Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning
Volume:4 Issue: 9, Spring-Summer 2012

The present study aims to investigate language learners’ cognitive processes in on-line ESP courses. Three modes of inquiry are used: think-aloud protocol analysis, screen capture analysis, and correlation analysis. The theoretical foundations for the evaluation of the cognitive aspect of Ferdowsi Univeristy of Mashhad E-learning System are drawn from cognitive load theory, cognitive apprenticeship theory and human-computer interactivity theory. 15 users were interviewed while their performance on the screen was recorded electronically. The results of qualitative and quantitative analyses show that design features have a meaningful effect on the users’ performance in four phases of cognitive interaction with elearning systems. The educational implications of the findings for software developers are discussed.

This project investigates the relationship between lexical semantics and causative morphology in the acquisition of causative/inchoative-related verbs in English as a foreign language by Iranian speakers. Results of translation and picture judgment task show although L2 learners have largely acquired the correct lexico-syntactic classification of verbs in English, they were constrained by the morphological patterns of their first language (L1) when learning zero morphology, especially with causative/inchoative verbs. Results also show the lack of the learner's proficiency level in all causative/inchoative contexts and in almost all contexts in grammatical judgment task.The transitivity errors documented are analogous to the overgeneralization errors reported in the L1 and L2 acquisition literature of English and other languages. In this study, we also suggest that L2 learners are atuned to the rich morphology of Persian and that the acquisition of derivational morphology and lexical semantics are not dissociated in these interlanguage grammars.

The aim of this paper is to report on an attempt to design and implement an intelligent system capable of generating the correct part of speech for a given sentence while the sentence is totally new to thesystem and not stored in any database available to the system. It follows the same steps a normal individual does to provide the correct parts of speech using a natural language processor. It uses both morphological and syntactic analysis of the input to arrive at correct part of speech. It, then, checks to see if the correct part of speech is provided. If not, it displays the correct part of speech with a shortnote referring to the specific rule responsible for the selection of correct part of speech. This tool can be used to help learners master English parts of speech system.

The objective of the present study was to identify and examine the influence of instructional tools, namely, games, songs and stories on young Iranian EFL learners’ achievement utilizing a quantitative design. To conduct the study 65 Iranian EFL learners, divided into an experimental group and a control group, learning English at Navid English Institute, Shiraz, Iran, participated in the study. The data were collected through two instruments: a pre/post- achievement test, and audio-recorded interviews, both designed by the researchers. The data obtained from the administration of the test and the interviews were analyzed using independent samples t-tests and paired samples t-tests and the findings were compared to describe the influence of employing instructional games, songs and stories on participants’ achievement. Findings drawn from the analysis of data revealed that the implementation of pedagogical tools used in the study can significantly affect the learners’ language achievement, realized through their listening, speaking, and writing ability and their vocabulary and grammar.

The present study investigated the use of interactive metadiscourse resources (IMRs) in terms of appropriacy during a process- based writing course by applying qualitative and exploratory methods. Moreover, learner's perception was investigated to find out how confident they felt as they were writing and rewriting the drafts. 30 intermediate EFL learners were chosen to participate in this study based on their performance on the OPT. The participants wrote essays on argumentative topics during the period of one semester. Each participant submitted three drafts on a topic, the first draft, the draft after revising and the draft after editing. Experts’ appropriacy judgments showed a clear improvement in the appropriate use of IMRs from the participants’ earlier drafts to their final drafts. Furthermore, analysis of the interviews’ data showed that most of the interviewees had positive views towards this kind of writing and stated that their level of confidence in using IMRs increased through the stages and they felt more confident towards the end of the course. The results of this study seem to have some implications for teachers and practitioners in EFL contexts and could be of major significance for classroom application.

In order to develop an understanding of the rhetorical conventions in the Persian language and to find out the metadiscursive cultural norms of Iranian writers in their native language writings, it is necessary to probe into the implicit rhetorical features of academic writing which has so far eluded a comprehensive systematic characterization. Metadiscourse marking, which is supposed to be one of the important rhetorical aspects in the writing process, is shown to be susceptible to cultural mentalities. Therefore, in this study an attempt is made to explore interactive and interactional metadiscourse strategies use by the Persian writers in the genre of research articles (RAs). For the purpose of this study, a corpus of 60 Persian researcharticles from social and natural sciences was selected for a close qualitative manual analysis. It appeared that, though globally similar in many ways, different IMRD sections of RAs which follow different cognitive genre types use interactive and interactional strategies differently. Also, the conventions of the two sciences appeared to be weirdly different. Thefindings are analyzed and implications are drawn for the teachers and learners of writing research articles in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes. It is argued that without such characterizations it would be very difficult to gather an idea of the current rhetorical trend in Persian language so that a comparison can be made with any target language conventions in teaching and learning foreign languages.