2024-03-29T12:23:14Z
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/?_action=export&rf=summon&issue=631
Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly (Formerly Journal of Teaching Language Skills)
TESLQ (Formerly JTLS)
2016
34
4
THE GENERIC STRUCTURE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IN PERSIAN DISSERTATIONS
Minoo
Alemi
Atefeh
Rezanejad
Acknowledgments are vital since students/researchers can demonstrate their genuine appreciation through them and more importantly shape their (local/global) academic identity. In line with this significance, the present study examined the move patterns of 503 Persian dissertation acknowledgements from two major universities in Iran, from 1981 to 2014 and from sixteen various disciplines including soft and hard science disciplines. Overall, 65,323 words were analyzed. By and large, a careful examination and analysis of the corpus indicated that Iranian university students follow a three-tier moves pattern in writing a dissertation acknowledgments, namely a “Framing move” (including six micro steps), a main “Thanking move” (consisting of nine micro steps), and a “Closing move” (containing four micro steps). Moreover, the results indicated that the longest and shortest acknowledgments were 986 and 4 words respectively. The results also indicated that there was a significant difference in the complexity of acknowledgments in hard and soft science disciplines. The results of this study can hold valuable implications for both university students and professors who aspire an appropriate, coherent, and to the point display of scholarly competence and academic identity.
Generic structure
Persian
dissertation acknowledgments
2016
03
01
1
28
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/article_3580_fed589b2719181f73ae80a9c0934d833.pdf
Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly (Formerly Journal of Teaching Language Skills)
TESLQ (Formerly JTLS)
2016
34
4
TEXTUAL AND INTER-TEXTUAL ANALYSES OF IRANIAN EFL UNDERGRADUATES’ TYPES OF ENGLISH READING TOWARDS DEVELOPING A CAREFUL READING FRAMEWORK
Asma
Dabiri
Naser
Rashidi
Mahbobeh
Saadat
Rahman
Sahragard
Zahra
Alimorad
This study investigated textual and inter-textual reading of a group of Iranian EFL undergraduates’ careful English reading types. In this research, Khalifa and Weir’s (2009) reading framework was used to propose a more inclusive aspect of a careful reading framework and the reading construct for instructional and assessment goals. The participants of this study were B.A. students of English Translation at Shiraz Payame Noor University. To obtain the required data, a questionnaire and a careful reading test along with reading journals, interviews, and retrospective verbal protocols were used. The findings revealed that careful reading at the sentential and textual levels were seen to be practiced frequently by the participants. However, reading purposes and cognitive processes requiring integrating information from different texts, reading critically to establish and evaluate the authors’ position on a particular topic, building links across texts, judging the relatedness of texts, evaluating the writer’s ideas and comparing viewpoints were not seen as prevalent emerged reading patterns. The participants performed differently on tasks measuring different types of careful reading at different levels in a descending order of difficulty. In doing the tasks, although no statistically significant difference was found between the performance of males and females, they performed differently regarding their age and educational level differences. Subsequently, based on the outcomes, in the proposed careful reading framework, some new variables such as educational level, age, documents knowledge, better understanding and careful reading at multiple text level structures were added to Khalifa and Weir’s (2009) reading framework.
careful reading
sentence-level comprehension
text-level comprehension
inter-text level comprehension
2016
03
01
29
55
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/article_3657_8ee153017f829baa301d5a0494cb7455.pdf
Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly (Formerly Journal of Teaching Language Skills)
TESLQ (Formerly JTLS)
2016
34
4
TEACHERS AS REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONERS: A SURVEY ON IRANIAN ENGLISH TEACHERS’ REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Golsa
Faghihi
Mohammad Reza
Anani Sarab
Reflective teaching, which has gained the status of an integral element of teacher pedagogy, is still an elusive concept, probably because it is merely attainable when teachers are provided with opportunities for building professional knowledge and for showing reflective teaching practices. The present study aimed at examining the English language teachers’ perception of their level of reflection and the way their perceptions were realized in practice. Adopting a multi-method design, the study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, data were elicited form 60 EFL teachers using a questionnaire (Akbari, Behzadpoor & Dadvand, 2010). In the second phase, six teachers were randomly selected from among the surveyed teachers and their teaching practices were observed. The record of the observations was, then, analyzed using the seating chart technique to find patterns in the observed teachers’ questioning practice as a sign of their degree of reflectivity. The results revealed a relatively low level of reflection with the teachers under study tending to rely more on their own rationality in teaching. It is argued that for teachers to develop desirable levels of pedagogic integrity, they should involve themselves more in exploring their students’ learning styles and critical aspects of the teaching context.
reflective teaching
seating chart
reflective teaching questionnaire
Iranian English language teachers
2016
03
01
57
86
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/article_3659_9f569361415a4a93081c1e50022375d7.pdf
Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly (Formerly Journal of Teaching Language Skills)
TESLQ (Formerly JTLS)
2016
34
4
ACADEMIC WRITING REVISITED: A PHRASEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS HIGH-STAKE GENRES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LEXICAL BUNDLES
Hassan
Jalali
Gholam Reza
Zarei
Lexical bundles are frequent word combinations that commonly appear in different registers. They have been the subject of much research in the area of corpus linguistics during the last decade. While most previous studies of bundles have mainly focused on variations in the use of these word combinations across different registers and a number of disciplines, not much research has been done to explore some high-stakes written academic genres of one single disciplinary area. This more qualitative study aimed at finding the way in which target bundles in the discipline of applied linguistics, as identified in research articles, were used by two groups of EFL postgraduate students (master-level and doctoral students) as novice discourse community members in the same discipline. Surprisingly enough, the study, contrary to some findings of the previous research, found that in many cases, postgraduate students were able to use target bundles as published writers did. The study, therefore, revealed little if any difference between the three groups of writers in their actual use of lexical bundles. Notwithstanding this, there were some remarkable discrepancies between the three groups with regard to some structural and functional classes of bundles.
lexical bundles
research articles
doctoral dissertations
master theses
applied linguistics
2016
03
01
87
114
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/article_3615_94625e0e7e4cc3ef041f0ea20f4af1f7.pdf
Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly (Formerly Journal of Teaching Language Skills)
TESLQ (Formerly JTLS)
2016
34
4
IMPACT OF SYNCHRONOUS COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION ON EFL LEARNERS’ COLLABORATION: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
Azadeh
Mozafarian Pour
Abdorreza
Tahriri
For the last two decades, computers have entered people’s lives in an unprecedented manner in a way that almost everybody considers life without them rather impossible. In recent years, researchers and educators have been trying to discover how computers and the Internet technology can maximize the quality of language instruction. As such, the present experimental study sought to investigate the impact of Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC) on Iranian EFL learners’ collaboration. To this end, 26 upper-intermediate female students were randomly chosen from a language institute and then they were randomly assigned to one control (Face-to-Face) and two experimental groups (Internet Relay Chat and 2 Dimensional modes). Then, they were taught how to write for ten sessions. The two experimental groups were instructed over the net with two different SCMC modes while the control group was given instruction in a conventional classroom context. Quantitative data regarding the students’ collaboration were collected via Haythornthwaite’s (2000) three-part Likert-scale questionnaire after being tested for its reliability and validity for the present context. The results of one-way ANOVA showed no statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in terms of collaborative learning, class interaction, and students’ impression. The results also suggested that mode of instruction might not be a determining factor as far as the amount of students’ collaboration, interaction and impressions are concerned.
Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC)
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
2 Dimensional (2D)
Face to Face (F2F) context
collaboration
2016
03
01
115
140
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/article_3616_2dae35d47d04a7f831dfca034e22474a.pdf
Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly (Formerly Journal of Teaching Language Skills)
TESLQ (Formerly JTLS)
2016
34
4
THREE TYPES OF COMMENTS ON CONTENT: TEACHER VS. PEER FEEDBACK
Leila
Tajik
Maryam
Fakhari
Maryam
Hashamdar
Somayeh
Habib Zadeh
This study was conducted to examine the effect of three types of comments, i.e. imperatives, questions, and statements, with different communicative purposes, i.e. giving information and making a request, given by an ELT teacher and peers on students’ revision of their writings. Sixty-four female students, between 16 and 26 years old studying at high-intermediate level of English language proficiency in Iran Language Institute (ILI) participated in this quasi-experimental study. They constituted four intact classes, two of which received feedback on their writing from their teacher, and the other two received peer feedback. One hundred and twenty eight pairs of students’ drafts including 672 instances of revisions of their writings based on teacher or peer comments were collected and analyzed based on the rubric designed by Ferris (1997). It was found that questions and statements provided by the teacher with the purpose of making a request, and statements given by the peers with either one of communicative functions all bring about the best results in students’ writings. On the other hand, the analysis of the revisions made by the students showed that statements provided by the teacher for the purpose of giving information has the least positive effect on the students’ modifications. Surprisingly, questions provided by the teacher and peers with the purpose of giving information were found to have negative effects on the students’ writing.
peer feedback
teacher feedback
content
comment type
communicative purpose
2016
03
01
141
166
https://tesl.shirazu.ac.ir/article_3656_5dee4b1aa61cd259c910e99c0fb9980a.pdf