Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Autumn and Winter 2017

To investigate the predictive power of language learning strategy types on meta-cognitive and motivational self-regulated learning components (task value, control of learning beliefs, and test anxiety), 149 male and female BA level students, majoring in English translation and English language teaching were selected to participate in this study. To collect data, a Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP) was given to homogenize the students. In addition, the participants were also asked to answer the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Four separate stepwise multiple regression procedures were used to analyze the obtained data. The results showed that cognitive, meta-cognitive and compensation strategies had predictive power for meta-cognitive self-regulated learning. Moreover, meta-cognitive, memory, and affective strategies were predictors of task value. The findings also showed significant relationships between meta-cognitive strategies and control of learning beliefs. In addition, the only negative predictor of test anxiety were communication strategies.

Teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) requires specific qualifications on the part of teachers for which reconstruction of cognitions on EAP is a prerequisite. Previous studies have largely taken the quality of teachers' EAP cognitions for granted and few studies, if any, have sought to examine in-service teachers' tacitly-held cognitions on EAP. This study aimed to examine in-service teachers' cognitions on key EAP issues including EAP goals, distinction between EAP and English for General Purposes (EGP), and EAP teacher qualifications as well as roles. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and life-history narratives from nine EAP practitioners at a state university in Iran. Results showed that the teachers' cognitions were mainly incongruent with the EAP principles. A close relationship was also found among individual teachers' cognitions on different key issues. It is concluded that despite their past practical experience, in-service EAP teachers' cognitions might be limited and in need of reconstruction. The findings may promise some implications for EAP teacher education and research.

Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) is an artistically convoluted narrative in which parallel, alternative worlds interpenetrate consistently and continuously, providing a fine instance of what, in Chaos Theory, is called an open system. The discovery of the chaotic connections in this narrative is in harmony with effecting a sense of indeterminacy, plurality and uncertainty which prevails all through the story and keeps flustering Pynchon’s protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Oedipa, engulfed by the chaotic flux of information which most tenaciously and purposefully resists any linear, causative ordering, struggles to fabricate, against all odds, an orderly nexus among the bizarre set of incidents that she encounters through resorting to paranoia. Paranoia, in Oedipa’s case, becomes therapeutic and constructive since fantasizing a conspiracy would warrant an escape from insanity which is an intrinsic attribute of chaos. The two consequential determinants in this narrative, therefore, are chaos and paranoia the convoluted interactions of which create an intriguing, chaotic, postmodern tale. Unlike the dominant trend of considering paranoia merely as a prevalent thematic concern in Pynchon, this study seeks to provide a new reading of the mentioned narrative in the light of the dynamic interplay of chaos and paranoia and its function in portraying Oedipa as the one who projects, author-like, a world of her own which, though still governed by the regulations and principles of chaotic, open systems, guarantees sanity, existence and authority.

Writing has been a troublesome skill for Iranian EFL learners as it needs accurate planning and acceptable coherence. The current study aimed as investigating the comparative effect of visual and auditory input enhancement on the use of cohesive devices in the writing of Iranian EFL learners. Participants of the study were 60 field dependent and 60 field independent language learners at intermediate level of language proficiency. The study adopted a pretest posttest design and data were analyzed through employing statistical test of ANCOVA. Results of statistical analysis showed that visual input enhancement was significantly more effective than auditory input enhancement in terms of their effects on the use of cohesive devices in both field dependent and field independent language learners. Results were discussed and implications of study were also presented.

This research looks at Robert Louise Stevenson’s renowned adventure romance, Treasure Island, in the light of its representation of social class struggles and the function of hegemonic conditioning in those struggles. It draws upon Antonio Gramsci's theories of hegemony and culture, coercion and consensus, and his notion of the organic intellectual. The careful analysis of the novel demonstrates the author’s critical attitude toward the dominant social system and his hope for an eventual breach in that system. The novel depicts the underlying hegemonic mind-frames that rule over social relationships from which very few characters can escape, and suggests that mass revolutions might not be successful in the toppling of the existing hegemony. Through the figure of Long John Silver, who is here compared to the organic intellectual of Gramsci’s theories, the novel proposes a cunning method of resistance against hegemonic forces similar to the Gramscian notion of war of position that could free people from hegemonic subjugation and lead them to success.

The purpose of the current study was to explore the effects of different corrective feedback (CF) conditions on Iranian EFL learners’ spoken general accuracy and breakdown fluency and their relationships. Consequently, four pre-intermediate intact classes were randomly selected as the control, delayed explicit metalinguistic CF, extensive recast, and intensive recast groups; these groups participated in spoken reproduction tasks for six sessions and their errors were treated differently. Then, the data was transcribed, coded for accuracy and fluency, and analyzed. The results indicated that the different CF conditions had insignificant effects on the number of error free Analysis of Speech (AS)-units, as an index of the spoken general accuracy. Considering the fluency, although different CF conditions had insignificant effects on the number of pauses the participants produced, it had a significant effect on the whole number of pauses; there was a significant correlation between participants' pauses and the whole number of pauses, with a medium effect size. The correlations between the general accuracy and breakdown fluency of all groups were negative and insignificant. In addition, different CF conditions had insignificant effects on the relationship between the accuracy and fluency. These findings suggest that there is no trade-off between spoken general accuracy and breakdown fluency. In addition, different CF conditions have insignificant effects on the EFL learners' spoken general accuracy, breakdown fluency, and their relationships.

Delving into the amazing and confounding language of four-, five-, or six-year olds, who dexterously and quite diligently use language for a myriad of purposes has always been intriguing to the pundits of first language acquisition. This scrutiny was an attempt to unravel some features germane to the normal disfluency in the preschoolers’ language. Normal disfluency is justifiably deemed to occur during periods of accelerated speech development (Guitar, 2013( and, unlike stuttering- a pathological condition-is a temporary condition. Over the years, researchers have investigated speech disfluencies of normally fluent young children in order to better understand the expected speech behaviors of young children but they have mainly focused on disfluencies of speech of English speaking children from Anglo-European, African-American, Hispanic, and Spanish cultures. Literature review proved there is not enough information regarding normal disfluency in Farsi speaking children. Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe the speech disfluencies in Farsi speaking Iranian preschoolers. The study was conducted in a kindergarten in Tehran in which from each age group 6 kids (3 boys and 3 girls) were randomly selected. Samples of their speech were recorded, carefully transcribed, and analyzed. A comparison was made among the three age groups as far as the in-mind categories were concerned (spontaneous speech, description, explanation, interpretation, and narration). Furthermore, in each category, the nature of the disfluency (repetition, silence, or filler) and the purpose behind its application (planning, reformulation, or replacement) was identified.