Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics
Volume:5 Issue: 2, Autumn 2014

International tourism and its related businesses have considerably increased recently. Due to this expansion, tourism employees must be able to communicate appropriately, and effective ESP programs need to be administered accordingly. Many studies have been conducted on current ESP courses for tourism; however, major problems still remain in designing ESP courses to satisfy L2 learners’ needs, especially those learning ESP in Iranian universities. The current study was an attempt to investigate the language needs of Iranian graduate students of tourism management based on their wants, lacks, and necessities. This mixed methods study involved a questionnaire and semistructured interviews with graduate students, English instructors, subject-specific instructors, and experts in tourism management. Despite the fact that wants, lacks, and necessities were not highly similar, based on the findings, it was concluded that all the 4 language skills need to be emphasized in their ESP courses in order to satisfy the specific needs of tourism management graduate students.

Studying translations during the time of conflict has gained currency in the recent decade in translation studies. One of the cases in which conflict manifests itself is in the way different countries choose to name an event or a geographical location, for example. This study set out to understand how translation of rival names and labeling was carried out in Iranian state-run news agencies. To achieve this end, English-to-Farsi translations of 4 news Websites (i.e., IRNA, ISNA, YJC, and Fars News Agency) were monitored and collected in the course of 2 weeks. Data were then analyzed based on the narrative theory approach using Baker’s (2006) model. Data analysis revealed that, in 33 cases, the names or labels adopted by the English news agencies were substituted with the names endorsed by the institutions in which the translators worked. This study demonstrated that name substitution took place when Iran’s national and international interests were conflicting with those of the Western news agencies including Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Syrian and Bahraini crises, Islamic values, and the sovereignty over the Persian Gulf. Findings suggest that translations cannot be thought of as neutral conduit through which totally disinterested message is relayed from one society to another. Findings are also indicative of translators’ critical appraisal in both decoding and encoding processes of translating.

Language educators are required to reflect upon content delivered to the students. Teaching strategies should be adapted to keep students loyal to cultural identity as well as foster resistance to oppressive policies dictated within English language curricula. Despite the significance of applying critical principles by teachers, it is not known whether Iranian ELT instructors and subject teachers practice the principles of critical pedagogy (CP) or not. This study investigated whether Iranian EFL teachers at universities are aware of the CP principles or not, and whether there is a difference between Iranian ELT instructors and subject teachers in terms of applying the CP principles. Fifty-five ELT instructors and subject teachers at different universities were selected through convenience sampling. Data were collected through the questionnaire of CP attitudes (Pishvaei & Kasaian, 2013). Results showed that the ELT instructors supported all the CP principles, but the subject teachers supported and applied only a few of the CP principles. That is, ELT instructors and subject teachers differ in terms of attitudes towards CP.

The present study intended to investigate the processing behavior of 2 groups of L2 learners of English (high and mid in proficiency) and a group of English native speakers on English active and passive reduced relative clauses. Three sets of tasks, an offline task, and 2 online tasks were conducted. Results revealed that the high-proficiency group’s performance was the same as that of the native group in all the 3 tests in terms of accuracy and processing behavior. Accordingly, it was concluded that proficient L2 learners can achieve native-like performance. Also, opposed to maturational propositions on adult L2 learning following the critical period hypothesis, the high-proficiency participants showed native-like behavior on the L2 structures. We suggest that the amount of exposure to an L2 can be a defining factor for L2 learners to perform in a native-like manner.

This study is a typological description of written formative feedback in an EFL context in Iran. Twenty M.A. students of TEFL participated in the study. They were required to summarize a scholarly article in each session on which the instructor would provide written corrective feedback (CF). Written formative comments were extracted, coded, and categorized into various types, such as asking for and giving information interrogatively or as a statement, making a request interrogatively, imperatively or as a statement, making positive comments or exclamation, and also making statements or comments on grammar and mechanics. Written formative comments were also analyzed with regard to the use of hedges and text-specific comments. Furthermore, we introduce a new category into the feedback types: hidden or covert feedback. Results are expected to raise the awareness of writing practitioners regarding their own practice in an EFL context.

Considering the crucial role textbook evaluation plays in any educational system, this study evaluated 2 textbook series with respect to the identity options they offer to Iranian learners of English. Data were gathered based on reading passages, dialogues, and pictures of Right Path to English (RPE) and Cambridge English for Schools (CES). Although this study is mainly qualitative in nature, quantitative results were also presented to provide the readers with a valid and replicable analysis of the data. Fairclough’s (1995) critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework constituted the theoretical framework of the study. Using this framework, the researcher examined different aspects of identity, namely, gender, social class, professional occupation, marital status, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. Findings indicated that RPE provides its readers with an ethnically homogenous imaginary world of English use. CES, on the other hand, depicts a more varied and ethnically heterogeneous picture of English use. Implications of these findings for Iranian textbook writers are also discussed.

The newly administered Iranian Ph.D. Program Entrance Exam (PPEE) is supposed to have had different washback effects on university curriculums. This qualitative study examined the effects of the new TEFL PPEE on the applicants’ study plans and strategies from the points of view of both Iranian university instructors and applicants. To this end, we conducted in-depth interviews with 10 experienced TEFL instructors from 4 different Iranian universities along with 10 applicants who sat both the old and new entrance exams. Findings indicated that from, the points of view of both instructors and applicants, the new exam has generated confusion in terms of technical content covered. It was also revealed that it has been more bits-and-pieces-oriented. The new exam, in the instructors’ view, has induced the applicants to develop exam-oriented strategies, rather than more demanding cognitive skills as required by target program courses.

Alternative assessment approaches and, among them, self-assessment and peer-assessment are becoming increasingly important in educational contexts. Designed to compare self-assessment, peer-assessment, and teacher-assessment, this study included 90 EFL students from 3 intact classes divided into 3 groups: self-assessment, peer-assessment, and teacher-assessment. After taking the TOEFL Proficiency Test (2004) and a writing pretest asking the participants to write a 150-word paragraph, the participants were trained upon the writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) scale of Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998). Before sitting the 2 posttests requiring the participants to write a 150-word paragraph, the self-assessment and peer-assessment groups assessed their own and peers’ writings, respectively, whereas the third group had their teacher assess their writings. Results of one-way ANOVA demonstrated that teacher-assessment was not as effective as self-assessment and peer-assessment in terms of enhancing their writing proficiency. Results have important implications for educational organizations and curriculum designers who look for the most appropriate methods of teaching and testing.

Research on L2 learners’ success at development and appropriate use of pragmatic ability and knowledge has mostly approached the issue from a cognitive or social perspective, and less attention has been devoted to the problem from the equally important emotional or individual-psychological lenses. This study sought to explore, first, the interplay between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ pragmatic performance and the different dimensions of their emotional intelligence (EI) and, second, the possible influence of gender on this association. A sample of 80 (32 males and 48 females) advanced M.A. TEFL students from 2 Iranian universities constituted the participants of the study. The Bar-On’s EQ-i measure of EI and Liu’s (2006) Test of Pragmatic Performance were administered to the participants. Results of the descriptive statistics indicated that the participants performed better in intrapersonal, interpersonal, and adaptability skills consecutively. Pearson product-moment correlational results revealed that there were 3 medium positive correlations between the participants’ pragmatic performance and their intrapersonal, interpersonal, and EI dimensions, as well as 2 small positive correlations between the participants’ pragmatic performance and their adaptability and stress management abilities. Results also indicated that the females with more EI and intrapersonal skills performed better on the pragmatics test than the males. Findings suggest that pragmatic development and performance are intricately linked to learner affect, subjectivity, and emotions, and that this interplay, in turn, is not immune to gender influence. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed

The present study sets out to investigate the narrator’s textual position in Grass’s The Tin Drum. Although authorial self-dramatization through affinities with one or more characters in the work is undeniable, this study mainly concentrates on the inner interpenetrations of heteroglot utterances as uttered by an unreliable first-person narrator, Oskar Matzerath, in the light of the Bakhtinian concepts of carnivalesque and polyphony. Through the evasiveness and irresponsibility of the narrator’s act of story-telling, a carnivalesque world is created—a world in which numerous marginalized, unvoiced, and alien utterances interact with the phallocentric as well as the logocentric forces of the dominant culture. In brief, the present study made use of the notion of narrative vagueness in Grass’s The Tin Drum to demonstrate the Bakhtinian sociodialectical principle operating through the stratified, heteroglot utterances of other-speechedness, a functional and yet thematic principle working through the tempospatial, chronotopic nature of languages.

It seems impossible to think of the Persian art without mentioning the significant presence of gardens. They are present in miniature painting, architecture, and literature. One of the modern works of Persian fiction in which gardens play a significant role is Malakut (1961), a novella by the modern Iranian fiction writer Bahram Sadeqi (1936-1984). The story of this novella begins in a “green garden” in “that pleasant moonlit night,” and moves through seductions in a garden of sin and death; it ends abruptly around dawn the next morning on the outskirts of the first garden with most of the characters either dead or dying. Moreover, there is a third garden which forces its presence upon the consciousness of the text whenever possible. Under the influence of his studies in Freudian psychoanalysis in writing Malakut, Sadeqi (1961) seems to have given gardens new meanings. In the present study, thus, the significance of the gardens in Malakut is studied in the light of Brooks’s rereading of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1961) as a text concerning textuality in which instead of studying the author’s, reader’s, or character’s unconsciousness, Brooks considers narrative as an organism which, like human life, is shaped and governed by the drives. Accordingly, we argue that the 3 gardens which make up the setting of the plot of the novella, indeed, represent, respectively, life and death drives, and the return of the repressed garden.