Number 1 Volume 8

Open Access Article

1 - Collaborative and Team Teaching in ESP Contexts
Simindokht Vakilidousta Ramin Rahmani

English for specific purposes is a crucial matter in English teaching that needs a lot of attention in our education systems. For this purpose, the present study was an attempt to investigate the ways of teaching ESP. Among eighty men in mechanical engineering from fore More

English for specific purposes is a crucial matter in English teaching that needs a lot of attention in our education systems. For this purpose, the present study was an attempt to investigate the ways of teaching ESP. Among eighty men in mechanical engineering from foreign brand vehicle manufacturing factory employees, 45 learners were chosen by placement test and they were put randomly in three groups. In first class, subject teacher taught, in second one, language teacher taught and in third classroom, both of them taught in cooperation with each other. The book that was taught was the same for all three groups and that was ESP for automotive mechanics for SAMT publication. At the end of the courses, an achievement test was held at the same time for all three classes. I used MANOVA tests for statistical analysis of variables which are final scores. The results supported the hypothesis which states that team teaching and cooperation between subject teacher and language teacher at the same time in one ESP class can be a good way of ESP teaching and the final result will be better. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

2 - A Study of Strategies Used in Translating Idiomatic Expressions In Serial Subtitles from English to Farsi
Sahar Hasani Moghadam

Idiomatic expressions are considered as a part of everyday language. In other words, they are the essence of each language and one of the most problematic parts to cope with, especially in the process of inter-lingual translation. Furthermore, there is sometimes no one- More

Idiomatic expressions are considered as a part of everyday language. In other words, they are the essence of each language and one of the most problematic parts to cope with, especially in the process of inter-lingual translation. Furthermore, there is sometimes no one-to-one equivalent for the idioms of the source language (SL) in the target language (TL). This study aimed at investigating the applied strategies in the translation of idiomatic expressions in two American subtitled serials, namely Friends and The king of queens, two American sitcoms, through using Baker’s (1992) proposed procedures in translating idiomatic expressions in translation studies. To this aim, the idiomatic expressions were extracted from the original versions of the movies and compared with the subtitled translations in Farsi. The first subcategory of audiovisual translation (or screen translation) is subtitling, which is a complex form of translation in which the oral communication (i.e., the SL) of a TV show or film is translated into the written language of the audiences (i.e., the TL). Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

3 - Trajectory of L2 Motivation Theories Development: Transition from the Social Psychological Views to the Socio-dynamic Perspectives
Saeed Safdari

This article reports on an attempt to investigate the developmental trajectory and route of L2 motivation theories from the early social psychological period to the current socio-dynamic perspective. While in the early days the individuals’ desire and tendency to More

This article reports on an attempt to investigate the developmental trajectory and route of L2 motivation theories from the early social psychological period to the current socio-dynamic perspective. While in the early days the individuals’ desire and tendency to integrate within the target language community was considered the most powerful motivating factor, the current global perspectives advocate a totally different stance and involve a variety of other cognitive, social, and contextual factors. The new views have brought about novel conceptualizations and unprecedented research methods. This theoretical shift is the outcome of decades of scientific endeavor and research that were continually empowered and supplied by the innovations of psychological motivation research. Four distinct periods of L2 motivation research are recognized with their own specific theoretical and methodological characteristics. In the present article, in addition to describing the developmental periods and their outputs in detail, the links and interconnections between them are discussed.Keywords: L2 motivation, social psychological period, cognitive-situated period, process-oriented period, socio-dynamic period Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

4 - Elicitative Psycholinguistic Tasks for EFL/ESL Research: A Literature Review
Sedigheh Golmohammadi

Research in the fields of applied linguistics including language teaching and translation studies has for long been controversial at least in terms of methodology and instrumentation in particular. For instance, Gass & Mackey (2000-2009) elaborated on stimulated rec More

Research in the fields of applied linguistics including language teaching and translation studies has for long been controversial at least in terms of methodology and instrumentation in particular. For instance, Gass & Mackey (2000-2009) elaborated on stimulated recall methodology, or Ellis & Barkhuizen (2005) discussed their instrumentations and methodologies for analyzing learners’ language. The impetus of the current report came from their focus on the methods and instruments in SLA research plus the tasks mentioned in Komatsu (1994) collection of research studies in cognitive psychology. Attempts were made in this article to present a list of applicable psycholinguistic tasks used in SLA. Each task underwent elaboration, and was clarified by mentioning at least one study in which the task had been used. The result of this review may have two benefits: first, many of such tasks are still practical i.e. they can still be used by researchers in linguistic and psycholinguistic fields. Second, the list of psycholinguistic tasks gives a sort of familiarity to those readers or researchers who may be at their beginning way of making their studies and conducting their experiments. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

5 - The Effect of Verbalization on Young Learners’ Speaking Performance: Collective versus Idiosyncratic Changes
Somayeh Akbari Parisa Daftarifard

This study investigated the role of verbalization in the development of young learners’ speaking ability and vocabulary knowledge at Cambridge English Movers level A1 through quasi experimental design. A total number of 60 participants between the ages of 5 and 6 More

This study investigated the role of verbalization in the development of young learners’ speaking ability and vocabulary knowledge at Cambridge English Movers level A1 through quasi experimental design. A total number of 60 participants between the ages of 5 and 6 years old were selected based on convenient sampling and had comparable scores on the listening section of the Mover Exam. Participants were divided into two experimental and control groups and were taught for ten sessions. The participants in the experimental group practiced verbalization strategy during the course of the study, whereas the young learners in the control group did not. The data, then, were subjected to both parametric and nonparametric analyses for collective results and Rasch model for idiosyncratic investigation. The results of Mann-Whitney U tests and Independent T-Test indicated there was no significant difference between experimental and control groups in their speaking performance. This showed that verbalization strategy had no significant effect on the language learners’ speaking performance when their speaking proficiency was concerned collectively. However, the results of Rasch repeated measure analysis indicated some idiosyncratic growth in the experimental group Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

6 - The Need to Develop Authentic Materials in Teaching Grammar Argumentatively and Communicatively for Iranian High School Students: (Theoretical perspectives)
Aliakbar Tajik Neda Hedayat Neda Gharagozloo

Teaching and learning grammar in Iranian high schools based on the communicative approach of the newly published textbooks tend to lead students to apply the grammatical pattern in sentence patterns not to apply them in communication. Acquiring writing skills is also mo More

Teaching and learning grammar in Iranian high schools based on the communicative approach of the newly published textbooks tend to lead students to apply the grammatical pattern in sentence patterns not to apply them in communication. Acquiring writing skills is also more difficult compared to other three skills because writing skills require mastery of many different linguistic elements of the language that are beyond what is just taught in the standard curriculum. Therefore, EFL teachers should adopt effective strategies and techniques to develop the students' proficiency to write. That is, the grammatical materials used in the newly published textbooks have been used for the specific purpose of providing grammar practice. In a research done on authenticity of Iranian English high school textbooks the feedback received from the teachers’ and the students’ responses, such textbooks lack the authenticity of natural English in terms of content and presentation. The materials are not generally presented from the easy to hard order and they are mainly void of cultural and communicative points. Therefore, the study is primarily aimed at discussing the effects of using authentic material in teaching grammar communicatively and examining the need for English language teachers and course designers to develop authentic materials for grammar instruction communicatively for Iranian EFL students. The results of the study indicate that the need for English language teachers to use authentic materials in teaching grammar to give the opportunity to the students to expose to the real use of language. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

7 - Impact of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) on EFL Learners' Writing Achievement and Critical Thinking
Hadi Salehi Sara Karimi

This study was an attempt to find out the impact of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) on EFL learners' writing achievement and critical thinking. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 EFL learners of institute in Shahinshahr were selected from among a total number o More

This study was an attempt to find out the impact of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) on EFL learners' writing achievement and critical thinking. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 EFL learners of institute in Shahinshahr were selected from among a total number of 100 learners based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET). After homogenizing, they filled out the critical questionnaire developed by Honey (2000) and then they were non-randomly divided into two groups, experimental and control, each consisting of thirty EFL learners. Experimental group members were instructed based on NLP and their instruction was based on five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste). The control group members had a routine teaching process in which no NLP methods was imposed in this group. Both groups were female and their age range was between 15-20 years old. After 16 sessions, writing posttest and critical thinking questionnaire were given to two groups to evaluate whether there is any significant difference between these two groups or not. The design of the current study was quasi-experimental posttest only design. The obtained data were analyzed both descriptively and inferentially. For descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation were obtained and the type of the test applied for this study was independent sample t-test. The statistical analyses revealed that there was significant statistical difference between the two groups’ mean scores on the writing posttest, while there was no significant statistical difference between the two groups’ mean scores on the critical thinking posttest. As a result, it can be argued that NLP had significant impact on learners’ writing skill, but NLP had no significant impact on learners’ critical thinking level. Manuscript profile

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