فهرست مطالب رسول محمدحسین پور

There have been a number of research concentrating on the request production of ESL/EFL, and native speakers. There have been some studies investigating the production of request speech act of EFLs and ESLs. However, no research has yet focused on the production differences of request speech act among Iranian EFLs and ESLs in terms of internal and external modification devices. First, the participants were given Oxford Placement Test (OPT) to determine their English proficiency level and 95 learners were chosen out of 123 ESLs and EFLs to respond to the scenarios adopted from Schauer (2009). Second, the scenarios were given to the participants via email or an already-made GoogleDoc link of the scenarios. The results of the independent t-test revealed that Iranian ESLs outperformed their EFL counterparts. The results regarding request head act, internal and external modifiers demonstrated that ESLs mostly applied conventionally indirect request strategies while EFLs mostly tended to apply direct request strategies. It was also revealed that requests produced by ESLs were more native-like with no or few grammatical mistakes and that both EFLs and ESLs utilized external modifiers more than internal modifiers. This study implies that due and sufficient attention is to be paid to EFLs since they lack sufficient exposure to L2 and such impoverished pragmatic input might result in inappropriate applications of speech acts in general and request speech act in particular.

The field of Interlanguage pragmatics has always reflected on its methodology, and the validity of the collected data through various data collection methods and whether they approximate the authentic data have always been serious concerns in the field. Drawing upon Schauer’s (2009) taxonomy of request speech act and its internal and external modification devices, the present study was an attempt to investigate the effects of enhancing DCTs. To this end, the requests of 30 EFL students produced by non-modified and modified DCTs were compared with their authentic requests recorded in the classroom institutional context. The findings revealed that modified WDCT and ODCT approximated Natural methodology in terms of request head act and internal modification devices but not external modifiers. To investigate the deeper layers of respondents' thoughts toward DCTs, unstructured interviews were also conducted. Although artificiality of the DCTs and their test-like nature in general were regarded as the weak points of the DCTs by the interviewees, they asserted that the modified DCTs improved their self-confidence and understanding of the scenarios. The findings cautiously suggest that modified version of DCTs enjoy the positive features of both non-modified DCTs, tapping pragmalinguistic and metapragmatic knowledge of respondents, and partly Natural methodology, eliciting the respondents’ sociopragmatic knowledge.

The upsurge of interest in the employment of instructional technologies in learning English has coincided with a growing interest in Online Informal Learning of English (OILE). Considering the under-explored area of speaking skill, the present study investigated the participants’ microgenetic development of speaking ability in terms of accuracy and fluency through informal participation in online activities. Through a stratified purposive sample selection, three adult male and female intermediate-level participants were selected and agreed to engage in some online informal activities such as emailing, watching online videos like TED Talks, participating in webinars, reading online news, etc. The participants’ microgenetic development were tested throughout the study in two-week-time intervals. The results of the audio recorded data highlighted the positive impact of the OILE activities on the development of the spoken accuracy and fluency. The results also suggested that each individual participant was on his/her own unique developmental trajectory and that accuracy and fluency development was not a linear process, and there was a trade-off between accuracy and fluency. The overall findings of the study suggested that learners’ speaking ability, particularly fluency and accuracy, can be enriched by interacting with online informal contexts. This study also confirmed that each learner is on his/ her own developmental trajectory. Learners’ developmental trends are various due to differing categorizations and entrenchments in their lives considering Usage-Based (UB) approach.

The importance of noticing, attending to linguistic features, and focusing on linguistic input like focus-on-form and focus-on-forms have always been a contentious issue in language teaching. Consistent with this line of research, the present study aimed to investigate the impact of typographical input enhancement, gloss, and advance organizes on EFL learners' reading comprehension ability. Eighty EFL learners were chosen from Safir Language Institute in Ahvaz and were assigned to four equal groups of typographical input enhancement, gloss, advance organizer and simple-text. A Preliminary English Test (PET) of reading was utilized as pretest. Control group and the three experimental groups were instructed for eight weeks through the aforementioned techniques. Finally, an equal version of PET was used as posttest. ANCOVA was run to analyze the data. Results indicated that the advance organizer group significantly outperformed the other groups regarding their reading comprehension performances. The study has important implications for reading comprehension task analysis, task design, and task instruction and the way such information could be utilized to activate schemata and retrieve information from long-term memory.

Capitalizing on Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) notion of Involvement Load Hypothesis, this study aimed to investigate the impact of task-induced involvement load on Iranian EFL learners’ retention of idiomatic expressions. The main concern of present study is to explore if principles of involvement load hypothesis hold true when applied to learning idioms. The research questions formulated to achieve the objectives include: 1.What is EFL learners’ retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the reading-comprehension task with involvement index 1? 2. What is EFL learners’ retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the fill-in-the blanks task with involvement index 2? 3. What is EFL learners’ retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the composition task with involvement index 3? 4. Does Involvement Load play any significant role in the retention of idioms of Iranian EFL learners? Given the fact that the depth of processing a word is the key component in vocabulary learning, it could be assumed that composition tasks designed to develop idiomatic expressions in EFL learners, enjoy much greater retention rate, hence attesting to the effectiveness of involvement load on the retention of idiomatic expressions. To this end, 60 female upper-intermediate Iranian EFL students in an English language institute in Tehran took part in the study. Twenty idioms were taught to three groups of students through tasks that induced different levels of involvement load, namely reading comprehension, fill in the blanks and composition tasks. To conduct the statistical analysis, fifteen idioms were picked from among the ones presented in the pretest, so that learners’ prior knowledge of some idioms was taken care of. The retention of the chosen idiomatic expressions was then tested via an immediate and a delayed post-test. MANOVA was run to compare the groups’ performance on the three tasks on the posttest and delayed posttest. Scheffe’s test was then used as a post-hoc comparison test to compare the groups on posttest and delayed posttest. The results pointed to a direct relationship between the involvement as induced by the tasks and participants’ retention of idioms, implying the fact that the higher involvement load of a task, the higher the retention of the task will be. Accordingly, the findings indicated that retention rate was the highest in the composition task, lower in the fill in the blanks, and the lowest in the reading comprehension task. The study has implications for task analysis, task instruction, and task design; Curriculum developers may benefit from the findings of this study when engaged in designing courses related to idiomatic expressions. English teachers could be more cognizant of varying involvement indexes in tasks and their effect on the retention rate of their learners. Eventually, language learners will be informed of the optimal amount of time and effort needed for mastering idiomatic expressions.

This study was to look for the interaction effect of cultural intelligence and cultural identity on Iranian EFL learners’ use of English address terms. Therefore, 52 participants were divided into high and low cultural intelligence and cultural identity groups. Further, the participants took part in the study of the relationship between the constituent parts of CQ and English address terms. They were required to complete L1 Cultural identity questionnaire, Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) and test of English address terms. The results indicated no interaction effect of cultural intelligence and cultural identity on the use of English address terms. Moreover, the four components of cultural intelligence were proved insignificant in relation English address terms. The findings can inform of imminent obliterating L1 cultural identity among EFL learners. Broaching the subjects such as globalization and English linguicism, the study calls for the need for further inquiries to revise already established findings such as the role of home culture, L1 and attitudes towards target culture in EFL domain.

Till recently, text difficulty has commonly been determined by employing readability formulas, however, major criticisms have been leveled against readability formulas (Graves & Graves, 2003).This research project aimed at determining text difficulty through readability formulas and Coh-Metrix. In other words, the study investigated the role of text difficulty in EFL learners’ pedagogic task performances. Since both males and females took part in the study, firstly the researchers aimed at finding out whether a different pattern of task performance existed for each. Secondly, all participants were provided with two different reading passages whose difficulty levels were determined by Coh-Metrix and readability formulas. Finally, a self-efficacy questionnaire was administered to delve into learners’ self-perceptions about their own performances on the pedagogic tasks. Descriptive statistics, paired samples t-test and repeated measures ANOVA were utilized to analyze the data. The results indicated that gender of the students had no significant impact on the learners’ performances on the pedagogic tasks. The findings revealed that text difficulty and the learners’ self-efficacy significantly affected EFL learners’ performance on the pedagogic tasks. The findings suggest that determining difficulty level of the texts through Coh-Metrix could be considered a step forward and will certainly assist language teachers and syllabus designers who strive to tailor the appropriate tasks and materials to learners at differing level of language proficiency. The results also imply that self-perceptions of learners might be a true predictor of their own performances on different tasks in general, and on pedagogic tasks in particular

This research investigated the views of the editor-in-chiefs, professors, and post-graduate students about the reasons for committing plagiarism in Iran and the ways it can be prevented. Twelve editor-in-chiefs, 41 professors, and 112 post-graduate students of English-related majors took part in the study by answering two essay-type questions and a modified version of iThenticate questionnaire through email. The results indicated that lack of proper training and consciousness-raising from the early stages of education, prevalence of laziness and cheating among Iranian students, pressuring professors and university students to publish papers to gain higher degrees, ranks and promotions, and the ease of admissions to the universities at the post-graduate level were among the main reasons for committing plagiarism in Iran. Appropriate awareness-raising, training and educating students from the very beginning, and laying down strict regulations to seriously punish plagiarizers were among the most important strategies suggested by the participants to avoid and deal with plagiarism.

In spite of the crucial function of the politeness markers in the appropriate communication of the language learners, teachability of these markers has not received due attention in the pragmatic studies. Drawing upon House and Kasper’s (1981) influential taxonomy of politeness markers, the present study addressed teachability as well as the underlying process or microgenetic development of these markers in an EFL context. A population of 56 undergraduate participants underwent instruction through consciousnessraising (C-R) tasks for nine sessions. The data were obtained through repeated measurements during the first, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth sessions. The findings highlighted the effectiveness of the politeness markers instruction and suggested that the learners’ heavy reliance on some structures like “please” and consultative devices such as “willingness” and “ability” structures at early stages of data collection was mostly due to their unawareness of other politeness structures. This reliance decreased over time and was replaced by “play-downs” especially “progressive aspect past tense” structure in the course of the instruction. Likewise, a wider range of simple politeness markers such as hedges, understaters, and downtoners which were absent in the learners’ early data increased steadily in their subsequent data. The findings highlight the acquisitional difficulty of pragmatic features and provide researchers, practitioners as well as language learners with information concerning the acquisitional sequence and order of pragmatic features in an EFL instructional context.

Summary writing is associated with lots of cognitive and metacognitive complexities that necessitates instruction (Hirvela & Du¡ 2013). Contrary to majority of studies carried out on summarization instruction¡ the present study addressed the underlying processes or microgenetic developments of the Iranian EFL learners’ summary writing. To this end¡ 41 male and female undergraduate students received instruction on summary writing for eight weeks. They were required to write five summaries during the first¡ second¡ fourth¡ sixth¡ and eighth sessions. The participants’ summaries were analyzed holistically by the TOEFL-iBT scoring guidelines and in terms of the number of instances of deletion¡ sentence combination¡ topic sentence selection¡ syntactic transformation¡ paraphrasing¡ generalization¡ invention¡ minor verbatim copying¡ and major verbatim copying. The findings revealed that some summarization strategies like invention¡ syntactic transformation¡ and generalization are more problematic and develop at later stages. The participants gave up major verbatim copying as they obtained a full appreciation of the conventions of authorship. However¡ many of them still used minor verbatim copying and patchwriting in their summary writing. The results imply that the students’ lack of awareness of the consequences of plagiarism as well as their insufficient general English and summary writing knowledge culminates in plagiarism.

An overview of pedagogical interventions in the field of interlanguage pragmatics reveals the under-exploration of the processes in which changes in learner's second language (L2) pragmatic competence are established and that most of these investigations have focused on the product or final outcome of the learner's pragmatic development (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper, 1996; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006). This study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis of the microgenetic development of English as a foreign language (EFL) learner's pragmatic knowledge of request speech act. A total of 140 male and female participants received instruction on request strategy types and internal and external modification devices for seven sessions (weeks) through consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks. The data were collected after instructional sessions during the first, third, fifth, and seventh weeks through discourse completion tests (DCTs). The results indicated that, in the course of time, the participants stopped using direct request strategies and employed conventionally indirect strategies more frequently in situations involving high-status interlocutors and high-imposition requests. Moreover, as time progressed, the learners became more preoccupied with pragmatic appropriateness rather than grammatical correctness. The results of the study suggest that C-R instructional tasks offer an effective means of teaching pragmatics. Considering request speech act, learners should become conscious of the significance of concepts such as status and imposition as well as internal and external modification devices in request formulation.