Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Spring 2010

The purpose of the present study is to develop appropriate scoring scales for each of the defined stages of the writing process, and also to determine to what extent these scoring scales can reliably and validly assess the performances of EFL learners in an academic writing task.
Two hundred and two students’ writing samples were collected after a step-by-step process oriented essay writing instruction. Four stages of writing process —generating ideas (brainstorming), outlining (structuring), drafting, and editing —were operationally defined. Each collected writing sample included student writers’ scripts produced in each stage of the writing process. Through a detailed analysis of the collected writing samples by three raters, the features which highlighted the strong or weak points in the student writers’ samples were identified, and then the student writers’ scripts were categorized into four levels of performance which were holistically defined as VERY GOOD, GOOD, FAIR, and POOR. Then descriptive statements were made for each identified feature to represent the specified level of performance. These descriptive statements, or descriptors, formed rating scales for each stage of the writing process. And finally, four rating scales, namely brainstorming, outlining, drafting, and editing were designed for the corresponding stages of the writing process. Subsequently, the designed rating scales were used by the three raters to rate the 202 collected writing samples.
The scores thus obtained were put to statistical analyses. The high inter-rater reliability estimate (0.895) indicated that the rating scales could produce consistent results. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated that there was no significant difference among the ratings created by the three raters. Factor analysis suggested that at least three constructs, knowledge, planning ability, and idea creation ability —could possibly underlie the variables measured by the rating scale.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether noticing through input enhancement had any impact on the acquisition of English conditional sentences in Iranian EFL learners. Two intact classes with 26 female students in each were chosen. A proficiency test administered at the commencement of the study showed that the two groups were homogeneous in terms of their language proficiency. The standardized achievement pretest signified that the two groups were unfamiliar with the target structures prior to the treatment. The study employed a pre test post test non-equivalent groups design with two groups. The Enhanced group (Experimental group) received a set of materials in which the If-clauses were enhanced through enlargement and different combinations of bolding, italics, and underlining; whereas, the Unenhanced group (Control group) received the same set of texts with no enhancement on If-clauses. The independent t-test computed between the means of the two groups showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the performances of the two groups on the achievement post test. Besides, a retrospection questionnaire for operationalizing noticing was used after the treatment. The analysis of the students’ answers showed that input enhancement had helped the participants in the experimental group learn the conditional sentences.

This study seeks to examine how teachers’ educational background (those who have educated in TEFL in comparison to those who have educated in Literature) may influence their beliefs and attitudes on language learning, teaching and the teaching methods they apply in their classes. On a general basis, depending on teachers’ opinion, learning process might be seen as behavioristic, inductive, interactive or cooperative; teaching might be seen as structural, functional, interactional, or task-based; finally, reading comprehension might be seen as practice, product, process, or social process. Though it is not within the scope of the present study to find how each one of these teaching and learning processes might correspond to the teachers’ beliefs, the main argument of the study is that the teacher’s own educational background has a strong influence on the application of different approaches to teaching reading comprehension courses. The results indicated that the relationship between the teacher’s educational background and his or her opinion about the processes of learning and teaching in the classroom was neither correlated nor significant. Anyhow, the teacher’s educational background was found to have a strong effect on the method s/he applies in his Reading Comprehension classes.

In the affective sphere of EFL learning especially with regard to teaching/learning situations in Iran, one deterrent element seizes particular attention and that is inhibition self-imposed restraint on or abstinence from learning due to academic and non-academic variables such as culture, gender, psyche, extreme emotions, etc. It is related to language ego permeability hypothesis (LEPH) which suggests that inhibition plays a powerful role in constraining achievement resulting both in an inhibition about using L2, which prevents them from gaining sufficient practice, and in the fear of making mistakes, etc. The main pursuit of this article is to locate such inhibitions, to give an observation-driven taxonomy of them, to shed some light on the inherent mechanisms of suppressed learning, and humbly offer ways to a more refined pedagogy especially in Iranian academic settings. Inhibition, if diagnosed and eroded, is superseded by arousal and will give way to more dynamic transactions among class participants which will consequently breed sounder setting for education. The study aims at uncovering the dynamism of inhibition and its ramification through a qualitative investigation of the variables proposed by 200 BA senior students (sampled out of 300) of varied backgrounds in their elicited questionnaires and 5 observed classes.

In 2000, an evaluation of Iranian elementary education revealed that it did not successfully prepare students for the future. The failure was attributed to the teacher centered, content-oriented education system. In 2001, the Iranian Ministry of Education began a pilot project that introduced an alternative curriculum, known as “Global Education,” with UNICEF’s participation. Global education, a participatory and collaborative approach to learning, proposes a holistic curriculum that encompasses all dimensions of learning.In a qualitative case study, this author evaluated the implementation of global education on Iranian learners in two provinces: Sistan-Baluchistan and Tehran. The data showed that the pupils not only learned life skills and the importance of sustain ability, but enjoyed the process as well. They also established relationships with their peers, parents and teachers. However, pupils, teachers and principals also found global education ambiguous. Teachers and principals found it time-consuming, hard to implement, and hard to explain it to government officials. In addition, global education’s philosophy and content hardly complied with Islamic teachings, the main focus of government policy-makers.The results of this study suggested that the Iranian future curriculum should emphasize present and future needs, both locally and globally. Emphasis on learners as self affricate Iranians and their ability to establish global relationships is more important than any other immediate or long-term program for education in Iran.

The purpose of this study was to measure reading comprehension strategies when Tell Me More and Sweet English software were utilized to enhance the traditional reading comprehension practice. The study focused on evaluation of four strategies (i.e., scanning, skimming, inferencing and headline guessing) in reading comprehension in three different classes at an English language Institute in Iran. In addition, the study reported the relationship between learner attitudes and learner perceptions toward the use of the software. To do so, one hundred and twenty students studying at Jam-e-Jam Institute in Tehran were selected. In the first step, CELT was administered and among 83 participants who were found to be homogeneous, sixty were selected and assigned randomly to three groups of 20, one as the two experimental groups and the other as the control group. In the second step, subjects in both experimental and control groups were tested on a researcher-prepared reading comprehension test as a pretest in the first session. In the following 12 sessions, the treatment was administered to the participants. At the end of the semester, the subjects in all three groups were given the same test of the pre-test as post test. The test result showed that CALL groups (the experimental groups) surpassed slightly the control group. The use of Tell Me More produced a significant difference in learners’ inferencing and scanning but not skimming and headline guessing as compared to Sweet English. The result of survey indicated an overall positive attitude toward Tell Me More. A significant correlation was reported between student attitudes and student perception.

Poetic analysis involves the explication of a poem by focusing on the process of semiosis in it. Through semiosis linguistic meaning is transformed into stylistic meaning. An examination of semiosis brings us to look at the hypersemanticized poetic structures which are none other than the style features of a poem. Since style functions in a literary text by conveying meanings other than literal ones, any poetic analysis necessarily centers on the examination and function of the style features. The poetic analysis in this paper involves the study of the style features along with their functions at the levels of the ’sentence symbol’, ’symbols in art’, and ’art/aesthetic symbol’ Gargesh (1990). While the study at the first two levels implies a textual analysis, the study at the level of the aesthetic symbol involves viewing the aesthetic concretions in the mind of the readers.

The vast diversity of the proposed definitions of parody, both before and after the twentieth century, can be an emblem of the lack of a thorough agreement amongst the literary critics about the definition of this literary technique (genre?!). While there is not a comprehensive all-accepted definition of parody, modern and postmodern literatures both exhibit a wide application of it. After looking at the definition of parody under Bakhtin’s dialogic concepts, Genette’s structuralist viewpoints, and Barthes’s poststructuralist notions this study endeavours to put forward a more comprehensive and more applicable definition of parody mainly based on Bakhtin’s dialogic criticism. Parody then can be defined as a deliberate imitation or transformation of a socio-cultural product (including literary and non-literary texts, and utterance in its very broad Bakhtinian understanding of it) that recreates its original subject having at least a playful stance towards it.