of external experts into the text, writers usually use reporting verbs, which seem to function differently. Furthermore, selecting reporting verbs (RVs) by the researchers of disciplines seems to vary. This paper explored the functions of RVs across sciences. To this end, 200 “Results and Discussion” section of RAs from the four sciences, namely Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Health Sciences were gathered and used as the data, and their functions of RVs were analyzed based on Hyland’s framework (2002). Hyland (2002) considered three basic RV types based on their function, including research, cognitive, and discourse acts, subsequently dividing each category into several subcategories. The results showed that the writers in Life Sciences used more research acts in comparison to the other disciplines. In terms of cognition acts, the rates of tentative verbs were high in all sciences since the researchers tried to report the results with caution as they were uncertain about the findings. The results approved this claim, indicating the high frequency of tentative verbs under the category of discourse acts, across disciplines using verbs like hypothesize, indicate, and suggest to show doubt with different rates. The obtained results can guide novice writers of the above-mentioned four disciplines to advance an authorial perspective and adjust to the expert conventions of the relevant research areas.

There are two different trends for the study of metadiscourse, including interactive and reflexive. The reflexive model suggested by (Mauranen, 1993) and (Ädel, 2010) cares about reflexivity in language. As reflexivity plays a pivotal role in spoken genres, this study aimed to study the frequency and functions of reflexive metadiscourse markers in academic interviews. Hence, this study focused on a corpus of three academic interviews carried out in English native academic context that was taken from “The Michigan Corpus of Academe Spoken English” (MICASE). The corpus was analyzed using the model by Ädel that includes four functional categories of metalinguistic comments, discourse organization, speech act labels, and references to the audiences. The results showed that about one-quarter of the personal pronouns were metadiscourse. Besides, among the personal pronouns that perform metadiscourse function, singular first-person pronoun was the most frequent while plural first-person pronoun was very rare. It was also found that among the four functions, the interviewees and interviewers paid more attention to metalinguistic comments and references to the audience. The results of this study could add to the knowledge of those participating in interviews in general and in the academic context in particular.

The unity of texts and readers’ textual interpretation is achieved through cohesive relations across sentence boundaries. Cohesive relations establish links that aid in providing access to linguistic elements and activate information in the readers’ memory. Encapsulation is a cohesive relation, which is very helpful in the text’s development as it condenses and synthesizes textual segments such as sentences, sequences of sentences, and paragraphs. Thus, this study intends to investigate the frequency of encapsulator THIS and syntactic and textual structures of encapsulated segments through THIS. This study also reports on the verbs used with encapsulator THIS. Hence, two corpora of papers from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Paper written by Nursing and Biology students were selected. It encapsulates a variety of textual structures, including sentences, sentence chains, and paragraphs. The results also showed that encapsulated structures used verb forms with different functional processes. In addition, the results highlighted some disciplinary differences concerning encapsulation (frequencies and encapsulated structures) and verbs’ functional processes used in encapsulation. The results of this study are directly applicable in the syllabus designed for writing academic genres.

Hedging and boosting are significant communicative resources to construe and attain persuasion in different fields and particular genres of academic writing. Hedges allow the researcher to address possible problems, raise objections or anticipate opposition to the research claims while contributing something new to the ongoing dialogue in a research field. Boosters enormously help to achieve the essential writers’ need to convince their readership of the truth in their propositions. They are mainly used whenever writers consider it not too risky to include them in their propositions. This study aims to investigate the frequencies and functions of hedges and boosters in academic students' essays. To meet this end, 96 students' essays (a total of 269.428 words) were selected from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP), including English and Psychology disciplines. The corpus was analyzed based on Abdollahzadeh (2019)classification of hedges. The results showed that hedges and boosters were frequent enough to be considered in teaching writing, either reducing or increasing the force of written utterances. The results of this study could be used directly in the syllabus designed for academic essay writing.

Digital communication technologies could play a pivotal role in the realm of learning, entertainment, and education for children, and could significantly affect the nature of commercial relations with children. The use of media as new communication technologies for children over the past decade has hosted many researches. The present study aimed to determine the effect of advertising literacy education on 6th-grade primary school female students' critical thinking skills in facing the media commercial messages in the city of Dezful in 2019-2020. The population consisted of all the 6th-grade primary school students in the city of Tehran, of which 60 students were selected using the random clustering method and randomly assigned into two groups of experiment and control. The tool used in this study was Cornell Critical Thinking Test (CCTT), and analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. The results showed that advertising literacy affected students' critical thinking. The effects on students' inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and observational analysis of advertising messages, credibility, and hypothesizing power were found significant.

 acts as an important device to manage information and to let the reader decide whether it is merit to continue reading the research article. In this paper, we intend to investigate the frequencies and discourse functions of types of grammatical subject (unmarked theme) used in research article abstracts from four disciplines. To this end, 300 research article abstracts were randomly selected (75 from each discipline) from leading prestigious journals in the four disciplines namely Applied Linguistics, Economics, Agriculture, and Applied Physics, and were analyzed based on Gosden’s (1993) classifications that include 16 types of grammatical subject. The results indicated that only six types of grammatical subject were used in the corpus and the frequencies of these types varied across the four disciplines. Besides, the results reported high similarities concerning the discourse functions served using the grammatical subject types. Thus, it could be concluded that the selection and discourse functions of the grammatical subject types are imposed by conventions of writing research article abstracts. The results could add to the existing knowledge of writing research article abstract in the analyzed disciplines by increasing awareness concerning selections of grammatical subject types.

This study aimed to investigate the grammatical complexity based on Biber, Gray, Staples, and Egbert’s (2020) linguistic description in research articles published in Iranian local journals and international journals. The corpus of the study included 40 Applied Linguistics research articles, 20 published in Iranian local journals and 20 in international journals in 2019-2020. The research articles were selected through purposive sampling from two Iranian journals, namely Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics and Journal of Teaching Language Skills, and two international journals, including Journal of English for Specific Purposes and System Journal. The research articles were analyzed in terms of three dimensions of grammatical complexity, including the structural types, syntactic functions, and specific structural/syntactic features. Moreover, for intra-rater consistency, the researcher re-analyzed the corpus after one month to see whether the same results were found. According to the results, in terms of the first dimension, i.e., the structural types, the frequencies of structures indicating higher grammatical complexity (non-finite dependent clauses and dependent phrases) outnumbered the frequency of structures showing lower grammatical complexity (finite dependent clauses) in both local and international journals. Concerning the second dimension, i.e., syntactic function within the structural type, the frequencies of more complex syntactic functions were higher than those of simple functions in both sets of research articles. Concerning the third dimension, i.e., specific structural/syntactic features, both groups of writers preferred to use more complex specific structural/syntactic features than simple ones.

Metadiscourse as one of the pivotal multifunctional linguistic features in spoken and written discourse has been investigated from two points of view; narrow and broad. In narrow point of view of metadiscourse, reflexivity in discourse is focused. Among the two points of view of metadiscourse, reflexivity is mostly used in spoken discourse, thus this study aims to trace the realization of functions of reflexivity metadiscourse in PhD dissertation sessions. To meet this end, four PhD dissertation defense sessions (totally 56837 words) were selected to make the corpus of this study. The transcription of the four sessions were analyzed for reflexive metadiscourse markers functions based on the model that includes four functional categories; “metadiscourse comments”, “discourse organization”, “speech act labels”, and “references to the audiences.”  The results showed that disciplinary speaking conventions have the most pivotal and significant impose on speakers to use categories of reflexive metadiscourse. For instance, it was found that in defense session on “Fosil Plant”, the “reference to audience” was the most frequent category while in defense session on “Music”, the “metalinguistic comments” has received the greatest attention for speakers. Findings of this study could contribute to the existing literature by helping EFL PhD candidates to understand and appropriately use reflexive metadiscourse markers.

Linking adverbials as cohesive features tie the ideas to form dynamic and satisfactory text. This study intended to investigate the use of linking adverbials in two spoken genres; student presentations (Class other than a seminar in which one or more students speak in front of the class or lead the discussion) and discussion sections (Additional section of a lecture class designed for maximum student participation; maybe also called recitation). To this end, the study was based on the data collected from a corpus including 11 student presentations and nine discussion sections. The data were taken from MICASE (the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) corpus and then analyzed based on Liu’s (2008) taxonomy of linking adverbials. The results indicated that in both genres additive and sequential classes of linking adverbials have received similar attention while the two genres were different in the proportion dedicated to the realizations of additive and causal/resultive classes of linking adverbials. The results pointed to differences concerning the use of subclasses adversative linking adverbials in both genres. The results of this study could have a contribution in teaching these important cohesive features in ESL classes aiming to improve students in relation to these two genres.

This study intends to investigate the realizations and functional patterns of shell nouns in Applied Linguistics research articles.  To this end, fifty research articles in the field of Applied Linguistic were selected from Journal of English for Academic Purposes and journal of English for Specific Purposes published by Elsevier.  The articles were analyzed for the realizations of shell nouns based on the list suggested by Hinkel (2004).  As to the functional patterns, Schmid’s (2000) classification of functional patterns of shell nouns was also adopted.  Findings reported that some shell nouns are used more frequently while some were put aside.  Findings also reported that writers of research articles in the field of Applied Linguistics used functional patterns suggested by Schmid (2000).  Findings of this study could have implications by raising the awareness of writers of Applied Linguistics research articles, especially in EFL contexts, concerning the use of shell nouns and functional patterns in which shell nouns are used.

Cohesive frames are linguistic elements that precede the grammatical subject in the main clause. This study investigated the frequencies and communicative purposes of cohesive frame types in results and discussion section of research articles from 4 disciplines. To run this study, 40 results and discussion sections of research articles were selected from 4 disciplines, namely Applied Linguistics, Psychology, Chemistry and Environmental Engineering (10 from each discipline). Then, the corpus was analyzed using Ebrahimi’s (2014) taxonomy of cohesive frame types. The results showed that writers of the four sets of results and discussion section of research articles showed similarities and differences concerning the frequencies and communicative purposes served through the use of cohesive frame markers. frequencies and communicative purposes of cohesive frame types were imposed by the rhetorical functions of results and discussion section and disciplinary conventions of writing. The results may have implications for teaching students in writing the results and discussion section of research articles, particularly for non native novice writers of English.

Frequencies and discourse functions of grammatical subject types were investigated in a corpus of forty results and discussion sections selected from four disciplines (Applied Linguistics, Psychology, Chemistry, and Environmental Engineering). The results and discussion sections were selected from research articles that were published in 2008-2012 issues of prestigious high journals of the four disciplines. The results and discussion sections were analyzed for realizations and discourse functions of grammatical subject types adopting the taxonomy suggested by Ebrahimi (2014). The results suggested that the selections, frequencies and discourse functions of grammatical subject types were highly imposed by the macro functions of the results and discussion sections and the conventional rules of writing in the disciplines. One immediate implication for the outcome of this study is that writers and instructors need to keep in mind that they must be fully aware (and follow suit) of how the implementation of grammatical subjects are imposed and restricted by disciplinary conventions.

The purpose of the present study is to analyse abstracts related to Applied Linguistics, and more precisely the discourse functions of grammatical subjects and verbs. The corpus consisted of 50 PhD thesis abstracts written on the subject of Applied Linguistics. All of the abstracts were written from 2010 to 2014. The theses from which the abstracts were extracted are available in the ProQuest database. Based on the model put forth by Swales and Feak (2004), the elements of the abstracts were identified. In accordance with Ebrahimi (2014), frameworks were used to analyse discourse functions, while the realisation of grammatical subjects and verbs was analysed for tense types. The results revealed that the “introducing part of study” and “research-related objects” were the predominant types of grammatical subjects. Indeed, these performed more discourse functions in Applied Linguistics PhD thesis abstracts compared with other grammatical subject types. The results also indicated that simple past tense was predominant in aim, method, and results sections, while the simple present was predominant in the background and conclusion sections.

This study intends to scrutinize the realizations and discourse functions of context frames in research article abstracts written by native and non-native writers of English from four disciplines namely: Applied Linguistics, Economics, Biology, and Mechanical Engineering. To this end, 200 research article abstracts (50 from each discipline) were selected for analysis. From the 50 research article abstracts of each discipline, 25 were written by native writers of English and 25 written by Iranian non-native writers of English. The corpora, then, were analyzed based on the analytical framework proposed by Ebrahimi (2014). Based on the findings obtained, it can be concluded that the context frame’s selection, frequency and discourse functions are affected and imposed by the nature of discipline and genre of RA abstracts. The result also indicated that there is a difference between native and Iranian non-native writers of English in dealing with these elements. In addition, the findings stress the fact that writing is restricted by the disciplinary conventions and writers’ background knowledge of English language.

This study aims to investigate the semantic and syntactic features of verbs used in the introduction section of Applied Linguistics research articles published in Iranian and international journals. A corpus of 20 research article introductions (10 from each journal) was used. The corpus was analysed for the syntactic features (tense, aspect and voice) and semantic meaning of verbs. The findings showed that in both groups of introductions, the common tenses were the present and past, rather than future. In introductions published in the international journal, the present tense was used more often than in those published in the Iranian journal, whereas past tense was used twice as frequently in Iranian journal introductions. Regarding the aspect of verbs, the simple aspect was common in both groups of introductions, but more frequent in Iranian journal introductions. The perfect aspect was more common in international journal introductions. Concerning voice, the active voice was predominant in both groups of introductions. Semantically, verbs with mental, activity, communication and existence meanings were common in both groups. The semantic meanings of verbs were not significantly different in the two groups of introductions. The findings of this study can have implications for novice, non-native writers in Applied Linguistics in helping them design and write more appropriate research article introductions.