Journal of Language and Translation
Volume:13 Issue: 4, Winter 2023

This study aimed at discovering the relationships between guided discovery learning, personality traits, and creating self-confidence in speaking among EFL learners. For this purpose, 60 participants out of 150 were chosen through convenience nonrandom sampling from two language schools in Tehran based on their language proficiency and personality traits and were assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent guided discovery learning. After the completion of the treatment, a speaking posttest was conducted. The findings revealed statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in terms of speaking confidence. Moreover, the results indicated that among the participants’ personality traits, extraversion made a significant contribution to EFL learners’ self-confidence. The implications of the findings of this study are elaborated at length in the paper.

This experimental study investigated the effectiveness of Cognitive Intervention Training on Iranian Elementary School Students’ Reading Performance with Dyslexia. This study was a pre-test and post-test research with a control group. The participants included male and female elementary school students in the third grade in Koudasht - Iran. Thirty-two dyslexic students with an average IQ between 90 to 110 were the sample in this study.  They ranged in age from eight to eleven. They were randomly selected.  The participants were equally divided into control and experimental groups. The instruments utilized in this study were Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WITC), Reading and Dyslexia Test (NEMA), and Cognitive Intervention Training Program. For ten weeks, this program was provided to the experimental group. The test (NEMA) was administered among students to measure their reading performance in pre-and post-tests. Descriptive statistics and covariance analysis showed a meaningful difference between the two groups after applying for the cognitive training at p ˂ 0.01. After receiving cognitive intervention training, experimental students improved their reading performance. The dependent sample t-test also revealed this program was influential in the students’ reading performance with Dyslexia, particularly, on reading words, chain words, words, and text comprehension components. The findings propose that teachers consider this program on different learning steps and prepare more effective activities to help students improve their performance on reading difficulties.

The present quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design investigated the effects of metacognitive awareness on developing Iranian EFL learners’ assessment ability. Forty-one male and female upper-intermediate level learners in two intact classes from an English language school in the Tehran province were selected based on convenience sampling. The classes were randomly assigned to the Cognitive-Based Assessment Instruction Group (CAIG) the and Metacognitive-Based Assessment Instruction Group (MAIG). A general proficiency test administered before the treatment verified the participants’ homogeneity. The Metacognitive Awareness Writing Questionnaire and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire were also administered before and after the study to measure participants’ metacognitive awareness level and self-regulation. The MAIG used metacognitive strategies such as planning, monitoring, and revising to assess English essays. The CAIG performed assessments based on cognitive strategies and a Writing Rubric. The participants’ improvement in assessment was measured every other session during the treatment. After the treatment, the participants took two writing posttests (rehearsed and unrehearsed writing topics). Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) results showed that the MAIG outperformed the CAIG in both posttests, and raising metacognitive awareness could significantly enhance the participants’ assessment ability. The Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (RM-ANOVA) and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that the MAIG participants’ performances were significantly better than the CAIG on seven writing assessments. The MAIG’s self-regulation was also significantly higher. This study has implications for materials developers, EFL teachers, and syllabus designers to focus on raising metacognitive awareness in writing assessment. </em></strong>

Language learning and achievement are related to the skills teachers practice and the presence of expert capability such as teachers’ reflectivity. The objective of the present study was to search the extent to which EFL teachers are involved in reflective instruction and test the level of growing teachers’ awareness of reflective teaching which leads to students’ language achievement. Data were collected by the following instruments: a) a TOEFL test administered to 350 Iranian EFL students, b) reflective journals written by 120 Iranian EFL teachers, and c) a Reflective Teaching Inventory. For the qualitative stage, 120 male and female EFL teachers from two language institutes in Kerman, the center of Iran, were selected through convenient sampling and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. After completing the treatment, a reflective teaching inventory as a post-test was given to the two groups to test the impact of the treatment. The results of the t-test </em>indicated that the experimental group outdid the control group in taking advantage of reflective teaching components. This finding raises provocative questions regarding reflective teaching and teaching skills.

There is no clear-cut, universal consensus on the nomenclature and essence of interpreting types and sub-types, modes, settings and modalities, and the sequence of presentation of modes in the curriculum because different authors and practitioners in the field view these concepts and their hierarchy from various angles and vistas. The uppermost objective of this study was to taxonomize interpreting types and modes to befit a standardized curriculum in the Iranian academia in the light of a qualitative research conducted within the ethnography of the Islamic Azad University South Tehran Branch. To this end, 243 books, 126 articles, 36 websites, 19 clips and 12 podcasts were qualitatively scrutinized as the source materials for content analysis. Moreover, 15 interpreters, 18 interpreter trainers, 32 M.A. and 86 B.A. English Translation Studies students participated by filling out a 5-item researchers-designed open-ended questionnaire. Based on the findings, the inventory of interpreting types and modes were taxonomized and the order of modes was sequenced to be used in an interpreter training discipline in Iranian higher education.

The present mixed-methods study had two aims 1) measuring Iranian EFL teachers’ awareness of dialogic inquiry approach to language teaching, and 2) investigating the influence of the awareness of the approach on changing teachers’ classroom practices into dialogic. To this end, the study included two phases. For the first phase of the study, a researcher-made questionnaire was designed with 5-point Likert Scale and was piloted. Purposive sampling method was applied to select 150 EFL in Fars Province, Iran. The questionnaire was sent to them via e-mail. The results of the analysis of the quantitative data pointed out that EFL teachers’ awareness was not sufficient to practice the approach in their classes. To do the second phase of the research, which was a case study, three EFL teachers participated in an in-service course, which focused on constructivist approach to teachers’ professional development, to increase their awareness of dialogic inquiry approach. Afterwards, five video-recorded sessions of a 20-session term were observed. The data were utilized to score Joyce and Showers’ (2002) Levels of Transfer Scale for each teacher to identify if they changed their practice into dialogic. To triangulate the data, in-depth interview sessions were applied. In order to investigate amount of dialogic stance of their practice, The Dialogic Inquiry Tool (D-I-T) teachers’ rubric was applied. The results showed that teachers’ awareness of the approach positively influenced the teachers’ practice to shift from monologic into dialogic. However, their feedback showed some problems.

The present study was an attempt to investigate assessment literacy among EFL teachers in the Iranian context aiming at studying the implications of assessment literacy for TEFL teacher education reform. Twenty EFL teachers in Iranian language institutes were randomly selected for an in-depth semi-structured interview. The interviews were recorded on a Digital Voice Recorder (DVR) and were transcribed, categorized, and analyzed. The data collected were categorized and analyzed through open, axial, and selective coding systems. The results revealed that Iranian teachers were moderately familiar with assessment literacy components. Likewise, it was revealed that novice teachers with a TEFL background were more aware of assessment literacy and its significance in teacher education. However, in terms of other assessment components such as test administration, selecting the best assessment methods, and communicating assessment results experienced teachers with a TEFL background presented more to-the-point concepts compared to their counterparts in the non-TEFL group, indicating that the teachers with a TEFL background could perceive the aforementioned teacher assessment literacy components better than their non-TEFL counterpart. The findings imply that EFL language institute teachers’ literacy on educational assessment is inadequate especially on communicating assessment results to others and valid grading of the learners’ assessment.

This quantitative research explores the implicit and explicit instruction of reading strategies and its connection through the application of metacognitive strategies by Iranian EFL students. To this purpose, 100 Iranian university freshmen, aged 20-35, studying at the Marwdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, were selected as participants through a convenient sampling method, from a pool of 117 students. Then, the Key English Test (KET) was used to check their homogeneity. The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was also used as a pre-test and post-test to specify the kind and occurrence sequence of learning strategies applied by the participants before and after the treatment. So, the participants were allotted to two experimental groups and received implicit and explicit instruction of reading strategies respectively. The results obtained from statistical data analysis showed that affective strategies were the very frequently-applied strategies, while memory strategies were the least frequently-applied strategies in the explicit group. It was also found that in the implicit group, cognitive strategies were the most frequently-applied strategies, while social strategies were the least frequently-applied strategies. These results have pedagogical implications for EFL teachers to use appropriate approaches in teaching reading strategies, that will ultimately help the students to develop more awareness and competence in reading comprehension.

Idioms are an intrinsic characteristic of every natural language and they are frequently used in spoken and written language; however, there has been insufficient research exploring the best strategies for teaching idioms to EFL learners. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of cooperative and non-cooperative receptive and productive based activities on Iranian EFL learners’ idiom learning. To this purpose, 166 Iranian intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to the five groups: cooperative receptive group (CR), non-cooperative receptive group (NCR), cooperative productive group (CP), non-cooperative productive group (NCP), and a control group. Results from the receptive and productive vocabulary tests showed that all four experimental groups outperformed the control group in both immediate and delayed posttest. However, the CP and NCP instructions were more effective than the CR and NCR ones in in bringing about enhanced idiom learning. Furthermore, CR under the cooperative condition led to better learning compared to its non-cooperative type; however, the CP proved effective irrespective of the cooperative condition. Given the challenging nature of L2 idiom learning and its significance in developing language learners’ knowledge of English, the implications of this study were presented and discussed for teachers, students and syllabus designers.

The present study set out to develop a willingness to communicate (WTC) questionnaire addressing teachers’ socio-affective strategies. It also aimed at exploring learners’ perceptions toward these strategies affecting their WTC. Participants of the study, who were selected by a non-probability convenience sampling method, were 153 English as foreign language (EFL) learners in three popular English Institutes in Iran. A questionnaire including 45 items was designed by referring to a previously conducted focus group interview of Iranian EFL teachers and the review of literature. After the questionnaire was administered to and was completed by the learners, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed. The analysis yielded 37 items and six factors: (a) creating a positive interaction (8 items), (b) teachers’ enthusiasm (6 items), (c) teachers’ fairness (5 items), (d) teachers’ presence (6 items), (e) teachers’ immediacy (6 items), and (f) teaching skills and participation in group activities (6 items). The reliability measures were also examined and the results were satisfactory. The six factors were compared against each other and teachers’ enthusiasm and fairness were found to be the most important factor in promoting learners’ WTC. Implications for teacher trainers and teachers are discussed and suggestions for further research are offered.

This research sought to identify the translation strategies employed by male and female translators for the rendition of philosophical terms in two Persian translations of Explaining Post-modernism from Skepticism to Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, based on Vinay and Darbelnet's model. To achieve this objective, a mixed-methods design was used. The corpus of the study consisted of 100 pages from the English book along with their Persian translations by Poursafir, Zohrabi, and Ehsani. The results obtained from the statistical analysis of the elicited data showed that Zohrabi and Ehsani have employed literal translation, translation by paraphrase, content transposition, form transposition, borrowing, and deletion strategies in translating philosophical terms into Persian. The most and the least frequent strategy applied by them were literal translation and deletion, respectively. The results also revealed that Poursafir has benefited from literal translation, translation by paraphrase, content transposition, form transposition, and borrowing strategies in his translation. The most and the least frequent strategy used by him were literal translation and borrowing, respectively. As for gender, while there were minor alterations between the frequencies of different strategies used by male and female translators, the differences were not significant. The findings of this study provide operational directions for future translators of philosophical works.

It is well established that knowledge has strong effects on text comprehension and memory. There are a few studies about the role of background knowledge on translation quality. The major aim of the present study is to investigate the role of background knowledge in translation quality of drama. For this aim, the literary translations of two groups were compared. There were one experimental group and one control group in the present study. The participants in both groups were given a pretest. The pretest examined the quality of translation. Based on Farahzad’s model of translation quality assessment (Farahzad, 1992), the qualities of the translations were studied. Then, the students in the experimental group received special treatment (Farahzad, 1992). They acquired good background knowledge of the play of An Enemy of the People based on Strangman and Hall's model of activation of background knowledge (Strangman et al., 2009). They studied the play and analyzed its different aspects. The students in the control group did not improve their background knowledge about the source text. They did not receive any treatment. After the treatment, the two groups were given a post-test and were asked to translate the text which was extracted from the play. The results of the present study show that having access to background information and subject matter knowledge has an effect on translation quality.

Nowadays, technology is an inseparable part of modern life, and it is closely related to learning a new language in every context. This study investigates the self-direction and autonomy of Iranian EFL university students in distance learning after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This questionnaire-based study was conducted on 76 EFL students using three close-ended questionnaires to assess the technology-based activities (TBA) used by the students. In addition, ten students were randomly selected and interviewed about their attitudes toward the role of TBA in distance learning and their improvement in English proficiency. The results reveled that listening to the teacher's recorded voice (score: 4.81), 2) using dictionaries or translators (score: 4.55), 3) listening to English music (score: 4.10), 4) using English language software and applications (score: 4.02), and 5) joining an English group through a social networking application (score: 3.90) were the most frequently used TBA by EFL university students. In addition, there is a positive correlation between self-direction and the use of TBA (p. value< 0.01) and between TBA and autonomous learning (p. value< 0.01) (OR: 0.551). It can be concluded that teachers should provide access to technology-based resources, applications, and social media; make activities with technology motivating and fun; and teach strategies for using TBA outside and inside the classroom.

Humans require to help each other in social life. From this aspect, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity of educational aids signified a change in the pedagogical methods. In this regard, the priority of launching online education was high on the agenda in Iran and throughout the world. The purpose of the study was to find the Iranian EFL university students' perceptions regarding the use of mobile phone technologies in online discussion classes and compare their perceptions with their instructional practices in this regard. Thus, in a qualitative study, the researchers used convenience sampling and out of 133 Law students of the Islamic Azad University (IAU), ten students were selected as participants of this study. To obtain the required data, semi-structured interviews were made among participants of the study to find their perceptions regarding the mobile phone technology use over the discussion-based classes. On the other hand, regarding the observation part, 3 EFL reading classes were observed. Qualitative results for semi-structured interviews and class observations demonstrated that IAU students reflected their interest in conducting comparative translation activities to develop reading comprehension skills over legal texts based on cooperative and collaborative reading strategies through online discussion classes. Findings of the study can be useful for some people who can benefit from the results namely administrative executives in the ministry of education to revise their curriculum, university teachers to use the results of the study in their syllabuses and university students to use the findings in their learning procedure.

The present study aimed to examine the impact of instructing metacognitive strategies involving planning, monitoring, and self-evaluation, within proactive and reactive classroom contexts, on the writing accuracy of Iranian EFL learners. Employing a quantitative quasi-experimental design, the research comprised 168 participants, drawn from an initial pool of 206 undergraduate students within the science and engineering department of Azad University, Tabriz Branch, who had completed a general English course during the Spring of 2021. Employing purposive sampling, the homogeneous sample was divided into two experimental and two control groups, aligning with the study's independent variables: the teaching of metacognitive strategies and the classroom environment. The experimental groups underwent instruction in metacognitive strategies, with one group exposed to proactive instruction before commencing writing tasks, and the other receiving reactive instruction when encountering writing difficulties. Pre- and post-treatment writing samples were collected and evaluated for accuracy, and ANOVA was conducted on the pre-test scores, establishing initial comparability among the four groups. Subsequently, a Two-Way Analysis of Variance was employed to assess post-test scores. Notably, teaching metacognitive strategies exhibited a statistically significant influence on writing accuracy only within reactive classroom conditions. Conversely, the classroom environment exerted a negligible direct influence on writing accuracy, though a noteworthy interaction effect emerged between the two independent variables. This study holds substantial implications for EFL instructors, learners, and curriculum developers, highlighting the significance of incorporating metacognitive strategy instruction to enhance writing accuracy within specific instructional contexts.

This mixed-methods study aimed to explore the interplay among stroke, strictness, and teacher success from Iranian male and female EFL teachers’ points of view. This study employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach. In the present study, 420 EFL teachers, 200 males and 220 females, participated based on convenience sampling. For collecting the quantitative data, three questionnaires were employed. From the sample of the study, 50 EFL teachers (25 male and 25 female) were interviewed on teacher stroke and teacher strictness. The intended variables' relationships were examined using the Pearson product-moment correlation formula, and thematic analysis (TA) was applied to analyze the qualitative data. The findings showed that there is a significant relationship between female and male teachers' success and stroke, and there is also a significant relationship between female and male teachers' success and strictness. The qualitative findings indicated that the male and female teachers adopted a positive view toward strictness and stroke as the teachers behaviors in the class in which complement the quantitative findings. At the end of the paper, the implications of the study were presented.

In this study the construction of Azeri Turkish noun phrase is investigated in the frame work of Role and Reference Grammar and Van Valin's (2005) theoretical pattern. In this research, the data have been selected from written sources and by listening to the Azeri speakers' conversations in eastern Azerbaijan province. Only sentences containing simple noun phrases have been chosen using a purposive sampling method. Data analyses indicated that the simple noun phrase in Azeri Turkish consists of one or several dependents. In Azeri Turkish, the dependents either fall before or after the noun phrase nucleus, and there are constraints for their collocating together. A simple noun phrase includes layers, namely nucleus, core and a noun phrase, preceding and following peripheries with operators, and preceding additions. Various adjectives, including descriptive, objective, object of preposition(genitive), honor titles, reduplicative adjective, possessive adjective, reflexive pronouns, noun as adjective, quantifiers and appositives are at the peripheries of the noun nucleus. Noun complement mark, prepositional phrases, comparative and superlative adjectives, ambiguous(indefinite) adjectives, negation mark, numeral adjective, plural marks and all the words referring to the quantity of a noun are noun core operators. Demonstrative adjectives, definite and indefinite articles are noun phrase operators. Data analyses have shown that there are some characteristics that are specific to this grammar and are not seen in other formal and traditional grammars, and the relationship of various elements according to different layers of the noun phrase and its relationship with the core, nucleus and noun phrase can be explained.

Persian, a southwest-origin language, comprises various Parthian and Northwestern dialects as well asnumerous loanwords adopted from East Iranian languages, specifically Sogdian. Loanwords are anatural phenomenon in all languages. They are the product of ethnic mixture and cultural intercoursesbetween different folks. In addition to tribal contact between Sogdians and Parthians, the advent ofsuperdialect and literature account for the entrance of East and Northwest words in the Persianlanguage.Shahnameh has left behind a compilation of ancient-origin East and Northwest vocabularyin Modern Persian some of which have fallen out of use with time. These now-obsolete words couldmerely be found in dictionaries, formal texts, and reference books. They are archaic words and rarelyused. Employing synchrony, diachronic, and comparative methods, this paper dissects the morphology ofthe following words: East Iranian Āvāza (fame), FaƔfūr (the emperor of China), Tāl ō māl (to getscattered), SitēƔ (mountain peak, straight, high, firm), Faž (agony, pain, impurity), RāƔ (plain, slopeof a mountain and also mountain), ČuƔd (owl), Zēvar (ornament, decoration), āƔāz idan, ĀƔāz (tostart), Butfōz (chin, snout), Sangsār (stoning), Rež (desire), žiƔār (scream, loud voice), kās (pig), yāfa(idle talk, backbiting), ĀruƔda (wild, terrifying, violent), Pasečīdan./PasēIJīdan (to get ready, to prepare),lanIJ (to take out, bring out), Alfanĵidan (to stockpile, to combine, to obtain or achieve).Northwest Iranian Āžīr, -Žāla,- Žerf,- žiyān, - Bahr,- Sipihr, - Hužīr, - Herbod,- Zafar,- Barzan, -Zam,- Burz,- Andarz,- Taham,- Sipenj, - Sipāh, - yala, - yāra, - yawa, - yazidan.

This study aimed at analyzing the English translation of Sepehri’ s Eight Books by Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid (2013) based on Jakobson’ s (2013) model. To achieve the stated objectives of the present study, a corpus-based and comparative design was utilized. The corpus of this study consisted of a total of 100 hemistiches which were randomly selected from the following poems: The Passenger, The Death of Color, The Life of Dreams, Downpour of Sunshine, East of Sorrow, The Wayfarer, and The Green Space. To analyze the collected data qualitatively, the content of the corpus was qualitatively analyzed by the raters to identify the translation strategies used to translate the hemistiches into English. The quantitative data analysis included calculating the frequencies and percentages of the identified translation types and translation strategies to recognize the most and the least frequent translation types and strategies used in translations; it was finally shown that literal translation, form transposition, content transposition, paraphrase, omission, addition, and idiomatic translation strategies were used in the Persian to English translation of Eight Books of Sepehri. Besides, the most frequent translation type used in the Persian to English translation of Eight Books of Sepehri was interlingual translation. And the least translation types used in Persian to English translation of Eight Books of Sepehri were intralingual translation and intersemiotic translation.

The present research paper seeks to apply Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s eco-phenomenology to the selected poems composed by Frank O’Hara, the prominent figure of the New York School of Poetry. 'Eco-phenomenology' is where philosophy and ecology meet. This relatively new vogue of criticism deals with environmental issues from a phenomenological perspective. Dismantling Cartesian dualism and proposing the philosophy of 'chiasm,' Merleau-Ponty has contributed substantially to environmental ethics and has proved himself an inseparable part of eco-phenomenology.Although the New York School of Poetry is considered urban in nature, this article intends to study several poems composed by Frank O’Hara, in the light of eco-phenomenology in order to challenge the reductive features of being urban and unaware of the natural environment, ascribed to this poetic movement, by binging to the fore a fissure within this poetry that expresses an awareness of a broader phenomenological world, comprising both the humans and the non-humans. Conducting textual and contextual analyses, this study applies the chiasmic ontology of Merleau-Ponty to the selected poems with the focus on the mutual participation between human flesh and the ‘flesh of the world’ at moments of perception in order to manifest the depth of O'Hara's engagement with the natural environment.