Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice
Volume:3 Issue: 7, Fall- Winter 2010

This research was an attempt to find the relationship between English discourse markers and their Farsi translations. It was conducted in order to find out whether DMs translations completely demonstrate source texts orientation and to what extent DMs translations are functionally appropriate compared to the original text? Six instruments were used. Three of them were the original English books and the other three were their translations. Ten pages from each original book were randomly selected. Then they were compared to their translations by the researcher and two translation teachers according to Farahzad's (1992) scale. The results of the study showed that there is a high degree of relationship between English DMs and their Persian counterparts; however, there is not a 1:1 translation about DMs. It can be also said that Persian translations are, functionally and almost totally, appropriate, compared to the original texts.

Aiming at highlighting the important role of print media discourse in the implicit  transfer of  the dominant ideology of discourse context, the present data-driven paper demonstrates  how the lexical features of repetition and synonymy as well as the structural and thematic features of passivization, nominalization and predicated theme were utilized by the discourse producers to mediate between their own underlying ideology and the target readers' understanding of the events of September 11, 2001. Through a comparative statistical analysis of the print media discourse of the data for the study written in two ideologically opposing contexts of Syria and America, we have tried to explicate how the discourse producers utilized various lexical and thematic strategies to produce different impressions of the event and implicitly impose the underlying ideology on the readers.

Emotional Intelligence, the ability to be aware of, understand, and express oneself, the ability to be aware of, understand, and relate to others, the ability to deal with strong emotions, and the ability to adapt to change and solve problems of a social or personal nature, can be considered an important factor in learning a language as it enhances the verbal fluency which is the ultimate goal in FLL. The present study intended to consider the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance in Osku-Iran Islamic Azad University`s EFL classes. For this purpose, 110 undergraduate EFL sophomore and junior students participated in this study. First, in the middle of the term they were required to complete Bar-On (1997) Emotional Intelligence Inventory and their EI scores were computed based on the guidelines Bar-On (1997) provided. At the end of the term the academic course final exam was administered to the students to achieve their academic mean score which was computed out of 20. After that the degree of correlation between EI and academic mean score was found. It became evident that there is no meaningful relationship between total EI score and academic mean score but there is a meaningful and positive relationship between some sub-scales of emotional intelligence and academic mean score. Therefore, material developers and syllabus designers are required to take emotional factors into account when they want to design syllabuses or make materials ready for teaching.

The consideration of rater training is very important in construct validation of a writing test because it is through training that raters are adapted to the use of students’ writing ability instead of their own criteria for assessing compositions (Charney, 1984). However, although training has been discussed in the literature of writing assessment, there is little research regarding raters’ perceptions and understandings of the training program. Although a few studies have looked at the differences between trained and untrained raters in writing assessment (Cumming, 1990; Huot, 1990), few studies have used a pre-and post-training design. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the training program on experienced and inexperienced raters with regard to a pre-and post- training design. Twelve EFL raters scored 45 pre-rated benchmark essay compositions by an authorized IELTS trainer. These essay compositions were scored before, during and after the training program. The results regarding the comparison across raters showed that inexperienced raters had wider range of inconsistency before training but they became more consistent than experienced raters after training.

Several studies of L2 learners’ interlanguage have addressed the complexity of the English adpositional system due to several reasons like L1 transfer, lack of knowledge in L2 and the strong collocational relations of prepositions with other elements of the English language. The major purpose of the present study is to evaluate the performance of Iranian students in dealing with three broad categories of spatial, non-spatial and idiomatic adpositions in English. To achieve the inclinations of the research project, 60 students majoring in TEFL at Roudehen University were selected. A paper-based TOEFL test of English Proficiency was administered to obtain some information about the participants’ general language proficiency. Three completion tasks with the division of spatial, non-spatial (nominal, adjectival and verbal) and idiomatic adpositions were administered. The obtained results represented the fact that the Iranian participants were considerably inclined to transfer their L1 adpositional patterns to their L2 production. The correlational analyses indicated that whereas the scores related to adposition task in general, non-spatial as well as the idiomatic subtests were strongly correlated with the scores obtained from the TOEFL test, there was a moderate correlation between the spatial subtest and the TOEFL one. The independent sample t-test results between the freshmen and sophomores dealing with spatial, nominal and adjectival subtests were considered to be significant.  However, in reference to the verbal subtest, the difference between the two groups was not significant. The results obtained from the independent sample t-test indicated no significant differences between the freshmen and sophomores in their performance on idiomatic adpositions. Finally, the result of the correlation coefficients showed high correlation coefficients between the whole adposition test and the three subtests of spatial, non-spatial and idiomatic ones. Moreover, high and moderate correlations were reported among the three subtests with the highest correlation between the spatial and non-spatial subtests and the lowest between the idiomatic and spatial ones.

Initiation, Response, and Feedback(IRF) sequences are the most frequent interaction network in any classroom contexts. IRF sequences have been examined profusely in previous studies and were reported to be negatively correlated with participation opportunities (Kasper, 2006; Cazden, 2001; Ellis, 1994).In all these studies, all contingent factors of any classroom context which might influence interaction network have been overlooked. Therefore, IRF sequences have been improvidently considered as static and inflexible interaction patterns which are unfolded invariantly in classroom. Based on video- taped data from ten English as a foreign language (EFL) classes, which were analyzed within conversation analysis framework, this study uncovered a modified version of IRF sequences labeled as ISRF (Initiation, Struggle, Response, and Feedback) sequences. Previous literature reported that IRF sequences offer very limited learning opportunities. ISRF sequences, on the other hand, have been shown in this study, to destroy even those very limited learning opportunities which IRF sequences could offer. The finding can both benefit teachers and teacher educators. It warns novice teachers to avoid applying this new interaction pattern in their classes and demands teacher educators to inform their trainees of the negative effect of ISRF sequences.

Computer technology has provided language testing experts with opportunity to develop computerized versions of traditional paper-based language tests. New generations of TOEFL and Cambridge IELTS, BULATS, KET, PET are good examples of computer-based language tests. Since this new method of testing introduces new factors into the realm of language assessment ( e.g. modes of test delivery, familiarity with computer, etc.),the question may be whether the two modes of computer- and paper-based tests comparably measure the same construct, and hence, the scores obtained from the two modes can be used interchangeably. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the comparability of the paper- and computer-based versions of a writing test. The data for this study were collected from administering the writing section of a Cambridge Preliminary English Test (PET) to eighty Iranian intermediate EFL learners through the two modes of computer- and paper-based testing. Besides, a computer familiarity questionnaire was used to divide participants into two groups with high and low computer familiarity. The results of the independent samples t-test revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the learners' computer- and paper-based writing scores. The results of the paired samples t-test showed no statistically significant difference between high- and low-computer-familiar groups on computer-based writing. The researchers concluded that the two modes comparably measured the same construct.

This study was conducted to probe the effect of the observer ring technique on the participants’ writing achievement. In so doing, the researchers utilized a quasi-experimental design with 20 participants in the control group and 18 in the experimental group. Instrumentation included a writing handout, an Oxford Placement Test (standard proficiency test), and a rating scale of writing. As a treatment, the participants in the experimental group were asked to write at home and bring their papers to the class to be corrected by their classmates and the teacher was the supervisor. In the control group, the papers were corrected by the teacher. The results of the pre-test indicated that the participants of the two groups were homogeneous with regard to proficiency level as well as their writing ability. The results of the post-test revealed that the writing ability of the participants in the experimental group had improved during the study. Moreover, the observer ring technique had a positive and significant effect on the participants' writing ability. The findings may promise implications for incorporating this new interactive feedback model into EFL writing classes.

The teaching of writing has recently begun to move away from a concentration on the written product to an emphasis on the process of writing. Feedback is a fundamental element of the process approach to writing. It can be defined as input from a reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to the writer for a revision. This study reports on the effectiveness of two types of feedback provided by two different sources– the teacher and the peers– on students’ overall writing quality in an EFL context. To fulfill such an aim, a group of 60 Iranian Persian native speakers aged between 22 and 25 majoring in English Translation were chosen from among a greater population of 98. They were assigned to three homogeneous groups based on their scores on Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and a sample writing assignment on a given topic by emphasizing the expository genre through providing some reasons. They covered five topics before and after receiving feedback– ten written texts– in the span of a 15-week semester. Then, the papers were rated analytically. The findings revealed that feedback had a noticeable effect on the students’ draft editing, and of the two sources of feedback, the students benefited from teacher’s feedback more than their peers’ feedback. Other possible implications interpreted from this study supported the occurrence of a change in students’ roles in communicative foreign language learning settings and that, they could take the role of autonomous learners and turn into common respondents to other students’ writings and in this way their L2 knowledge construction and implementation increased

The present study was an attempt, to empirically investigate if there was any significant difference between authentic listening materials and their simplified version in terms of the listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, two groups of thirty subjects were chosen. One group received authentic listening materials and the other group received the same topic in simplified version through ten sessions. The subjects studied Top Notch Book, level 3. The listening parts were followed with seven listening comprehension questions to assess the listening comprehension of the subjects. Then, at the end of the course, the listening comprehension scores of the two groups were compared by a T-Test. The result showed that simplified demonstration of materials had a benefit over the use of authentic version. A questionnaire was also given to the subjects at the beginning and at the end of the course to find out their motivation toward using authentic or simplified materials. The result indicated that there was no significant difference between two groups in terms of motivation.