نشریه پژوهش های زبانشناختی در زبان های خارجی
سال دهم شماره 3 (پاییز 1399)

 Dialects and accents exists in many languages and in addition to diversifying any kind of languages, they contain many concepts and even proximity to other languages. The main issue of this study is to find an appropriate match between several common linguistic terms in the area of dialects and accents between both Russian and Persian languages, based on the linguistic theories. To this end, it is attempted to characterize several dialects and accents between the two languages and, if is possible, to classify them and to compare them. The main purpose of the research, considering the necessity of understanding the concepts proposed in the form of terms for finding equivalents in the other language, Is to reveal these concepts in the form of each of the terms proposed by prominent linguists in each of these two languages in order to find the appropriate equivalence and then to establish a research plan in the field of dialectology. The method of research in section I was to check in detail the concepts of terms in the opinions of prominent linguists along with analyzing them, and systematic matching in another language and in section II, It was attempted to present features of dialects and accents. In the concluding section, after presenting appropriate definitions and equations, it will be clarified the importance of checking dialects and accents for closer understanding proximity of both of these languages, particularly in the fields like language teaching.

While plenty of learning occurs outside educational environments, few studies have examined the extent and type of language learners’ out-of-class activities. This study intends to investigate the extent to which Iranian EFL learners are exposed to English reading, listening, and audiovisual materials out of the classroom and determine the relationship between this exposure and learners’ vocabulary knowledge. To this end, 88 freshman students of English language teaching major were administered a vocabulary knowledge test and a questionnaire. The reliability of both instruments was tested and approved. The results of this study indicated that the learners spent the most time on viewing English audiovisual materials, including movies, TV series, and online videos. Listening and reading were the second and last sources of out-of-class exposure to English. The results of Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between viewing and listening to English materials and vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, it was found that using no subtitles and using English subtitles while viewing had a positive correlation with vocabulary knowledge. No significant effect was found for using Persian subtitles or reading. The findings show that the popularity of audiovisual media and their potential for vocabulary learning should be further exploited in EFL programs. It is also suggested that learners be encouraged to engage in extensive viewing.

As the teacher’s role in language learners’ success has always been highly significant, their individual characteristic features have been the focus of attention from different aspects. Among the different features, identity growth is one of the most complicated issues in the applied linguistics domain. The reason is that deciding to learn a second or foreign language brings about a great many changes in one’s value and motivation system which in turn may lead to significant identity changes and professional development. Therefore, the current research aimed at investigating an important need of Iranian EFL student-teachers in developing their possible self in light of “the possible-self theory” using quantitative and survey method. To this end, the English teachers’ possible-self questionnaire including three sections to measure ideal, ought to, and feared selves developed and validated by Karimi and Norouzi (2019) was distributed among 141 student-teachers using random sampling. The researchers made use of Friedman and Mann-whiney tests and the results showed that the participants’ vision of their ideal-self ranked first compared to their ought to-self and their feared-self vision which ranked second and third respectively. The findings of this study benefit EFL student-teachers, teacher educators, professors, curriculum developers and lay the ground for their possible self-perception.

In recent years, the development of the use of a variety of methods for teaching English has greatly improved the value of educational books. However, very few studies have focused on the evaluation of English-language textbooks in primary education in Iran. The purpose of this study was to evaluate English language teaching textbooks in junior high school from the perspective of students and teachers. To achieve this goal, 8 junior high school teachers with an average of 7 years of teaching and 261 students of the seventh, eighth and ninth grades participated as participants in this study. The textbooks were evaluated based on a questionnaire designed and validated in 1979, comprising 25 questions in six contexts: The suitability of topics, the vocabulary and structure of the book, the appropriateness of the exercises, the suitability of the images, and the physical make-up of the book. The results of the interviews were compared with the results of the questionnaires. Finally, the results of this study showed that from the perspective of students the Prospect Book series in many respects does not meet the needs of students and is not efficient. The results of this study can be used by teachers, educational planners, and textbook writers.

Numerous factors play a role in technology integration by teachers, and teachers’ demographics are one of these factors. Hence, a research was conducted to compare Tabriz high school English teachers’ attitudes toward integrating technology in the classroom based on their demographics . 195 high school EFL teachers from Tabriz, Iran answered 30 Likert-type questions comprising the modified and adapted version of an already available questionnaire developed by Albirini(2006). The results showed that (a) female high school EFL teachers’ attitudes toward technology are significantly more positive than their male counterparts, (b) retirement-age high school EFL teachers’ attitudes toward technology are significantly more positive than their mature counterparts, (c) junior high school EFL teachers enjoy more positive attitudes toward technology in comparison to their senior colleagues, and (d) Iranian high school EFL teachers’ demographic characteristics (grade level taught, gender, teaching experience, and academic degree) explain virtually 26% of the variance / variation in their attitudes toward integrating technology into their classrooms. The implications are discussed in the paper.

The present study examined the acquisition of the syntactic features of future tense by Persian monolingual speakers and Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English in light of the prediction made by several second language (L2) and third language (L3) generative theories. To this end, 36 Persian monolinguals and 36 Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English took part in the study. At first, the participants took an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) based on which they were assigned to three groups, namely, intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced with regard to their English Language Proficiency. Then, they received a grammatical judgment test (GJ) and a translation test (TT). The results revealed that the contributors of the study in both groups faced difficulties acquiring syntactic features of future tense since their former languages lack the same feature. According to the results, the inconvenience learners struggle with is much more noticeable at the early stages of English learning. As the participants got closer to advanced levels, they gradually build the ability to produce more target like productions. The findings also demonstrated that since both Kurdish and Persian speakers have a lack of specific syntactic features for expressing future tense, they face difficulties acquiring the same feature in English.

The high significance of Formulaic sequences (FSs) in each language has attracted the attention of scholars. This study aimed at comparing the use of FSs in English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as Native Language (ENL) lectures. Additionally, it attempted to discover the textual and structural functions of used FSs in two corpora of lectures. Finally, this study aimed at finding the position of FSs in sentences. To this end, two corpora, namely the transcribed corpus of spoken English of ELF and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English were selected to be studied. The present study selected 100,000 words from the two corpora, approximately 50,000 from each The study employed Antconc software in order to accomplish its goal. Then, 638 FSs were extracted from previous studies and examined one by one. They were analyzed from different perspectives according to the objectives of the study. The results indicated non-native speakers used FSs more than native ones. Moreover, the most used textual function was saptio-temporal one both by non-native and native speakers. The most used structure by both groups was prepositional phrase. Furthermore, both groups used FSs in initial position more than other positions. The present study has implications for students, teachers, and material developers.

Resultative constructions represent magnitude of variations at the interface of syntax and semantics and are subject to cross-linguistic variations. The current study investigates the acquisition of different types of resultative constructions by Persian EFL Learners. Due to lack of causative and non-causative property resultatives in Persian, L2ers may face difficulties in producing and perceiving different categories of such constructions. This study inspects (a) the acquisition of different categories of resultative constructions on the syntax-semantics interface, (b) the impact of proficiency on rendering various types of resultative constructions by EFL learners, (c) the most difficult and problematic categories of such constructions, and (d) the impact of L1 on production of resultatives by Persian EFL learners. To this end, using quantitative method and non-interventionist quasi-experimental design, 68 participants completed a translation task. Results indicated that L2ers produced path resultatives to a considerable extent while resorting to various substitute constructions in the case of property resultatives including prepositions like till and until to indicate the result phrase. The L2ers faced difficulties producing fake reflexive resultative constructions. Proficiency revealed a significant effect on the production of resultative constructions. The findings of the study reveal the challenges associated with the syntax-semantics interface in SLA and entails pedagogical implications for teachers and material developers in Iranian community.

As second language writing established itself as an independent area of study, instruction as well as assessment of language writing has taken over a major part in English as second/ foreign language (ESL/EFL) settings. Considering the link between assessment and learning, teachers need to learn about writing assessment together with their learning of writing pedagogy to be prepared for classroom challenges. As a result, over the last few years, there have been calls regarding the importance of developing language teachers’ writing assessment literacy (WAL). Developing assessment literate writing teachers requires teacher education programs that equip prospective teachers with sound understanding of theory and practice of writing assessment. To provide EFL/ESL teachers with good assessment education, first we need to have information about current assessment courses and their needs. The purpose of this study was to provide insights into writing assessment education from the perspective of in-service EFL teachers, through a WAL questionnaire developed by the researcher and administered to 200 EFL teachers. The results showed that there might be five distinct components of WAL: Language Pedagogy, Technical skills, Scoring and Decision Making factor, Local Practice, and Principles and Concepts factor. Most teachers perceived themselves to be moderately knowledgeable in the five thematic areas. However, in some items within these five thematic areas, they found themselves to be slightly knowledgeable including knowledge of developing or using rubric or using portfolio assessment.

This study aimed to explore the extent to which matching cognitive learning styles (CLS) with written corrective feedback (WCF) can enhance the feedback efficacy in learning the English definite/indefinite article system. To this end, using a pre-test, immediate and delayed post-tests design, 75 pre-intermediate EFL learners were assigned to four groups: experimental direct-FD, experimental indirect-FI, comparison indirect-FD, and comparison direct-FI. As for data collection, several instruments were used in different stages of the study as follows: Oxford Placement Test (OPT), Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT), WCF Preference Test, Narrative Tasks, and Error Correction Test. OPT, GEFT, and WCF Preference Test were used to assign the students to different groups, whereas Narrative Tasks and Error Correction Test were used as measures of learning gains. To analyze the data, ANCOVA was run to find any potential differences between the groups. The results revealed that the experimental groups outperformed the comparison groups in both narrative and error correction immediate and delayed post-tests, suggesting that the cognitive learning styles of learners can contribute to the efficacy of direct and indirect types of WCF if they are in harmony with each other. Based upon these findings, a number of implications along with new avenues of research at the intersection of WCF and CLS are suggested.

Considering the costly nature of translation quality assessment in terms of time, money and energy, it seems logical to benefit from the modern technologies that are introduced in the field of machine translation (MT). Automated Translation Quality Evaluation Understudy Metrics (ATQEUMs) are one of these technologies that have revealed a promising application in assessing the MT output quality. This study, however, attempts to examine the reliability of the scores provided by the lexical ATQEUMs to human translated texts (i.e. the ones provided by 51 senior students of translator training programs in Iran) using 1, 2, …, 5 reference translations successively and separately. To this end, an empirical applied study is conducted following a quantitative approach to assess the reliability of the lexical ATQEUMs’ scores in comparison to the expert scorers’ scores. The higher the correlation between the sets of scores (in different stages of using 1, 2, …, 5 reference translations), the higher the reliability is interpreted to be. The results of the Pearson correlation coefficient analysis revealed that using 5 reference translations had led to the highest correlations in 37.80% of cases, which is more than the number for any other situation considered (i.e. using 4 reference translations (3.65%), 3 reference translations (10.97%), 2 reference translations (31.70%), and 1 reference translation (15.85%)). However, using 2 reference translations achieved the second position in having the highest correlations which contradicted the hypothesis that more reference translations would lead to higher correlations and reliability.

The present study was conducted to explore the effect of dialogic interaction on the writing performance of the Iranian EFL learners. In order to achieve this goal, a quasi-experimental pretest posttest design was utilized. Besides this quasi-experimental design which was responsible for answering the first research question, the researcher used a structured interview in order to obtain the data for answering the second research question of the present study. A total number of 32 participants were selected and assigned to an experimental group (n=37) and a control group (n=15). They were homogenized using Oxford Placement Test (OPT). They took a pre-test and a post-test and underwent a nine-session treatment. Since the distribution of the data was normal, an independent sample t-test was used to compare the mean scores of the groups. The results of the study showed that the dialogic group, the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of their achievement in their writing. Moreover, the results of the interview conducted with the learners showed that the attitude of the learners in the dialogic group was positive toward the use of this technique in the writing class. 

With huge improvements in the quality of Machine Translation (MT) in recent years, more interest has also been directed to its application in language learning; however, there is no standard questionnaire to assess English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ perception of this technology. Therefore, this paper reports an attempt to describe the processes undertaken to validate a questionnaire developed for the first time to measure EFL students’ perception of Machine Translation. The validation processes employed were face and content validity, factor analysis informed construct validity, reliability via internal consistency using test-retest reliability as well as Cronbach’s Alpha correlation efficient. The exploratory factor analysis yielded four factors, namely, prior familiarity, degree of use, fear of detection and the importance of training among such students. The items on the questionnaire yielded factor loading ≥0.5. Reliability checking indicated that Machine Translation questionnaire was reliable. Cronbach’s Alpha obtained was 0.94 for the whole questionnaire and between 0.80-0.91 for the four subscales. Test-retest statistic examination displayed stability of the responses at two time points eight weeks apart. The final questionnaire consisted of 29 items and the psychometric analysis indicated that it was both reliable and valid. Therefore, this questioanaire can be used to gain more understanding of Machine Translation.