Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:10 Issue: 4, Winter 2020

This mixed-methods design study investigated Iranian TOEFL iBT and IELTS teachers’ views on thestructure of the TOEFL iBT and IELTS receptive and productive sections from the yardsticks of dynamic and static assessment. It also examined the conformity level of the receptive and productive sections of TOEFL iBT and IELTS to dynamic assessment and static assessment standards. To achieve the objectives of the study, 100 information-rich TOEFL iBT and IELTS teachers selected based on purposive and snowball sampling completed two 8-item researcher-made questionnaires on the underlying features of these exams. To cross-validate the quantitative results, we performed semi-structured interviews with 10informed teachers selected through purposive sampling from among the questionnaire respondents. The semi-structured data were content analyzed using a researcher-made framework categorizing the distinctive dynamic assessment and static assessment features. The results of the qualitative phase corroborated those of the quantitative part revealing that these exams mainly conform to static assessment tenets and that they enjoy only a few dynamic assessment features. The pedagogical implications of the findings are also explicated.

This study is a mixed method research that investigated the effect of electronic collaborative discussion forum on Iranian EFL teachers' engagement and professional identity and their development in terms of teachers‘ competences as they were engaged in collaborative teacher inquiry. For this purpose, 5 EFL teachers participated in 11 online forum discussion sessions. Before participating in discussions, their lev- el of engagement and professional identity were examined through administering two questionnaires. In order to investigate the effect of e-collaborative discussions, multidimensional scale of teacher engage- ment and questionnaire for investigating teacher's professional identity were administered twice in pretest and posttest. The results of Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed significant difference from pretest to- wards posttest in teachers' engagement and professional identity. The content of the participants' discus- sion on an online forum was analyzed using Nvivo software through which categories and subcategories that indicate teacher competences emerged deductively. The major categories are technical competence, critical competence, personal competence and clinical competence. These four major categories include subcategories that represent teacher professional development. In the light of the results, important impli- cations are suggested for teaching practitioners.

The current paper examines the ways the concepts of ̳home‘ and ̳belonging‘ are conceived, accepted, and imagined by the characters of Sam Selvon‘s The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Hanif Kureishi‘s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990). Taken from two different but close-knit periods in twentieth-century Eng- land, the 1950s and the late 1970s, the novels represent the socio-political circumstances that formulated, and consolidated the discursive and ideological constructs, the operation of which had been aimed at im- peding the immigrant characters‘ conceptualisation of England as home. The paper explains the moments in the narratives that testify to the systematic discriminating and undermining practices via which the pro- tagonists‘ consciousness of home is destabilised, if not completely torpedoed. Employing postcolonial criticism as the theoretical framework, the current study unravels that although the British immigration policies in the periods in question encouraged multiculturalism, there was a handful of cultural and eco- nomic issues that practically impinged on the full realisation of such an anticipation. To this end, built upon the postcolonial theories of less acknowledged thinkers as Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, and Avtar Brah, whose theories enjoy identity- and race-related imbrications, the research underpins the transitory exposi- tion of the meaning of home, belonging, and diasporic nostalgia. It will demonstrate that the discursive representation of immigration proves that home and belonging are defined essentially not on the basis of multiculturalism, but on that of ideological and racial dogma, as the novels in question illustrate.

The current pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study sought, firstly, to examine the effect of employing flipped language teaching techniques on EFL learners' text comprehension and, secondly, to explore whether there was any significant interaction between the flipped classroom approach and EFL learners’ proficiency level. To this end, 65 male and female EFL learners were conveniently selected and their English proficiency level was determined based on the results of a TOEFL PBT. Having been divided into two experimental (one intermediate and one upper intermediate) and two control (one intermediate and one upper intermediate) groups, the participants were pretested in terms of reading comprehension at the beginning of the study. Subsequently, during a 14-week course of reading comprehension, the learners of the experimental group received flipped language instruction, whereas the control group’s learners were taught being exposed to conventional instruction. To investigate any changes in the learners’ per- formance as a result of the study course, their reading comprehension ability was gauged at the conclu- sion of the study course administering a posttest parallel to the pretest. The results indicated that the learners in the flipped classrooms outperformed their counterparts in the control group in terms of text comprehension, regardless of their English proficiency level. The findings of the study may urge EFL teachers to adopt a flipped classroom approach in order to enhance EFL learners’ reading comprehension skill.

The present study was conducted to investigate the comparative impacts of three types of EFL teach- ers' mindsettings on EFL learners' grammar achievement. The participants of the study were English Translation undergraduate students (both female and male with the age ranging of 18-35) who were selected according to convenience non-random sampling from three classes of English Grammar 1 at both Islamic Azad Universities of Karaj and Shahriyar. The total number of students in each class was 30. The course lasted 16 successive sessions. Participants were assigned into three experimental groups. The researchers provided interventions in terms of Fixed-mindsetting (Experimental group 1), growth-mindsetting (Experimental group 2), and mixed-mindsetting (Experimental group 3) to teach English grammar to them. The independent variables in this study were human mindsets which were grouping variables to three levels of mixed-mindset, growth-mindset, and fixed-mindset. The depen- dent variable was EFL learners' grammar achievement. At the end, a same grammar test was adminis- tered among participants in all three groups and it was demonstrated that the students in growth- mindsetting group outperformed significantly higher than those of the other two groups. This study includes a variety of instructional implications for both EFL teachers and EFL learners.

The subject intended to study the general methods of natural word-forming in Azeri Turkish language. This study aimed to reach this purpose by analyzing the construction of compound Azeri Turkish words. Same’ei (2016) did a comprehensive study on word-forming process in Farsi, which was the inspiration source of this study for Azeri Turkish language word-forming. Numerous scholars had done various studies about this issue in different languages; however, Same’ei’s (2016) point of view and his application of variables like 'x' and 'y' were really attractive and considerable although absence of such study was quite visible to the Turkish language. Accordingly, this study considered 'x's and 'y's to represent the components of the compound words which were collected from reliable Turkish bilingual or monolingual dictionaries, ongoing dialogues, and grammatical sentences. Different pat- terns were introduced to show the structures of the recognized compound words. The compound words were assessed by the process, and also were contrasted considering their syntactical chain and have been analyzed by analogy of the words, as Same'ei (2016) did. Accordingly, the structural dif- ferences between the Azeri Turkish and Farsi languages were considered, and words structure were successfully analyzed with their components via the desired variables.

This research presented the use of bilingual dictionary and addressed the EFL translation students' points of view on the use of bilingual dictionary in translating polysemous words (English to Persian). Moreo- ver, it aimed at finding the possible relationship between the effect of using bilingual dictionary by stu- dents in translating polysemous words and their achieved scores. In the study 30 translation students of both genders were opted based on convenience sampling. Questionnaire and translation tests were two instruments which were employed in this study. At first, MA students were asked to translate 20 sen- tences including polysemous words by use of monolingual dictionary. After that, the second test with the same procedures were administered to the same students. However, they were allowed to use bilingual dictionary. Then, the questionnaires were distributed to them and the participants have filled them care- fully without any time limitation. At the end, all the data was gathered and analyzed. The results of this study indicated that the use of bilingual dictionary had a positive impact on the participants' performance in translating polysemous words, also they had positive perspective on the use of bilingual dictionary in translating polysemous words.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students‘ explicit knowledge in grammar and their translation ability. The importance of grammatical knowledge and its effectiveness in translation quality motivated the researcher to run this study and consider grammatical knowledge in Per- sian as the source language of Iranian students. It is clear that grammar is an area that may merit some level of explicit teaching in English translation curriculum, particularly if explicit knowledge is in the grammar of the source language. Through a Language Proficiency Test, Explicit knowledge of Persian Grammar Test, and Translation Ability Test, the explicit grammatical knowledge in Persian and the trans- lation ability of 60 translation students at Islamic Azad University were measured. The result demonstrat- ed that there was a moderately significant relationship between the students‘ grammatical knowledge and translation ability. On the other hand, the explicit knowledge of Persian grammar provides a significant impact on the quality of translation from English to Persian among Iranian undergraduate English transla- tion students. An implication of this study is that awareness assists practitioners to employ some practical and useful techniques of translation in order to consider more practical knowledge of structural differenc- es existing between languages as well as to reduce the learners‘ misunderstandings and to talk over the learners‘ needs in translation.