فهرست مطالب

رشد آموزش زبان های خارجی - پیاپی 113 (زمستان 1393)

نشریه رشد آموزش زبان های خارجی
پیاپی 113 (زمستان 1393)

  • تاریخ انتشار: 1393/11/20
  • تعداد عناوین: 10
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  • Sh. Zarei Neyestanak Page 13
  • M. R. Anani Sarab Page 29

    Considering the fact that your were extensively involved in research on English language curriculum issues in the Iranian context when you were at Shiraz University, your current involvement in the same area of research in the international forefront at Macquarie University places you in a unique position to contribute to our better understanding of those issues and the way they can be tackled more effectively. One of the issues that has gained more prominence as a result of the shift to the CLT approach in the secondary school English curriculum is classroom assessment. So I would like to ask you to share your views with ROSHD readers on classroom assessment. It might be helpful to first explain the dynamics between large-scale testing and classroom assessment as they relate to the issues that are normally created when a traditional exam-based curriculum is shifted to CLT.

  • J. B. Sadeghian Page 33
  • H. Azimi, Z. Kobadi Kerman Page 38
  • M. Yousefpoori Naeim Page 47

    With the rise of the Communicative Language Teaching, the field of language testing also witnessed outstanding changes, which resulted in the advent of the performance-based assessment. It did not take long for this new approach to language assessment to gain popularity among teachers and researchers, and its passion has not petered out to this day. The present paper makes an attempt to provide readers with a concise overview of what performance-based assessment is, how it was developed, and how it should be viewed in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. It is concluded that despite the numerous benefits the field of language testing has gained from performance-based assessment, it still falls short of the expectations raised at its early stage of development.

    Keywords: communicative language teaching, language testing, performance-based assessment
  • N. Khaki, A. Khodamoradi, M. Ganjabi Page 54

    Textbooks are an important part of a curriculum so textbook evaluation seems to be inevitable and necessary, especially in countries where the textbooks are developed by the Ministry of Education and not selected by the EFL teachers. Since a new English book has been developed for the 7th grade students in Iran, this study aimed at evaluating the newly developed textbook from the perspective of the teachers who had used it in their classroom instruction. To accomplish the study, a questionnaire was developed to evaluate the book based on six domains, namely, structure and vocabulary, general theme, appearance and illustrations, dialogues, exercises and activities, and supplementary materials. The findings revealed that most EFL teachers were satisfied with the general theme, appearance and illustrations, and supplementary materials, while nearly half of them were not satisfied with the dialogues, vocabulary and structure, and exercises and activities. It can be concluded that, in spite of some privileges, the book is in urgent need of revision and modification.

    Keywords: textbook evaluation, EFL teachers’ attitudes, 7th grade, Iran
  • M. B. Mehrani Page 64

    Although educational materials often present new vocabulary in semantically clustered fashions, empirical investigations indicate that presenting words in semantically related groups seems not to facilitate but even to hinder the process of vocabulary learning. The present study was conducted to compare the relative effects of two methods of vocabulary presentation: semantically related words versus semantically unrelated words. The study was conducted as part of regular instruction, in a language institute on 68 elementary language learners, and lasted for eight sessions. A “presentation – practice – test” procedure was followed within a quasi-experimental research framework. Throughout the study the participants were taught four semanticallyrelated and four semantically un-related sets of words. The results of eight series of vocabulary tests revealed that students’ performance in the semantically unrelated condition was significantly better. The findings suggest that presenting semantically related vocabulary items may cause interference in the process of word learning, at least at the proficiency level tested in this experiment.

    Keywords: interference theory, mental lexicon, semantic clustering, vocabulary instruction