Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:6 Issue: 3, Autumn 2022

International scientific communication is mostly conducted in English. Consequently, writing and publishing in English is of significant importance in academic settings. Alongside many other factors, proper academic writing has an appropriate level of linguistic formality. Research has shown that linguistic features can distinguish between formal and informal texts. Different scholars have utilized different methods to define and measure formality. The present study compares the degree of formality of applied linguistics articles written in English by native English speaking and Iranian non-native English-speaking researchers by calculating their F-scores, a measure of formality introduced by Heylighen and Dewaele (1999). In total, 80 articles were selected from four international journals. Half of them were written by Iranian non-native researchers and the other half by native researchers. The results indicated a medium level of formality in both groups. However, articles written by Iranian non-native researchers were found to have a significantly higher degree of formality. Broadly, this research has implications for teachers of English in different areas, journal editors, materials developers and researchers who want to publish internationally.

This study examines how Iranian language institutes represent themselves in two pages of their institutional websites, namely, Homepage and About Us. Accordingly, this study aims at comparing and contrasting three formerly-established and three newly-established Iranian English language institutes in terms of their representation in the above-mentioned webpages. Swales’ model of move analysis (1990) within genre analysis was applied to dissect the Homepage and About Us pages of the two groups of websites. The analysis reveals that the websites of the two groups of institutes are similar regarding their Homepage and contain the same five moves. There are, on the other hand, some differences between the moves and steps in About Us pages of the former and newer institutions’ websites. The formerly-established institutes rely mainly on their long-lasting reputation to represent themselves, while the newly-established institutes represent innovative institutes conforming to the learners’ needs and expectations as well as offering some free services. It seems that newer institutes apply lengthier About Us pages to convince their learners of their capability to fulfill their claims. The results and models would be of high significance to language institutes businesses and to the researchers in genre analysis.

Radical orientation in the feminist movement evoked numerous criticisms calling for a more neutral and non-political paradigm toward women. The urge for visibility is a long-established intersection between gender and translation. Paratexts, as elements outside the text proper, have created a promising avenue for redirecting translators’ visibility outside the textual background. This study sets out to investigate how male and female fiction translators employ their prefaces as an opportunity to elaborate on themselves as translators and their profession as a delicate and serious task. One hundred translators’ prefaces in the fictions translated from English into Persian were analyzed using thematic analysis. The contents of translation- and translator-oriented themes reflected female translators' preference for speaking in the first person and asserting more personal accounts, whereas men preferred the third-person point of view and focused mostly on introducing the original authors and their works. The overall results of this study showed that female and male translators were mostly reluctant to talk about their translation process and its possible challenges or delicacies.

This study aims at comparing the effects of order of acquisition (L1 vs. L2) and language of contact instruction on third language acquisition (L3), exploring whether the context of acquisition affects learners’ knowledge of the L3. To this end, four groups of L3 English learners were selected: The first and the second groups had Persian as their first language (L1) and Arabic as their second language (L2). The participants of the first group were students of Persian Language and Literature, while the participants of the second group were students of Arabic Language and Literature. The third and fourth groups had Arabic as their first language and Persian as their second language. The participants of the third group were students of Persian Language and Literature, while the participants of the fourth group were students of Arabic Language and Literature. The knowledge of English plural marking was elicited via a grammaticality judgment correction task and a picture description task, aimed at examining how these groups learn number agreement between the noun and its adjective modifier in English as their L3. Results revealed that Persian and Arabic A groups (those with Persian as their language of instruction) outperformed the other groups in both tasks, suggesting that they transferred plural marking facilitatively from Persian.

Batelaan (2001) posits that a teacher-student respectful inter-relationship is conducive to a safe learning context. This study presents a multi-faceted scale that cross-culturally measures teachers’ (dis)respect for learners as a crucial dimension of teacher-student relationships. The teachers’ respect for learners questionnaire (TRLQ) is premised upon literature review, focus groups and online interviews. We examined the dimensionality of the TRLQ via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to seek confirmation for our hypothesized six-factor model among native and non-native English language teachers and learners (N = 472). The six-factor structure was obtained through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) of the TRLQ, which was developed based upon three overarching categories consisting of 14 minor themes gained from focus groups and online interviews. Hinged upon these analyses, the six-factor structure strongly indicated the best fit. These dimensions include a) teachers’ interpersonal characteristics, b) teachers’ insightfulness, and c) teachers’ occupational attributes. Reliability coefficients revealed that the internal consistency of the six factors was excellent. Further, we tested the convergent, divergent, and predictive validity of the TRLQ. Teachers’ (dis)respect for learners appeared to predict learners’ academic achievement, particularly their GPA and self-assessed success in learning English. The results lend support to the six dimensions derived from EFA and focus groups and online interviews and offer concrete proof of the psychometric properties of our scale. This scale can be used by educators and policy makers to oversee teacher-student respectful relationships.

The current study examined the impact of online planning and strategic planning in the context of task-based computer-assisted language learning (CALL) on Willingness to Communicate (WTC). Initially, the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered to 120 intermediate female English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Then, based on the OPT scale, 90 learners were chosen and divided into two experimental groups and a control group. The participants in the assigned groups were asked to complete the WTC questionnaire as the pretest. Following that, one of the experimental groups received CALL Online Planning and the other one received CALL Strategic Planning. In the Strategic Planning group, the learners wrote an essay each session on a given topic while being allowed to think of what they were going to write (content), and what language forms (words, grammar, etc.) they wanted to use. In the other experimental group, learners had time to think about the task performance during the task, but were instructed not to write down their plan. Conventional treatment was applied to the participants in the control group. After ten sessions, the learners in the three groups were given the WTC questionnaire as the posttest. The results of ANCOVA indicated that online planning and strategic planning had considerable impact on Iranian EFL learners’ WTC. Moreover, it was revealed that the effect of strategic planning was more significant compared to online planning on Iranian EFL learners’ WTC. The results promise implications for EFL teachers to incorporate online planning and strategic planning in the context of CALL-based TBLT (i.e., Task-Based Language Teaching) to enhance WTC.

The growing inclusion of technological devices in language learning calls for exploring their efficacy and determining to what extent learners’ characteristics mediate their effectiveness. In light of these concerns, the current study has sought to examine the relationship between learning English vocabulary via mobile phone and the learners’ personality traits. The participants of the study were 100 intermediate English as foreign language (EFL) learners studying English at the University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran. Sixty American English idioms were chosen and made available in a Telegram channel, during a six-week period of treatment to provide the participants with Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL). A researcher-designed achievement test was administered to assess the learners’ vocabulary learning via mobile phone. Big Five Inventory (BFI)” (John et al. 2008) was used to estimate the learners’ personality traits. The data analyses showed no significant correlation between the variables; however, simultaneous multiple regression offered extraversion as the unique significant predictor. The results revealed MALL not only frees the learners from the restrictions of time and place, but also minimizes the possible intervention of learners’ characteristics in the process of language learning. The fruitfulness of MALL in leaving behind students’ characteristics has important implications for both educators and practitioners.