pooneh heydari - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by pooneh heydari

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2012

This study aimed at exploring the correlation between readers' evaluation of text-readability... more This study aimed at exploring the correlation between readers' evaluation of text-readability on one hand and some popular readability formula's (Flesch Reading Ease Readability Formula, Gunning's Fog-Index of Readability, The SMOG Index of Readability, Flesch-Kincaid) evaluation of text-readability on the other. This study was conducted with an overall number of 118 participants. The participants were selected from among male and female undergraduate students studying different EFLrelated majors at the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics of IAU, Shiraz Branch. The participants were chosen using convenient sampling procedure. To achieve the objectives of the study, 5 passages of different readability index were used. Moreover, a questionnaire aimed at tapping responses from the participants was devised on each passage. Finally, a number of SPSS analyses were run and the results of the study did not reveal any significant correlations between readers' and ...

1. IntroductionAccording to Richards, Platt, & Platt, (1992), the Item Response Theory (IRT) is a... more 1. IntroductionAccording to Richards, Platt, & Platt, (1992), the Item Response Theory (IRT) is a modern measurement theory, as opposed to the Classical Test Theory. Richards et al. (1992) stated that, "IRT is based on the probability of a test taker with a certain underlying ability getting a particular item right or wrong7' (p.277).Indeed, the IRT is a powerful measurement theory that provides a superior means for estimating both the ability levels of test takers and the characteristics of test items (i.e., difficulty and discrimination). According to Musavi (1999), the basic measure used in the Item Response Theory is the probability that a person of specified ability (the so-called latent trait) succeeds on an item of specified difficulty. The latent traits are statistical constructs that are derived mathematically from empirically observed relations among test responses. A rough, initial estimate of an examinee's latent trait is the total score he or she obtains on...

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2012

This study aimed at investigating the most frequent cohesive errors committed by Iranian undergra... more This study aimed at investigating the most frequent cohesive errors committed by Iranian undergraduate EFL learners at different levels of proficiency as well as the sources of cohesive errors. An overall number of 67 undergraduate students at Shiraz Azad University participated in this study. To have three groups of learners with different proficiency levels, Oxford Placement Test 1B1 (Allan, 1985) was administered. To achieve the objectives of the study, the participants were given a writing task requiring them to write an approximately 200-word narrative composition. Then, the compositions were scored based on the taxonomy developed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Finally, the data were analyzed through appropriate procedures using quantitative methods. Regarding the frequencies and percentages of errors it was found that low-level learners' most frequent errors were involved in references (20), followed by errors in lexical (14), and conjunctive cohesion (1). Besides, the find...

This paper reports a study which aimed at exploring if there is any difference between the evalua... more This paper reports a study which aimed at exploring if there is any difference between the evaluation of EFL expert readers and computer-based evaluation of English text difficulty. 43 participants including university EFL instructors and graduate students read 10 different English passages and completed a Likert-type scale on their perception of the different components of text difficulty. On the other hand, the same 10 English texts were fed into Word Program and Flesch Readability index of the texts were calculated. Then comparisons were made to see if readers ' evaluation of texts were the same or different from the calculated ones. Results of the study revealed significant differences between participants ' evaluation of text difficulty and the Flesch Readability index of the texts. Findings also indicated that there was no significant difference between EFL instructors and graduate students ’ evaluation of the text difficulty. The findings of the study imply that whi...

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Theory and Practice in Language …, 2012

Many scholars in the field of EA have stressed the significance of second language learners' erro... more Many scholars in the field of EA have stressed the significance of second language learners' errors. Corder (1967), for instance, in his influential article, remarks that "they are significant in three different ways. First, to the teacher, in that they show how far towards the goal the learner has progressed. Second, they provide to the researcher evidence of how a language is acquired, what strategies the learner is employing in his learning of a language. Thirdly, they are indisputable to the learner himself because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn" (p. 161). The present paper mostly illustrates fundamental background studies done in the field of Error Analysis. There is the hope that the paper helps EFL teachers and educators to become familiar with the most frequent errors committed by EFL learners leading them to make more objective decisions about how to go about adopting appropriate teaching strategies to help EFL students learn better.

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Jan 1, 2012

mcser.org

This paper reports a study which aimed at exploring if there is any difference between the evalua... more This paper reports a study which aimed at exploring if there is any difference between the evaluation of EFL expert readers and computer-based evaluation of English text difficulty. 43 participants including university EFL instructors and graduate students read 10 different English passages and completed a Likert-type scale on their perception of the different components of text difficulty. On the other hand, the same 10 English texts were fed into Word Program and Flesch Readability index of the texts were calculated. Then comparisons were made to see if readers' evaluation of texts were the same or different from the calculated ones. Results of the study revealed significant differences between participants' evaluation of text difficulty and the Flesch Readability index of the texts. Findings also indicated that there was no significant difference between EFL instructors and graduate students' evaluation of the text difficulty. The findings of the study imply that while readability formulas are valuable measures for evaluating level of text difficulty, they should be used cautiously. Further research seems necessary to check the validity of the readability formulas and the findings of the present study.

Theory and Practice in …, Jan 1, 2012

In TEFL, it is often stated that communication presupposes comprehension. The main purpose of rea... more In TEFL, it is often stated that communication presupposes comprehension. The main purpose of readability studies is thus to measure the comprehensibility of a piece of writing. In this regard, different readability measures were initially devised to help educators select passages suitable for both children and adults. However, readability formulas can certainly be extremely helpful in the realm of EFL reading. They were originally designed to assess the suitability of books for students at particular grade levels or ages. Nevertheless, they can be used as basic tools in determining certain crucial EFL text-characteristics instrumental in the skill of reading and its related issues. The aim of the present paper is to familiarize the readers with the most frequently used readability formulas as well as the pros and cons views toward the use of such formulas. Of course, this part mostly illustrates studies done on readability formulas with the results obtained. The main objective of this part is to help readers to become familiar with the background of the formulas, the theory on which they stand, what they are good for and what they are not with regard to a number of studies cited in this section.

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2012

mcser.org

Theory and Practice in Language …, 2012

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Jan 1, 2012

mcser.org

This paper reports a study which aimed at exploring if there is any difference between the evalua... more This paper reports a study which aimed at exploring if there is any difference between the evaluation of EFL expert readers and computer-based evaluation of English text difficulty. 43 participants including university EFL instructors and graduate students read 10 different English passages and completed a Likert-type scale on their perception of the different components of text difficulty. On the other hand, the same 10 English texts were fed into Word Program and Flesch Readability index of the texts were calculated. Then comparisons were made to see if readers' evaluation of texts were the same or different from the calculated ones. Results of the study revealed significant differences between participants' evaluation of text difficulty and the Flesch Readability index of the texts. Findings also indicated that there was no significant difference between EFL instructors and graduate students' evaluation of the text difficulty. The findings of the study imply that while readability formulas are valuable measures for evaluating level of text difficulty, they should be used cautiously. Further research seems necessary to check the validity of the readability formulas and the findings of the present study.

Theory and Practice in …, Jan 1, 2012