scholarly journals Exploring Gender-based Language Identity Among Iranian EFL Learners

Author(s):  
Hossein Khodabakhshzadeh ◽  
Mansooreh Hosseinnia ◽  
Fatemeh Ahmadi

The purpose of this study is examining the language identity among male and female language learners in Iran. 1268 English language learners from different parts of the country from different ages and Iranian ethnicity and English language proficiency levels participated in this research. Validated and reliable scales of measuring language identity was used. The results of this study revealed that male and female English language learners are significantly different in their language identity and Iranian English language learners are in a moderate level of language identity. Moreover, the majority of the participants in each gender (male: 35.52%, and female: 50.88%) chosen American English as their favorite pronunciation kind, females (41.04) prefer Persian English more than males (20.94), and the lowest percent among male learners is related to Australian English (7.05) and among female learners is related to Canadian (1.54). 

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Maryam Farnia ◽  
Atena Farhangi ◽  
Masoud Saeedi

As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging for the foreign language learners. However, the body of literature is heavier on the side of humor production than humor perception. The current study explores the extent to which Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners perceive different types of English humor in comparison with the English native speakers. The participants were 153 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency who were randomly selected from English language learners from several English language institutes in Shiraz, Iran, and 30 American English native speakers who voluntarily participated in this study. A questionnaire consisting of six contextualized jokes of three major types of universal, cultural and linguistic (with morphological, phonological, lexical and syntactic subcategories)was developed based on Schmitz's classification of verbal humor to obtain the quantitative data. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was conducted to elicit the perception of those participants who did not find the jokes humorous. The results showed that the majority of Iranian EFL participants did not realize the humor in the jokes. Also, the findings revealed that generally speaking, Iranian EFL learners' perception of humor is significantly lower in all types of jokes examined. The best perceived type of humor was found to be the linguistic humor of morphological type for the Iranian EFL learners and the lexical type for English native speakers. It was also discovered that the phonological humor was the least perceived type of humor for both Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers.


Author(s):  
Ali Akbar Khansir ◽  
Afsaneh Salehabadi

As the topic suggests, the research paper presents Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners. Error analysis always tries to resolve language learners’ problems in acquiring second or foreign language setting. Learning to English pronunciation is perhaps as important as learning listening skill, speaking, and spelling. Errors in English pronunciation create several problems for English language learners in their works. In other words, most of the English language errors of pronunciation are due to the lack of knowledge of language learners. However, all the students in our sample are of age group (16-25) at Bushehr language institute and they are all Iranian nationals. In addition, all of them were female learners. An English pronunciation (consonant) test was used to get information about the knowledge of the learners in English pronunciation. Findings of this article indicated that the first and second hypotheses of this article were accepted, but the third hypothesis was rejected. However, the findings of this paper showed that the Iranian EFL students have problem to pronounce English sounds correctly.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Seyyed Hatam Tamimi Sa’d ◽  
Fereshte Rajabi

Vocabulary constitutes an essential part of every language-learning endeavour and deserves scholarly attention. The objective of the present study was three-fold: 1) exploring Iranian English language learners’Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs), 2) examining language learners’ perceptions of vocabulary learning, and 3) exploring Iranian English language teachers’ Vocabulary Teaching Strategies (VTSs). In total, 145  intermediate learners of English as a foreign language, consisting of 114 males and 31 females aged 15 to 27, participated in the study. The triangulated data were collected using three tools: questionnaires, interviews, and class observations. Sixty-seven learners (31 females and 36 males) filled out a 56-statement questionnaire, adopted and adapted from Takač (2008) and translated into Persian. The questionnaire comprised two parts, enquiring as to the learners’ VLSs and the teachers’ VTSs. The findings indicated that females and males differed significantly in their reported VLSs and their teachers’ use of various VTSs. Additionally, 78 learners were interviewed as to their perceptions of effective and ineffective VLSs as well as VTSs. The findings revealed that the most effective VLSs were reported to be: a) reciting, repeating and listening to words, b) using words, and c) memorising words while the most effective VTSs revolved around: a) explanation, b) repetition, and c) dictation. The observations also confirmed the findings obtained via the questionnaire and interviews. In general, the findings are indicative of the limited repertoire of vocabulary acquisition techniques employed by Iranian EFL learners, hence the need for strategy training in how to acquire vocabulary. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustapha Boughoulid

The increase in the needs of the English language learners (ELLs) and their endless demands in terms of achievement and proficiency in all the educational systems all over the world urged teachers and educators to call for new teaching strategies that sound more adequate and appropriate in the classroom. The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model emerged as one of the worldwide prominent teaching methods that guarantee the ELLs success, especially when it has to do with the understanding of the content and language learning meanwhile. With its diverse culture and prominent engagement in terms of education, Morocco represents a fertile field for the implementation of the SIOP Model that has proven in different contexts its adequacy in helping ELLs achieve proficiency. This study is about a quasi-experimental research that is implemented in an urban school known for its diversification in terms of mother tongue, socio-economic status, gender, and background. Given these different circumstances of the learners, the findings reported after the adoption of the SIOP Model as a teaching approach showed that it is a reliable and adequate teaching method in terms of content and language proficiency. The use of wh-questions as key indicators to measure the learners’ capacity of understanding and responding correctly throughout the experiment phase showed the superiority of the ELLs in the SIOP classes in contrast to the learners in the mainstream classes. This superiority is embodied, especially in terms of the high scores obtained in providing correct answers in a short duration of time. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0726/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 178
Author(s):  
Hamid Ashraf ◽  
Mona Tabatabaee Yazdi ◽  
Aynaz Samir

Since SLA literature remains researchers unaware of the mental processes involved in the X-Test taking (in contrast to C-Test which there are plenty of available related studies), this article aims at exploring cognitive strategies that EFL learners may use while answering an English X-test, which like the C-Test has been modified, adapted and used in many research papers. To this aim, thirty EFL respondents from Mashhad, Iran, were randomly asked to answer a reliable and valid X-test. All of them participated in introspective methods of think-aloud and retrospective interviews during and after the test administration. To analyze the data only the exact word scoring procedure was employed. The results showed participants used various cognitive strategies in taking the X-Test. It was also revealed that respondents experienced more strategies when filling out an X-Test comparing to related literature of C-test, which could be an indicator of the importance job of cognition in X-Test taking. It is hoped that the article can shed light on the underling cognitive strategies that English language learners’ use, and provide a chance for educators who want to better understand the learners’ cognitive processes in order to assist them identify problems and improve their English instruction.


2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 80-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikyung Kim Wolf ◽  
Tim Farnsworth ◽  
Joan Herman

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Iman Tohidian ◽  
Ali Khorsandi Taskoh

To be literate, students need to able to think critically and read between the lines to find the implicit meanings and ideologies. To help Iranian English language learners learn writing as a social action and not independent of social (in)justices and (in)equalities, we included critical literacy in a writing course at the University of [for anonymity]. We intend to illuminate teacher’s narration about raising students’ awareness towards (mal)practices, (in)justices, and (in)equalities of the society in their writings.To do so, all 52 undergraduate 3rd-year-EFL learners of English Literature and Translation participated in our writing class. The teacher was also an associate professor (50 years old) with critical literacy as his main area of research. Students were required to write essays as mid-term and final exams. The teacher’s reflection on the course in general and on the EFL learners’ reflective essays highlighted that teaching writing through critical literacy helped students realize that writing is a process dependent on different social and political issues.Students’ growth in critical consciousness through their writing reminds teaching practitioners, policy-makers, and teacher educators to provide innovation in their classrooms to empower language learners with teaching methodologies contrary to what they are accustomed to during their learning.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 874
Author(s):  
Ehsan Alijanian ◽  
Saeed Ketabi ◽  
Ahmad Moinzadeh

From the sociocultural point of view, the investigation of private speech is important in seeing how the mind works. Yet, not much is known about the form and content of private speech. A group of English language learners were required to talk about some topics of their reading courses. Their voices were recorded and the private speech used by them were identified. It was found that the main role of the loud and silent forms of the private speech in the data is to help learners manage the interaction. Private speech is embedded within the speech context and it needs to be explained in the context in which it happens.


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