As an effective instructional approach, contemplative teaching has been shown to improve language learning. Nevertheless, its impact on the development of L2 speaking and self-regulation particularly from the perspective of learners has not been examined so far. For this purpose, 62 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in a language institute in Iran were selected to participate in the study. Participants in the experimental group were exposed to contemplative instruction using the relevant practices, whereas those in the control group received no such instruction. A mixed-methods approach was used in this study for data collection and the obtained data were analyzed through t-tests. The results of statistical analyses failed to demonstrate the effect of the contemplative teaching approach on the speaking skill development of learners. Furthermore, contemplative teaching did not affect the self-regulation behaviors of learners receiving it. And, while learners appreciated some aspects of the contemplative approach, they had concerns about its applicability in teaching speaking. The implications of this study for the teachers who wish to practice contemplative teaching are presented. پرونده مقاله

Possible selves of teachers are not formed overnight, but it is a continuous process on which different factors such as teaching experience may have a significant impact. This study aimed at investigating EFL teachers’ defining their possible selves in the future with a focus on their teaching experience. In so doing, a survey design was used. ََA total number of 180 (90 males and 90 females) English language teachers from high schools (N=90) in North West area of Iran participated in the study through available sampling. To collect the data, the Expected Self-goals Questionnaire, and The Selves I Fear Questionnaire were used. The results showed that prospective teachers of public schools feared that they seem uninspired and were more task-focused than quality-focused; new teachers feared that they cannot control classes and were more task-focused than quality-focused; and experienced teachers of public schools sought to reach professional development and were more quality-focused than task-focused. Further, it was shown that three categories of teachers’ expected selves were significantly different. Moreover, three categories of teachers’ expected selves were different significantly concerning both expected quality-focused and expected task-oriented dimensions. More specifically, prospective teachers reported lower levels of expected professionalism and higher levels of expected learning to teach than the two other categories of teachers. The results of the current study may shed light on our knowledge of EFL teachers’ possible selves as well as the effect of teaching experience on the construction/reconstruction of EFL teachers’ possible selves. پرونده مقاله

این کنکاش انتقادی، برساخت"عقد/ازدواج آریائی"را در زمینه ای از مسائل زبان فارسی (پساقاجاری) طرح نموده و به نقش شناسی آن در تشدید مسائل نهاد خانواده ایرانی/اسلامی پرداخته است. این موضوع (حلقه ای از یافته های زمینه یابانه گسترده تر پژوهشگر در "مسئله شناسی زبان بنیاد ایران") بر اساس تظاهرات در دسترسی از آن در فضای سایبری (میدان پژوهش)، همچون "سندرمی" از آریاگرائی (ساخت ستیزی پساقاجاری) کاویده شده است. دیدگاه زبانشناختی هایدگر (موتور پارادایمی) با برداشتی آزاد و اهتمامی ترکیبی/تلفیقی فضای نظری و بینش روش شناختی کنکاش را ساخت داده است. زبان، افزون بر اینکه میدان و ابزار پژوهشی است؛ جوهره هستی جامعه و"خانه هستی" نیز می باشد؛ وجود و مسائل جامعه نیز در و با زبان اتفاق می افتد؛ با چنین فضای مفهومی (موسیقی متن) "عقدآریائی" نیز با بنیادی زبانی (سیاق زیست زبانی نژادپرستانه) و با ادعاها / بهانه های زبانی ("عدم فهم" متن عربی مرسوم ، ضرورت متنی به "فارسی سلیس") ؛ در بستری از ام المسئله ایران پساقاجار (ناجامعه گشتگی) فهمیده شد. با تکه چینی معمول در گرانددتئوری، نتایج آگزیوماتیک زیر به دست آمد : به نظر می رسد برساخت مزبور با ویژگی نژاد پرستانه (مأخوذ از میدان مطالعاتی)، ضمن تغذیه از تولیدات زبانی و پیوستگی با برساخت های ضد ساختی دیگر (کولبر، سوختبر و ...) از آلاینده های معاصرتر فارسی است؛ که در پیوند با ستیزه های "روشنفکری پس افتادۀ فرهنگی"، در سطوحِ صورت (سامان نوشتاری/ لغوی) و سیرت (سرمایه/ ادبیات اخلاقی و معنوی) زبان فارسی و نیز امنیت اخلاقی/ملی را تهدید نموده، با کژکارکردهای عینی (بازتولید ساخت ستیزی/ تشدید ناجامعه سازی ایران، نژادپرستی) و احتمالی (ضد اخلاقی) ضمن همجوشی با مسائلی داخلی (روابط ضربدری، ازدواج سفید و ...) و جهانی (در وضعیت پست مدرن) تدریجاً می تواند به "ناخانواده سازی" نهاد خانواده نیز منجر گردیده، سامان خانواده/ انتظام اجتماعی را مخدوش سازد. در این امر افزون بر اغواهای سیاسی/ ایدئولوژیکی (اسلام ستیزی آریاگرائی)؛ مصرف گرائی مسلط بر جامعه مصرفی، تبلیغات (بنگاه های خدمات ازدواج)، کالائی شدن امور (مراسمات و ...) در وضعیت پست مدرن نیز نقش آفرینی فعالی نشان می دهد. پرونده مقاله

Thanks to the development of the concept of metadiscourse, it is now widely acknowledged that academic/scientific writing is not only concerned with communicating purely propositional meanings: what is communicated through academic/scientific communication is seen to be intertwined with the negotiation of social and interpersonal meanings. While a large number of so called metadiscoursal resources contribute to the simultaneous negotiation of propositional and interpersonal meanings, the present study aimed at investigating the functions self-mention forms can fulfill in academic/scientific communication. Two of Stephen Hawking's scientific books were selected as the corpus of the research, and based on Tang and John's (1999) model, the constructed corpus was analyzed in terms of the functions self-mention forms can fulfill in academic/scientific writing. The findings revealed that from among the different roles identified by Tang and John, the representative role constituted the most frequent self-mention function in the corpus. The remarkably heavy presence of representative role in Hawking's scientific prose was interpreted as a further evidence for the claim that scientists are more likely to persuade readers of their ideas if they frame their messages in ways which appeal to appropriate community-recognized relationships. پرونده مقاله

Since the early development of interest in the interpersonal dimensions of academic communication in the 1980s, the analytic potentials of the concept of metadiscourse have motivated a large number of investigations. Although these analytic potentials have facilitated the study of diverse academic genres, there has always been a risk of detachment of textual analyses form the contextual origins and motivations. In some cases, this detachment has been so observable that the true discoursal nature of the interpersonal dimensions of academic communication has been reduced to classifications of a large number of pure textual properties. As a reaction to this reductionist trend, the present article provides a preliminary framework within which the contextual origins of metadiscourse features can be understood. It is suggested that if the findings of metadiscourse research are meant to be interpreted in meaningful ways, they should be contextualized within such process-oriented frameworks. پرونده مقاله

The view that academic writing is purely objective, impersonal and informational, which is often reflected in English for Academic Purposes materials, has been criticized by a number of researchers. By now, the view of academic writing as embodying interaction among writers, readers and the academic community as a whole has been established. Following this assumption, the present study focused on how second/foreign language writers enact, construct, and invent themselves through writing. In this study, the theoretical stance on identity is grounded on Ivanič’s (1998) four interrelated aspects of writer identity, namely autobiographical self, discoursal self, authorial self, and possibilities for self-hood in the socio-cultural and institutional contexts. Hyland’s model of metadiscourse (2004a) was used as the analytical tool for analyzing texts. Based on a corpus of 30 research articles, the overall distribution of evidential markers, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions were calculated across four rhetorical sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Discussion and Conclusion) of the research articles. According to the results of this study, identity is a critical aspect of writing which should be brought into the mainstream of second/foreign language writing pedagogy through consciousness -raising or the specific teaching of certain features. پرونده مقاله

Academic discourse enables others' voices in a text to be realized through conventionalized citational patterns. However, form amongst a variety of factors, one thing which may influence the way others' voices are textualized is writers' affiliations to different cultures. Following this assumption, the present contrastive study attempted to explore manifest intertextual constructions across the academic articles written by English and Iranian writers in the field of applied linguistics in a ten-year period (2000-2010). The typology of citation elaborated by Swales (1990), and subcategorized by Thompson and Tribble (2001) and Thompson (2005) were explored as the analytical framework of this study. The analysis demonstrated the dominance of different strategies of citations in the two corpora. The findings of this research may be helpful for novice writers and researchers in applied linguistics. پرونده مقاله

In light of the understanding that the analysis of the generic features of different academic genres can enhance the ability of non-native members of academic discourse communities to understand, and where appropriate, to produce them, the present study aimed at investigating the dominant generic structure of research articles in mathematics. To start with a relatively narrow focus, a corpus of thirty mathematics research articles were randomly selected from The Bulletin of the Iranian Mathematical Society(BIMS), and were analyzed in terms of their macro-organizational structure. An eleven-move structure was identified in the analyzed corpus, while it was also found that the research articles in the corpus did not follow the conventional Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion structure found in many other disciplines. Methods and Discussion sections which are frequently encountered in research articles of many other disciplines were missing in the analyzed articles. It is argued that the findings may have theoretical implications in revealing some discipline specific conventions of organizing macro structure. Since all the authors were Iranian, the emerging model should be treated cautiously because some aspects of the emerging macro structure may also be under the influence of culture specific conventions. پرونده مقاله

The original impetus for this cross-linguistic study came from a need to explore the effect of cultural factors and generic conventions on the use and distribution of metadiscourse within a single genre. To this end, the study as a contrastive rhetoric research, examined a corpus of 60 newspaper editorials (written in English and Persian) culled from 10 elite newspapers in America and Iran. Based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse, both interactive and interactional metadiscourse resources were analyzed. The results disclosed that genre conventions had a determining role in the writers’ choice of some metadiscourse resources that contributed to some similarities in the use and distribution of metadiscourse resources across English and Persian data. In addition, some differences were found between two sets of editorials which were attributed to cultural/linguistic backgrounds of both groups of editorialists. The interactional category and attitude markers proved to be the predominant metadiscourse category and subcategory in newspaper editorials genre. Overall, the findings suggested that metadiscourse has a decisive role in the construction of persuasion in newspaper editorials genre. پرونده مقاله

Free riding behavior or not contributing equally in group work, is a common obstacle in many cooperative activities in language learning. The present study aimed at comparing male and female EFL learners' attitude and their free riding tendency to use the benefits of lowering free riding behaviors in order to make group work more influential in language learning. To this purpose, 140 intermediate and upper intermediate Iranian EFL learners and 30 teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to investigate the topic. The obtained results revealed that the female learners act better in reducing free riding behaviors. The results further revealed a positive perception of interpersonal activities at both level of language proficiency-- intermediate and upper-intermediate. Actually, the obtained results showed that the intermediate group (males and females) acted more positively than the other group in this respect. The findings of the study bear some implications and suggestions for scholar interested in the topic of this. پرونده مقاله

AbstractThis study investigates the collocations, as specific type of multiword sequences that frequently occur in the scientific writing of hard and soft disciplines based on Hoey's (2005) model. The study also extends the semantic prosody of collocations in general words across disciplines. To this end, the introduction sections of 1000 research articles (RAs) from two disciplines of soft and hard were gathered from disciplines of applied linguistics, sociology, and psychology under the category of soft science and from the majors of computer science, chemistry, physics and medicine under the category of hard science in order to find a relationship between these two types of RAs with differences in discipline and the authors’ use of collocations and their semantic prosody. In this study, function words containing articles were ignored that their rates and frequencies were higher than the content words, including specific and general words. The findings indicated that the collocates of general words expressed the positive, negative, and neutral senses and being in soft or hard science did not affect their semantic prosody. It means that the general words directly expressed the meaning they transferred to the reader, without the interference of the context. The results can result in collocation teaching, which is a popular genre of academic writing assigned across disciplines as well as in language-related courses. پرونده مقاله