Academic reading and writing abilities are prerequisites for success inpostgraduate programmes. These are particularly important domains ofcompetence for students in applied linguistics, whose ...studies and futureperformance require insight into these skills. A validated self-assessmentquestionnaire was administered to 194 graduate students of applied linguistics,who assessed their own academic reading skills. In addition, open-endedquestions added to the questionnaire and interviews with 14 students wereanalyzed, yielding eight domains identified as particular challenges. The resultsrevealed that students assessed their information literacy to be the weakestdomain. The eight areas of challenge included: shortage of time, informationliteracy, content knowledge, critical literacy, writers’ language styles and genericfeatures of texts, teachers’ high expectations and vague instructions, insufficientstatistical literacy and insufficient interaction with peers. The implications forEnglish for Academic Purposes (EAP) instruction are discussed.
La posesión de habilidades para la lectura y escritura de textos académicos es un requisito para concluir con éxito un programa de posgrado. Estos son tipos de competencias especialmente importantes para los estudiantes de lingüística aplicada, quienes durante sus estudios y en su futuro académico y profesional requerirán estas destrezas. Se administró un cuestionario de autoevaluación validado a 194 estudiantes de posgrado de lingüística aplicada con el que estos valoraron sus propias destrezas de lectura académica. Además del cuestionario, los participantes respondieron diferentes preguntas de respuesta libre y 14 de ellos participaron en sendas entrevistas. Su análisis evidenció la existencia de ocho aspectos de especial dificultad. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que los estudiantes consideran que su alfabetización informacional es el aspecto en el que creen tener menores habilidades. Las ocho áreas que suponen un mayor desafío para los estudiantes son las siguientes: la falta de tiempo, la alfabetización informacional, el conocimiento del contenido, la alfabetización crítica, el estilo de cada autor y aspectos relativos al género de cada texto, las altas expectativas de los profesores y la existencia de instrucciones imprecisas, una insuficiente alfabetización estadística y una insuficiente interacción con sus pares. Por último, se discuten las diferentes implicaciones de estos hallazgos para el ámbito del inglés para fines académicos.
The present study investigates English language teaching (ELT) curriculum planning in Iran's Ministry of Education and its implementation by teachers. We studied programme evaluation; needs analysis; ...the ELT-specific documents; communication channels between planning and practice levels; teacher evaluation and student assessment; interpretation and re-examination of national policies within the Ministry; and the criteria set for ELT material development. Instrumentation included: curriculum documents; interviews with Ministry officials, material developers and headteachers; and teacher questionnaires. Results attested to the lack of any ELT-specific document for material development and absence of research-based needs assessment as the foundation of the programmes. Also, there are no pre-defined linguistic and professional criteria for evaluating teachers, and planning for students' assessment is limited to a set of general guidelines. Moreover, there is neither a programme evaluation nor an ELT evaluation model and national-level policies are not re-examined at planning level. Results also indicate that politico-ideological beliefs of material developers are as important as their expertise and communication channels between planning and practice levels are of a top-down nature. It is argued that the gap between planning and practice results from a highly centralised policymaking process in which local policymakers (i.e. teachers) are not involved.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Despite the surge of interest in evaluating culture representation in English language teaching (ELT) materials, the literature has not adequately addressed representations of culture in English for ...Academic Purposes (EAP) textbooks. To bridge this gap, the present study draws on the Cultural Linguistics semiotic approach to evaluate texts, tasks, and visuals in three locally-developed EAP textbooks in Iran. To this end, we triangulated interview data and narratives obtained from the materials developers of the selected textbooks and a local EAP policymaker with the analysis of texts, tasks, and images. The findings revealed that: (a) few instances of cultural schema and cultural categories were found in the textbooks; (b) mostly materials developers either were not cognizant of the notion of cultural conceptualisations when designing the textbooks or they did not consider it a significant priority in EAP textbooks due to some politico-religious reasons; (c) metacultural development tasks were barely presented in the pre-, while-, and post-reading tasks; and (d) an incompatibility prevailed among texts, tasks, and visuals regarding the presented cultural conceptualisations. The findings are discussed with reference to the need to raise EAP materials development stakeholders’ awareness about the effectiveness of cultural conceptualisations and metacultural competence in EAP education.
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FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, UL, UM, UPUK
Needs analysis, as an important phase in curriculum development and course design, has received scant attention in Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) education. Similarly, no systematic ...empirical study has addressed the status of EAP programs for post-graduate psychology (PgP) students. Hence, this study aimed to investigate target academic English language needs of PgP students, their abilities in performing discipline-related EAP tasks, and their general English Proficiency (gEP). Participants included 343 PgP students, 13 EAP instructors, and 22 content teachers from 7 major Iranian universities. To achieve triangulation, data were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and observations. The findings highlighted several skills and subskills of academic English as highly important for PgP students. Moreover, some mismatches were found regarding the participants' perceptions about students' abilities in different language skills/sub-skills as well as in their gEP levels. Furthermore, we probed participants' viewpoints regarding the amount of EAP instruction in post-graduate curriculum, the degree of effectiveness of general English (gE) and EAP courses in bA education, their preference for EAP teachers (i.e., either ElT instructors or content teachers), language skill priorities in EAP courses, and major challenges in EAP education in Iran. Some implications and suggestions for further research are presented.
Although university English teachers’ professional growth hinges upon active research engagement, they could not individually follow a one-size-fits-all approach to turn into teacher researchers. In ...this study, through the lens of activity system, we explored how university English teachers could be empowered to mediate their research engagement by reliance on socially enhanced research tools, research community norms, and research scaffolding trends. Thirty Iranian university English teachers (twenty-seven PhD candidates and three PhD graduates) participated in this study. To collect the data, we used semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, and online discussion forums. The findings demonstrated that Iranian university English teachers’ research engagement is mediated by research mindset, research interest, and research toolkit. Furthermore, research apprenticeship and academic promotion are the two research norms that university English teachers support. In the research engagement system, research networks and research teams promote the teachers’ collective research literacy. The results further showed that to socially mediate the university English teachers' research engagement, research educators are expected to systematically guide the teachers’ research practices, research materials developers need to curate and produce teacher-friendly research materials, and academic researchers should authorize the teachers to get socialized into teachers’ research communities.
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FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, UL, UM, UPUK
Given the importance of specialized vocabulary in scientific communication and academic discourse, there is a growing need to create wordlists to address the vocabulary-learning needs of university ...students and researchers in different subject areas. The current study analyzed a corpus of chemistry research articles (with 278 million running words) to establish a mid-frequency vocabulary list for this field. Using frequency, range, and dispersion criteria, the study identified 560 lemmas in the fourth to the ninth British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) lists that provided 6.4% coverage of all words in the corpus. The list was validated using specialized and general corpora, and the results confirmed the value and relevance of the items for chemistry. Moreover, for using the list for pedagogical goals, the vocabulary items were divided into five bands based on their coverage and importance. The 100 words in the first band were the most important mid-frequent vocabulary in chemistry, as they provided 3.05% coverage. The study highlights the significant contribution of mid-frequency words in research articles and the findings have implications for using large corpora as a big data source in identifying specialized and field-specific vocabulary.
With the advent of the global perspective on English, the live issues of the ownership and culture of English (Akbari, 2008; Seidlhofer, 2005) have begun to shake up numerous conventional notions of ...the field. In the wake of this landmark shift, this study attempts to probe EFL teachers’ cultural attitude toward prospective English words. To this end, identifying twelve highly Persian culture-specific words, the researchers devised an attitude questionnaire, which was administered to 351 EFL teachers to examine their right of cultural encoding (Kirkpatrick, 2014) as English users. The study concludes with granting a legitimate norm-overriding role to EFL teachers in order to gate-keep their required concepts in English.
Needs analysis, as an important phase in curriculum development and course design, has received scant attention in Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) education. Similarly, no systematic ...empirical study has addressed the status of EAP programs for post-graduate psychology (PgP) students. Hence, this study aimed to investigate target academic English language needs of PgP students, their abilities in performing discipline-related EAP tasks, and their general English Proficiency (gEP). Participants included 343 PgP students, 13 EAP instructors, and 22 content teachers from 7 major Iranian universities. To achieve triangulation, data were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and observations. The findings highlighted several skills and subskills of academic English as highly important for PgP students. Moreover, some mismatches were found regarding the participants’ perceptions about students’ abilities in different language skills/sub-skills as well as in their gEP levels. Furthermore, we probed participants’ viewpoints regarding the amount of EAP instruction in post-graduate curriculum, the degree of effectiveness of general English (gE) and EAP courses in bA education, their preference for EAP teachers (i.e., either ElT instructors or content teachers), language skill priorities in EAP courses, and major challenges in EAP education in Iran. Some implications and suggestions for further research are presented
Virtual conferences and webinars are increasingly transforming the nature of academic communications. In their transition from conventional to digital academic venues, researchers require guided ...mentorship, hands-on experience, and consistent feedback. In this study, the aim was to explore the effectiveness of an online EAP course in developing researchers' virtual presentation skills. The participants included the researchers (N = 20) from different departments of sciences in a state university in Iran. Through narrative interviews, the needs analysis phase was completed. The findings demonstrated that the researchers' virtual presentation needs are characterized by academic language competence, pragmatic communication skill, and remote audience engagement. To meet these needs, an online short-term EAP course was designed and held. Through participatory observations and peer feedback, the effectiveness of the course was investigated. The results showed the positive contributions of the course. The participants' attitudes towards their immediate learning experiences were further probed through focus-group interviews. The findings highlighted the researchers' revived self-confidence, live demo experience, digital academic competence, multimedia-enhanced presentation skill-building, collaborative community-based learning, awareness of audiences' affective engagement, and increasing attention to communicative language choices in this course. The findings have potential relevance and application to those involved in the design, delivery, and teaching of online EAP courses – and not only for academics from non-English speaking background, but also English-speaking background.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The current study investigated the contribution of a mobile application for self-directed and autonomous learning of academic vocabulary among English as a Foreign language (EFL) university students. ...Furthermore, we examined the long-term impacts of mobile-assisted vocabulary learning, by using a pre-, post-, and delayed post-test design. The participants were 38 third- and fourth-year university students in experimental (N = 20) and control (N = 18) groups, selected based on convenience sampling procedures. During a semester, students in the experimental group used a mobile application (i.e. AWL builder), while the control group used traditional materials. The participants' receptive vocabulary knowledge was tested three times. The findings revealed that both groups improved their vocabulary knowledge (Sig. < 0.000). Nonetheless, the participants in the experimental group attained better results in both post- and delayed post-test, and the observed mean differences were statistically significant (Sig. < 0.000, Partial Eta Squared = 0.356). Moreover, a significant effect for time was found for mobile-assisted vocabulary learning (Sig. < 0.000, Partial Eta Squared = 0.907). The results highlight the potential offered by mobile applications for self-directed learning of academic vocabulary and promise implications for EFL vocabulary learning.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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