Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:10 Issue: 2, Summer 2020

Research findings on teaching of language learning strategies found that summarizing is of tremendous role in learning in general, and in reading comprehension in particular. Due to its importance and also due in large to the fact that there wasn’t a comprehensive way of summarizing the current study tried to provide an inclusive genre -based model for text summarizing, and examine its effectiveness in a mixed-methods study which lasted for one academic semester. The results of the quantitative phase revealed that the experimental group outperformed in the posttest. It can be said that the effectiveness of the Genre-based model is principally due to its role in increasing the learners’ structural awareness, namely in supporting them in finding out the schematic structure of texts and eradicating the insignificant parts. In the qualitative phase the researcher designed a questionnaire and found out attitudes of the learners towards the model. The results exposed that learners had positive attitudes towards the genre-based model of summary development. Through making use of the model they have an effective tool for taking the gist of texts out of them, and make connections with what they already know.

Translation is a challenging task, especially when it deals with ideological turns. Translations may be manipulated and rewritten by rival parties to serve their own interests and convey their own ideologies and also translators play a significant role in negotiating meaning within social and political processes. In the field of ideological turns, different matters are being discussed from among which, discussion of patronage suggested by Lefevere is debatable; the latter consists of three components, i.e. ideological, economic, and status components that, according to Lefevere’s theory, affect literature products and especially translation. Taking this reality into account, the present descriptive-qualitative study was designed to investigate the effect of these three components on the English translation of Persian political news and on the selection of news by MEMRI (the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute) website; MEMRI translates the news of Middle East countries into European languages. The results revealed that these three components affected MEMRI’s translations and also the selections of Persian political news for translation.

Testing the translation performance of EFL students has not been paid due attention compared with the bulk of the literature on testing other language skills, namely reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This has led some translation teachers to face serious problems in measuring their students’ translation performance. In most cases, they have to opt for the existing developed rubrics presumably considered suitable for their own classrooms. However, the procedures leading to these developed rubrics are not usually well elaborated on by the original rubric developers. Furthermore, the rubrics that have been developed for measuring this skill are in some cases so detailed that EFL instructors prefer to resort to their own general assessment. Thus, reviewing some of the suggested rubrics for assessing students’ translation quality, the present paper which focuses on the testing model proposed by Hughes aims at providing translation instructors with a handy and practical rubric based on the skills and sub-kills needed in any translation practice.

The main priority for translation educators is to improve the quality and outcomes of translation courses at the university level. The process of planning and implementing the teaching process and the design of teaching materials are the translation teachers' two major concerns among many. This research presents Iranian translation educators' views on the possibilities for improving the conditions in the English language departments of Iranian universities. The goal was achieved through conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews with some of the experienced faculty members of the Iranian universities involved in translation teaching, whose suggested guidelines and perspectives were extracted and synthesized. The discussions centered around applying the constructivist approach to teaching translation, which the interviewees believed could provide opportunities for students to play an active role in their own learning by integrating and activating corresponding knowledge, skills, and attributes specifically in the form of group work or collaborative learning in translation classes. Furthermore, local policies, based on needs assessment, implemented by each department were considered to be highly efficient to face translation teaching and learning problems.

The present paper provides a detailed description of target situation analysis of the ESP needs of border guarding police cadets. It was conducted as a part of a comprehensive ESP needs analysis research whose results have been used to develop an ESP curriculum for police cadets at Iran’s Amin Police University. The importance of English language in border guarding missions and lack of a proper ESP curriculum in the faculty were among the reasons of ESP curriculum development for police officers. The researchers utilized a qual/quan design (exploratory sequential - qualitative first). The study was conducted in 2018-2019. The participants were chosen from among 249 participants of current BA cadets, ESP teachers, and graduate frontline officers, managers, and commanders. The data were gathered utilizing semi-structured interviews and a researcher-made questionnaire. Through target situation analysis, the researchers determined the target needs in border guarding, the needs related to language skills in academic/target career, extra needs, the type of curriculum and materials they might need, the possible situations of applying English in the academic/target career, and specific border police content and subjects. The results are to be used in designing and developing an ESP curriculum, syllabus, and materials for police cadets who study ESP in the Faculty of Border Guarding at Amin Police University.

This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learning perspective. Given the centrality of writing for both EFL learners and teachers, writing anxiety was explored through a longitudinal study spanning two years  with 25 EFL learners and teachers who participated by providing comments, diaries, and documents. The participants were also observed and interviewed following Mwanza's model as a guide. The obtained data in the whole process was constantly thematized by means of a qualitative software, NVIVO 10. The main themes on writing anxiety were extracted from teachers and learners by applying contradictions as a principle of expansive learning theory. To help learners become transformative agents of anxiety, an intervention process was carried out in the form of an online collaborative writing task. The findings recommend applying contradictions as an initial point for problem-solving and a driving impellent of activity which may lead to expansive learning. Besides, the dynamic and developmental process is expected to help learners expand and transform their writing anxiety. Contradictions may also become an initiation for future studies on language learning.

Despite a growing interest in the study of the introduction sections of research articles, there have been few studies to investigate how academic writers engage with other voices and alternative positions in this academic genre. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to show how native-speaking (NS) and nonnative-speaking (NNS) writers take position and stance in research article introductions. For this purpose, engagement resources based on the appraisal framework were investigated in 60 articles written by English NS and Iranian NNS writers published in journals of applied linguistics. It was found out that the mean occurrences of heteroglossic items in both corpora was larger than those of monoglossic items but comparing the means of monoglossic engagements between the two corpora, it was revealed that NS writers’ corpus had larger mean occurrences of monoglossic engagements than NNS writers’ corpus implying the natives’ stronger authorial stance in the texts. The results also revealed that there was no significant difference in the use of contractive and expansive engagements by NS writers (t = -0.995, p > 0.05), indicating a balanced use between the two options. However, the higher mean occurrences of expansive options compared with contractive options in the NNS corpus may suggest that NS writers open up more dialogic room for alternatives positions in the introductions. The findings of this study may help writers to better perceive the creation of a strong authorial position using appropriate engagement resources in research article introductions.

To cultivate effective reading, all teaching practices must develop higher-order processing, which involves enhancing reading comprehension and its components of vocabulary, grammar, and text structure. This quasi-experimental research aimed at implementing problem-based learning (PBL) with hard scaffolds in a general English course in the Iranian EFL context to investigate its impact on the participants’ reading comprehension. Two intact groups of elementary students, one as the experimental group (N = 40) and one as the control group (N =40) whose homogeneity in language proficiency was checked through the Key English Test (KET) were selected. The experimental group underwent the PBL method with hard scaffolds and the control group received a mainstream reading instruction method. The two groups completed pre-and posttests of reading comprehension. The results of the study, based on multivariate analysis of covariance, indicated that the PBL group with hard scaffolds outperformed the control group in reading comprehension, including its components of vocabulary, grammar, and text structure. The results of the study suggest that practitioners could pay special attention to the PBL method in EFL educational contexts to enhance students’ higher order processing, vocabulary and grammar learning, and text structure knowledge.

The present research was an endeavor to determine whether or not the adoption of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) can be an effective means of increasing the students’ reading comprehension ability. Also, this paper explored the students' views towards the mentioned method. To fulfil the purposes of the study, a mixed method research was employed and 80 advanced EFL learners of university participated in the study that were assigned randomly to the experimental and control groups. Having instructed the two groups with the same texts but different methods of teaching during a term, the learners’ reading performance results were compared through administering a reading posttest to both groups. The researchers in the control group class followed her regular teaching practice through the conventional book-based method, but, she applied task based method in three stages in the experimental group class.  The obtained data were analyzed using t-test to examine the effectiveness of TBLT method as on students’ reading performance. Moreover, the students' views of the experimental group were investigated through related questionnaire and interview. The findings revealed that the experimental group remarkably performed better than the control group. Therefore, TBLT had a significant effect on learners’ reading performance compared to traditional reading instruction. On top of that, findings of the interviews and questionnaires demonstrated the participants' satisfaction with implementing TBLT method, and also revealed that they had positive views towards it.

Although the word “love” appears less frequently in the Qur’an than in the Bible, Love is a cornerstone of both Islam and Christianity. As the Bible and the Qur’an agree on many things, why then do Muslims and Christians perceive each other so differently and so often misunderstand each other? Such a question, of course, deserves an in-depth, multi-faceted answer; however, we will look at just one of those facets: a difference of emphasis and vocabulary. This paper tries to pick up some salient points about the nature and function of the love and law as given in the Bible and Qur’an itself. The Qur’an seems to be in accord with this viewpoint, giving priority to love although not neglecting the necessity and reality of law. The verses of Qur’an open with the conception of a beneficent and merciful God Who is the Lord and Sus-tainer of all the worlds that He creates. This perpetual providence or sustenance implies love for what is sustained. But having emphasizedthese attributes, another attribute of God follows that He is the Lord of the Day of Judgment. He is the Supreme Judge Who first made the laws and then watches life to see whether it is following those laws. Loveapart from law and reason is an abstraction, and ‘law,’ devoid of the foundation of love, would become a tyranny and a burden, hampering life instead of advancing it. This essay also indicates the attitude of Jesus and Christianity towards Law. Jesus saidthat he had not come to destroy the law of Moses but to fulfill it. His main function and mission was to turn humanity towards the spirit more than the letter of the law. Soon after him Christianity unburdened itself of the cumbersome corpus of almost theentire Jewish law. But when [the] Christian Church became powerful and Christianity became a State religion, laws were required both for religious and for secular life. The State legislated for its own necessities and the Church developed Canon Law