Teaching English Language
Volume:2 Issue: 7, Summer 2008

The most significant aspect of scientific discourse is to weigh evidence and draw conclusions from data. Academic writers need to present their claims cautiously, accurately and modestly in order to meet the expectations of the corresponding discourse community and to enter a dialogue with their audience. Hedges can serve as the interactive elements which bridge between text information and author’s interpretation. The present study examined the impact of language/culture on the use of hedging strategies in academic writing of English and Persian Native Speakers in English applied linguistics research articles. To this end, 108 applied linguistics research articles written by English and Persian Native Speakers were selected on the basis of stratified sampling randomization. The discussion section of experimental and descriptive research articles were compared for the amounts and types of hedges through chi-square analysis. The findings show that there are some significant differences between hedges used by English and Persian native speakers of English applied linguistics articles in the corpus. More specifically, English native speaker writers were found to use a variety of terms to express tentativeness and their degree of commitment towards their findings. The findings have theoretical and pedagogical implications for English for Academic/Specific Purposes.

Recently, the number of trilinguals and multilinguals is rapidly increasing but most of the studies of cross-linguistic influences have concentrated only on the effect of L1 on L2 and not on the effects of L1 and/or L2 on the acquisition of a third language (i.e. L3). This research tried to concentrate on this aspect and specially focused on the acquisition of negation in English as an L3 by Turkish-Persian bilinguals. The reason for choosing negation was that many learners find syntactic negation problematic and different languages put their negative particles in different positions in the sentence.For the purpose of this paper, the three languages were compared, and predictions were made on the basis of these comparisons. 40 participants (20 adults and 20 children) chosen by stratified random sampling took part in written and oral production tests, and then they were divided into two halves on the basis of their proficiency levels (elementary and advanced). The written test consisted of 30 questions, and the interviews included a number of questions eliciting negative productions, and each one lasted for about 15 minutes.Incorrect negative utterances extracted from the tests/interviews were analyzed and compared, and then predictions were made following Contrastive Analysis (CA) guidelines. The researchers came to two important first, interference or negative transfer was not the only source of errors, and CA predictions should not be completely trusted. Second, L2 (here, Persian) was more dominant and effective in the participants'' productions of negations in L3 (here, English).

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of monolingual, bilingual, and bilingualized dictionaries on vocabulary comprehension and production of Iranian EFL learners of English at different proficiency levels. A total number of 270 students at Tabriz Azad University (nine groups of 30 members each) participated in the study. Three groups were elementary, three intermediate, and three advanced level learners. At each level of proficiency, all the three groups were taught the same words, but each group used a different kind of dictionary. At the end of the experimental period, all three groups (at each level) received two posttests, a multiple-choice test and a fill-in-the-blank test. Six independent one-way ''Analysis of Variance'' (ANOVA) procedures were run to compare the means of the groups on receptive and productive vocabulary tests. Results indicated that different types of dictionaries are appropriate for vocabulary comprehension and production of learners at different levels of proficiency

Translator education is now widely practiced in Iran. Every year a huge number of candidates are accepted into the "English Translation Program" at B. A. level. Teaching translation inevitably involves evaluating the quality of the translations produced by students and giving a grade for the achievement of the intended goal. Thus، there are always final exams of translation to be developed، administered، evaluated and scored. Based on such scores، decisions are made by translation teachers and university officials; decisions that seriously affect students'' educational career in particular and their whole life in general. Accordingly، this study aimed at investigating the attitude of undergraduate Iranian students majoring in English translation towards the way their instructors test their translation ability. In so doing، the researchers developed and administered a 33-item Likert-type questionnaire to 120 senior students studying at four various Iranian universities including state universities، the non-for-profit ones، the Islamic Azad Universities، and Payam-e-Noor University. The findings showed an overall negative impression of the final tests on students. Whereas the subjects were highly pleased with the access to dictionaries (but not to glossaries) and to some extent with the content validity and the test instructions، they were not satisfied with the scoring procedures at all. Their main source of deep dissatisfaction included time allocation، the difficulty level، text selection and the reliability. Interestingly enough، the test format commonly used was considered appropriate only by half of the respondents. As part of the solution، the authors suggest a shift toward more direct، performance-based tests using standard scoring rubrics. Moreover، translation instructors-evaluators must get acquainted with modern theories of translation evaluation as well as the existing evaluation schemes and observe more strictly the principles of test development. In particular، they should use test specifications and scoring rubrics to establish and promote the test validity and reliability respectively.

This article aims at shedding light on the concept of postmodernism, and its implications in TESOL. Postmodern philosophy as a prevalent concept and a hot buzzword in philosophy, science, and art is believed to have influenced TESOL theoretically in some ways. The elements of postmodernism including: constructivism, subjectivism, relativism, localism, and pragmatism are found to have been applied in TESOL to the concept of the demise of the methods, more focus on styles, strategies, multiple intelligences, chaos/complexity theory and critical theories. But in practice, in Iran TESOL still lives in the modern era.

This article includes an attempt at developing a model of foreign language learner''s identity formation. First, the paradoxical situation of the foreign language learner is expounded in relation to their concern and influence. Given the poverty of exposure in foreign settings, language programs are suggested to be reasonably designed in the direction of learner''s independence. This need is linked to an existentialist-humanist argument to the effect that considering basic issues of the learner''s identity is a precondition for viable foreign language learning. The elements of a model of language instruction which has foreign language learner identity formation at its heart are then presented. Pedagogical mechanisms for enhancing learner identity are hinted at, the most important being Self-Based Syllabus, which engages the learner in a process of self-exploration using an array of learner-related materials. The paper ends by subsuming the idea of identity development under the larger construct of sustainable education.

The huge corpus of travel literature, penned by the British male and female writers on Persia during the high noon of imperialism, should not be taken simply as an ‘innocent transcription’ of the other world; rather, it has been asserted by postcolonial critics that the mapping out of non-European nations through a matrix of textual production in stereotypical attributes plays a crucial role in perpetuating and legitimizing the imperial domination. Lady Sheil’s portrayal proceeded with her husband’s Notes, authored within the constraining frame of colonial discourse and backed up by the discursive authority, presents ‘a living tableau of queerness’ of the Persians as the other inferior Orient in need of Messianic British mission. To set this study in context, it initially defines the key concepts of the field, and then it moves on to a postcolonial scrutiny, not only to probe into the stereotypical images, but also to unravel the exploitative side of the imperial project lurking in the narrative.