جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "attitudes" در نشریات گروه "علوم انسانی"

Persuasive writing is considered a complex genre for EFL learners to master and yet vital for academic arguments. As meta-discourse markers are recognizable and familiar devices to persuade, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of explicit online instruction on Iranian high school students’ persuasive writing. The participants were high school students, homogenously divided into two groups: experimental (n=40) and control (n=40). An official e-platform used in Iranian state-run schools was used for online instruction. The participants received different passages containing meta-discourse markers in a writing class with the regular schedule. The teacher assigned the experimental group to notice and discuss the markers in small groups. Then, a passage-related topic was assigned and the learners wrote a persuasive essay in each session. For the control group, the same procedure was adopted except for the explicit focus on meta-discourse markers. Finally, a writing test demonstrated the significant effect of explicit instruction on persuasive writing of high school students, through statistical analysis explaining participants’ attitudes and high frequency of interactive type meta-discourse markers. Students’ attitudes were also examined through interviews. Pedagogical implications are suggested to include an explicit focus on meta- discourse markers in writing courses.

The ICTs have invaded not only the fields of business, economics, and different sciences, but also the field of education and particularly language teaching and learning. This article addresses a crucial issue related to the use of ICTs at the university in Morocco and its impact on the academic performance of students. Many studies in the review of literature are presented and they mainly revolve around similar issues related to advantages and disadvantages of ICTs in general, however little attention has been devoted to the relationship between ICTs and academic performance. Thus, this article seeks to answer a set of research questions along with hypotheses which are tested and discussed following some statistical procedures. The researcher looks at the correlation between the use of ICTs in higher education and students’ academic performance. A questionnaire was designed and submitted to a sample of students composed of 108 students from four major universities in Morocco. Cronbach’s alpha was obtained to test the reliability of the instrument. The findings indicate that the implementation of ICTs in higher education is positively correlated with the academic performance of students. The implications of this study suggest that integrating ICTs into higher education can lead to improved academic performance of students. This has significant implications for educators and policymakers who can use this information to design and implement effective ICT-based teaching and learning strategies to enhance student learning outcomes. The study also highlights the importance of considering the relationship between ICT use and academic performance in educational research and policy-making. The results provide a foundation for further research on the use of ICTs in higher education and their impact on student success.

This study was conducted to examine learners’ attitudes and perceptions toward the efficacy of task repetition: whether or not they appreciated task repetition as an effective classroom strategy for enhancing their oral performance. To this end, a multiple case study approach was adopted in which six intermediate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners were investigated over a four-month period in an intact class. Four data collection tools were used: (1) multiple interview sessions, (2) learner diaries, (3) participant observation, and (4) classroom portfolios. In addition, 20 hours of the learners’ audio-recorded task performances across sessions were transcribed and analyzed for signs of improvements in qualities of oral performance. Results indicated that despite the fact that repeating reciprocal narrative tasks led to gains in oral performance, learners viewed task repetition as a futile activity that did not affect their performances over time. The findings are discussed, and implications are provided in the context of education.

This study aimed at evaluating listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities of Iranian senior high school English textbook, Vision 2, based on Bloom’s revised version of cognitive domain. The study was actually conducted to determine the levels of cognition in Bloom’s revised framework concerning the four language skills activities in this textbook. Furthermore, it aimed to investigate the teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards such activities through researcher-made questioners. For the first purpose, the activities in the textbook and the workbook were located, tabulated and codified on the basis of the codifications in Bloom’s revised version. Then, the frequencies and percentages of the codes were calculated. For the second purpose, 130 users of the textbook, 30 teachers and 100 male and female high school students were selected through convenient sampling and questionnaires were distributed among them. They were asked to respond to questionnaires anonymously during the class sessions. The collected data from questionnaires were analyzed manually. The obtained results demonstrated that the identified codes were mainly classified under the lower-level categories in Bloom’s taxonomy, indicating that the activities were not beneficial for the students actively involved in the higher levels of thinking process. Moreover, the result of the Chi-square test showed that the relationship between two groups of low-level and high-level codes was not statistically significant and the obtained codes did not show a regular pattern. As for the responses to questionnaires, the activities, particularly listening and speaking activities, failed to be much responsible for the students’ deep learning.