جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « learning » در نشریات گروه « ادبیات و زبان ها »

This study aimed at investigating the socially-mediated testing factors affecting Iranian university EFL students. The necessity to understand these factors to foster language learning gets bolder when one attempts to investigate them in settings, like that of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where English as a foreign language has witnessed great ups and downs due to political and social changes. For this purpose, the researcher used a qualitative design. The participants in this study comprised 30 EFL university learners (15 males and 15 females) studying or having finished language teaching discipline. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit data. The recorded interviews were transcribed, and each participant was assigned a fictitious name to protect their privacy. The transcripts as well as the researcher’s notes and memos were then returned to the participants to confirm that the data was genuine and reflected their viewpoints. The transcripts were read and reviewed a couple of times for the sake of familiarity. Then, they were transferred to a computer software called MAXQDA. As a result, a long list of codes emerged which was reduced to a smaller list of tentative categories (4 themes with 25 categories) through a constant comparative method. These four themes are, 1) positive points of socially mediated testing, 2) negative points of socially mediated testing, 3). learning measurement of socially mediated testing, and 4) goals of teachers in socially mediated testing.

The present study aimed to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions about critical issues of LOA using a mixed- methods design. To this end, a 35-item questionnaire for investigating perceptions towards LOA was designed and validated. A group of 213 high school EFL teachers in Torbat-e Heidarieh and Mashhad were selected based on simple random sampling as the main participants of the study, and 57 EFL teachers were selected to participate in semi-structured interviews to triangulate the results obtained from the questionnaire. The data obtained through the questionnaire were analyzed using different methods of analysis. First, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to confirm the construct validity of the questionnaire. It included seven subcategories: contextual, affective, interactional, instructional, learning, proficiency, and elicitation. Second, the data were analyzed using SPSS software- using frequencies and percentages, computing independent sample t-test and Pearson Correlation. The results indicated that females had a more positive view than males towards the use of LOA in Iranian language classes. Positive relationship was found between teachers' age and their perceptions of LOA. The results indicated significant relationship between teaching experience and attitude of LOA. The qualitative findings of semi-structured interviews supported those of the questionnaire, revealing that the vast majority of EFL teachers believed that the use of LOA was advantageous and productive. These results have implications for L2 teachers and teacher trainers.

Pronunciation is one of the sub-skills which has significant effect on improving the communication competency and linguistic performance. Moreover, Pronunciation is one of the most difficult parts of teaching a foreign language to adults. It seems that the sub-skill of pronunciation is not taught in the form of a well-rounded program in communicative approaches and interactive conversations in Persian language classes, and that learners pronounce Persian under the influence of the phonemes of their mother tongue. This study is an attempt to provide an answer for the question of what strategies foreign learners use in their learning process by examining pronunciation learning strategies. The current research is the application and collection of research data using the field research approach and the descriptive method is used for the data analysis. The research instrument in data collection is a questionnaire composed of 43 items, each question containing a pronunciation strategy. After verifying validity and reliability, it was randomly distributed among foreign Persian learners. Based on the findings, they make significant use of cognitive, social, metacognitive and compensatory strategies. Commonly, mother tongue does not have a significant effect on the use of these strategies, but Chinese speakers use the group of cognitive strategies significantly more than Arabic speakers do.

 Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are referred to as computerized learning environments that incorporated pedagogical, cognitive learning, knowledge representation theories into computational models of tutor, learner, and domain knowledge respectively in order to provide individualized instruction in diverse subject areas. Since they take advantages of many technological artifacts of artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge representation models, and computational linguistics, they have been both object and means of research into AI, pedagogy, psychology, applied linguistics etc. Under the circumstances, the bulk of research findings is expectable and unavoidable. Sometimes researchers are badly in need of conducting first- or second-order meta-analytic reviews. This study first introduces the components of a typical ITS; then provides a descriptive account of the effectiveness, potential, and requirements of ITSs for foreign language teaching and learning (FLTL); and finally and most importantly, as a second-order review, synthesizes and describes the results of some previous meta-analytic reviews in reference to a few prevailing themes in the ITS research area such as the effects of the forms of instruction, subject matter variation, ITSs’ pedagogical features etc. Toward the third end, exclusion and inclusion procedures were applied to select seven target reviews using keyphrases scheme. The thematic meta-synthesis showed that the findings of almost all these reviews are consistent and congruent with some slight variations due to the study features. It is implied that meta-analyses like this can, by implication, inform and advance the science of ITS design, i.e. a theory of ITS design.

Paralinguistic features are indispensable and crucial aspects of communication without which any utterance would lose its identity. On the other hand, confusion in cross-cultural communication is most often assigned to paralinguistic features. Despite the significant importance of paralinguistic clues in humans’ communication, only limited studies have tackled this issue. More specifically, despite the fact that paralinguistic features are culturally different, no study has investigated the possible relationship between these features and speaking performance of Persian-speaking learners of English. Hence, with this existing gap in the literature, in this study, we tried to scrutinize the impact of paralinguistic cues upon EFL learners’ speaking fluency in the Persian setting. To this objective, we recruited 40 first-year undergraduate female students of Linguistics at the University of Gonabad, utilizing non-random sampling method. Their English proficiency level was determined as lower-intermediate via the administration of Quick Oxford Placement Test. In our pre-test post-test experimental research, we allocated a five-week span of instruction for the purpose of teaching paralinguistic clues to the experimental group to see whether it could have a significant positive impact upon their speaking performance. The instrument we utilized to evaluate speaking capability of our participants was Researcher-Made Speaking Test. The results of our study demonstrated that utilizing paralinguistic features boosted students’ speaking capability. On the light of our finding, it could be concluded that paralinguistic features could be employed for the first-year undergraduate students to enhance their communicative performance. Future studies in diverse EFL settings, could shed light on this conclusion.

This study provides a framework for identifying, designing, and validating a flipped learning pattern to enhance problem- based teaching approach in higher education instructors in teaching the English language. Also, this endeavors to offer a general blueprint for designing a pedagogical pattern as an improvement strategy in teaching and learning English. The present study is an applied and mixed-method research. In the qualitative phase, a systematic review of 137 written and electronic documents was performed to identify the components of the pattern. Besides, in-depth interviews with 32 available and purposeful experts were done to collect data. As a methodology, researchers used inductive qualitative content analysis. To confirm the obtained components, CVR and CVI were performed in quantitative part with 25 available experts. The final influential elements in pattern formation were determined and approved in 6 main components (selected code), 18 sub-components (pivot code), and 94 properties (open code). Based on the results of CVR = 0.9, CVI = 1, and the reliability of the questionnaire r = 0.83, all 118 components were confirmed. The activities before, during, and after the class were separately approved along with the independent activities of the teacher and learner. The results indicated the acceptability of the pattern indicators. It showed that choosing the correct and principled teaching method with conscious design can solve English teaching-learning problems according to the experts’ perspectives. Besides, it not only helps English instructors and learners how to plan but also encourages them to use it in various fields.

Over recent decades, second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have considered attention an important cognitive process mediating second language (L2) learning. The concept of noticing as conscious attention to form has become especially important in the field. The present study explored whether two pedagogical interventions, namely textual input enhancement (TIE) and learners´ output production (LOP), in isolation and in combination, promoted learners’ noticing and learning of English relative clauses (RC). The study was conducted with a sample of 113 freshmen majoring in English language and literature. The participants were assigned to three experimental groups and the control group based on the treatments they received, +TIE+LOP, +TIE-LOP, -TIE+LOP, and -TIE-LOP. Before treatment, all the participants took a test of English RCs as the pretest. Then, the participants were required to read the reading texts including instances of RCs and take note. While the participants in the +TIE groups read the enhanced input, the participants in the -TIE groups received the unenhanced input. Also, the participants in the +LOP groups were required to carry out output tasks, but the participants in the -LOP groups answered comprehension questions. Consequently, the participants took part in think-aloud processes. Finally, the test of RCs was administered again as the posttest. The findings revealed that LOP positively affected the participants’ noticing and learning of RCs. However, TIE was only effective in promoting the participants’ noticing, but not learning, of RCs.