Razieh Gholaminejad | Shahid Beheshti University (original) (raw)
Papers by Razieh Gholaminejad
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 2021
PurposeAlthough English for academic purposes (EAP) courses are vital components of engineering d... more PurposeAlthough English for academic purposes (EAP) courses are vital components of engineering disciplines in the universities of Iran, studies investigating engineering students' English language needs are infrequent, and even more infrequent are studies comparing how the students of different engineering disciplines vary in their English language needs. Research demonstrates that students of different disciplines have different language needs, which requires competency in different language skills (Soruç et al., 2018). However, in the majority of Iranian universities, students of different engineering disciplines are taught similar subskills, through similar teaching methodologies and textbooks. With the twofold purpose of identification and comparison of the students' language needs and weaknesses, this study focuses on the perceptions of Iranian students of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels of their present lang...
The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in t... more The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in two university genres: textbooks (TBs) and research articles (RAs) on applied linguistics. It aims to identify the LBs used in the two genres, compare them on the basis of their functional type and frequency and explore how they are related to genre. To this end, fourword LBs were identified in two corpora drawn from applied linguistics TBs and RAs. The comparative analysis revealed that there are interesting differences between the two genres in terms of discourse functions: the occurrence of LBs in the TBs was lower than in the RAs; attitudinal/modality LBs occurred more frequently in the TBs than in the RAs; epistemic LBs occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; discourse organizers occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; and time, place and text reference LBs occurred almost twice as frequently in the RAs. The findings build on research into the variations of ...
Terminology
Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in form... more Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in formal academic contexts with a high frequency across scientific disciplines (Farrell 1990). These are referred to as academic vocabulary. Recent findings do not support the adequacy of a single academic wordlist which can equally meet the needs of students of all disciplines (Durrant 2016), and this has inspired researchers to develop wordlists specific to each discipline. Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics is a discipline which often embraces a high number of non-English speaking students for whom it is a demanding task to engage in academic communication without having access to a ready-made resource. In the present study, a 10,781,188-word corpus based on textbooks taught in thirteen subject areas of this field was compiled. The corpus was characterized by a specified genre and time-span, and a large representative scope. It was used to draw up a list of academic words (= terminol...
HOW
This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a for... more This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language learners experience any reversal conceptual transfer and whether they construct two identities as a result of learning a foreign language. The findings from the open-ended questionnaires distributed among 65 undergraduates at the University of Isfahan as well as 45 interviews conducted in a private language school reveal that most of the participants feel they have partly experienced reversal conceptual transfer. However, most of them claimed not to have constructed a new foreign language identity in English, while those who did had a more positive attitude towards their English identity.
Higher Education of Social Science, Sep 26, 2014
The present study investigates how effective it is to teach listening comprehension strategies fo... more The present study investigates how effective it is to teach listening comprehension strategies for High-Proficiency and Low-Proficiency Iranian EFL Learners. Two intact classes were selected randomly from a private language institute in Iran. An advanced-level class (n= 33) was chosen as the High-Proficiency group, and a Lowerintermediate class (n=32) was selected as the Low-Proficiency group. Before the start of the semester, both classes were pretested. During the intervention time, the strategies-based approach was adopted by the researcher while teaching the listening comprehension section of the regular curriculum in both classes. At the end of the term, both classes were post-tested. The t-test observed for the difference in the paired means of the scores obtained from the pretests and post-tests turned out to be insignificant for the Lower-intermediate class, while in the paired means comparison of the advanced class the results were revealed as significant.
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2013
International Journal of Research, 2020
Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in t... more The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in two university genres: textbooks (TBs) and research articles (RAs) on applied linguistics. It aims to identify the LBs used in the two genres, compare them on the basis of their functional type and frequency and explore how they are related to genre. To this end, four-word LBs were identified in two corpora drawn from applied linguistics TBs and RAs. The comparative analysis revealed that there are interesting differences between the two genres in terms of discourse functions: the occurrence of LBs in the TBs was lower than in the RAs; attitudinal/modality LBs occurred more frequently in the TBs than in the RAs; epistemic LBs occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; discourse organizers occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; and time, place and text reference LBs occurred almost twice as frequently in the RAs. The findings build on research into the variations of...
The present paper draws together the existing, but largely scattered, research findings on the po... more The present paper draws together the existing, but largely scattered, research findings on the policy of English language teaching (ELT) in post-Revolutionary Iran. It begins with a brief history of ELT in Iran, then it deals with the major policies adopted and their consequences. It is followed by how ELT policies came under reform in 2013, inspired by the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. The rest of the paper examines the underlying reasons why the reform failed to work as expected. To this end, a critical analysis of the missing infrastructures prerequisite to the reform is presented. These include the low budget allotted at the planning and implementation levels; teachers’ unpreparedness to teach and assess based on the new approach, due to lack of educational, and economic empowerment; inefficiency of the newly-designed textbooks; the regime of school accountability; heterogeneous classes; inadequate time; extreme class sizes; and students’ demotivation to use En...
July/December
In this reflective paper, we review the currently-used word classification system proposed by lin... more In this reflective paper, we review the currently-used word classification system proposed by linguist Paul Nation (2013, 2015) and the position of the academic vocabulary in this system. Different lexical layers in this system are explained as well as the underlying assumptions. Then, taking a critical position, we raise a number of criticisms against three different aspects of Nation’s classification. The first criticism involves the fact that the system has sacrificed function for form in developing the lexical layers. The second focuses on the problem of equating ‘academic words’ with Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) and ‘high-frequency words’ with West’s (1953) General Service List (GSL). Finally, the system is criticized for the lack of an independent lexical layer for discipline-specific academic vocabulary by ignoring disciplinary variation at the level of academic words. The critical points raised in the paper can be useful for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) m...
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2014
In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its de... more In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its development, and its relationship with language learning are examined. The process of trying to determine the term 'identity' is complex. Many people have attempted to define the term identity. There is a lack of consensus among researchers on what 'identity' means, although there are many similarities among researches across different disciplines. Researchers define identity in different ways with common relationship. This review paper outlines the studies conducted by researchers in recent years in order to examine identity from the poststructuralist perspective. Finally, two recent paradigms on identity as well as different types of bilingualism are discussed in detail. Index Terms-identity, the monocultural cognitive paradigm, the constructivism paradigm, bilingualism, subtractive identity change, additive identity change, productive identity change, hybrid identity change I. WHAT IS IDENTITY? Prior to discussing the relationship between language and identity, it is necessary to understand the meaning of the term 'identity' from the viewpoint of different researchers and scholars along with factors contributing to its construction. The meaning of the term identity has evolved from seeing it as a stable core self (Hall, 1996) to dynamic, contradictory, and multiple dimensions of a person (see Block, 2006, 2007a; Pavlenko, 2002). There is a lot of definitional confusion in the literature, with some authors offering multiple definitions for single terms, and other authors conflating two or more terms and using them (Menard-Warwick, 2005). According to Ha (2008) the West and the East conceive the notion of identity differently. While Western scholars' perception of identity is considered "hybrid and multiple" (p. 64), Eastern scholars regard it as a sense of belonging. Eakin (1999) uses the term identity together with subject, self, and person, and defines it as "terms that seem inevitably to spin in elliptical orbits around any attempt to conceptualize human beings" (p.9). Wu (2011) argues that identity is the way we view ourselves and are viewed by others and it is inextricably tied to the social contexts out of which it arises. It is, furthermore, constructed through a mixture of social practices in which individuals are involved in their daily lives. Identity, as Ige (2010) puts it, is unarguably a reflection of the various ways in which people understand themselves in relation to others. Identity is sometimes considered as synonymous with ideology. However, identity is not merely ideology; rather ideology leads to identity (McAdams, 1985). According to Norton (2000) identity refers to "how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future" (p. 5). Danielewics (2001) notes that identity refers to "our understanding of who we are and who we think other people are" (p. 10). Haneda (2005), on the other hand, considers the following as elements of identity: "(a) membership in a community in which people define who they are by the familiar and the unfamiliar, (b) a learning trajectory in which they define themselves by past experiences and envisioned futures, (c) a nexus of multimembership in which people reconcile their various forms of membership into one coherent sense of self, and (d) a relation between local and glob" (p. 273). II. IDENTITY AS BOTH A DIFFERENTIATOR AND ASSIMILATOR Identity includes both the contradictory attempts to-differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory‖ (Bamberg, 2010, p. 1). In other words, when we define a certain identity for ourselves, we are in some way assimilating ourselves to a particular group or class, and at the same time, we are differentiating ourselves from others who do not belong to that group or class, although the differentiating role played by identity far outweighs its integrating one. That is why Woodword (2002) claims that identity is essentially about differentiation. There are, yet, other scholars such as Joseph (2004), who argue that the process of identity construction can be like a
TEFLIN Journal - A publication on the teaching and learning of English
In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopti... more In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopting a comparative perspective, then, the merits and demerits of the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) and its competing counterpart the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) are presented. We also explore whether the AWL can still be considered as “the best list” (Nation, 2001, p. 12) for improving academic words, or whether its counterpart is reasonably “the most current, accurate, and comprehensive list” (Gardner & Davies, 2014, p. 325). The comparison was made in terms of twelve aspects: corpus size, types of corpus texts, sources of corpus texts, text balance, disciplines included, counting unit, wordlist items, method for excluding highfrequency words, minimum frequency, method for excluding technical words, sequence of list items and lexical coverage. The comparison reveals that the AVL is far from complete and cannot replace the AWL. The results of the comp...
International Journal of Leadership in Education
The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about cla... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about classroom observation. This multiple- case study interviewed five teachers from different private language schools in Iran. The themes emerging from in-depth interviews suggest that the negative attitudes could be related to the observer effect, teacher’s performance anxiety, lack of external motivation, ambiguity of the purpose of observation, the hierarchical nature of teacher–supervisor relationship, job insecurity and lack of sense of belonging, disregarding the developmental level of the supervisee, accompanying observation with no other techniques, lack of teacher autonomy, improper quality, quantity, and frequency of the visits, improper quality and quantity of feedbacks, improper quality of communicating the feedback.
Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication, 2020
Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in form... more Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in formal academic contexts with a high frequency across scientific disciplines (Farrell 1990). These are referred to as academic vocabulary. Recent findings do not support the adequacy of a single academic wordlist which can equally meet the needs of students of all disciplines (Durrant 2016), and this has inspired researchers to develop wordlists specific to each discipline. Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics is a discipline which often embraces a high number of non-English speaking students for whom it is a demanding task to engage in academic communication without having access to a ready-made resource. In the present study, a 10,781,188-word corpus based on textbooks taught in thirteen subject areas of this field was compiled. The corpus was characterized by a specified genre and time-span, and a large representative scope. It was used to draw up a list of academic words (= terminology) for students of this field. The wordlist, which is accompanied by a list of collocations, accounts for approximately 7.1% of the coverage in the corpus. The findings build on the trend toward generation of field-specific academic wordlists, which have significant implications for students, instructors, material developers and researchers.
International Journal of Leadership in Education, 2020
The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about cla... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about classroom observation. This multiple- case study interviewed five teachers from different private language schools in Iran. The themes emerging from in-depth interviews suggest that the negative attitudes could be related to the observer effect, teacher’s performance anxiety, lack of external motivation, ambiguity of the purpose of observation, the hierarchical nature of teacher–supervisor relationship, job insecurity and lack of sense of belonging, disregarding the developmental level of the supervisee, accompanying observation with no other techniques, lack of teacher autonomy, improper quality, quantity, and frequency of the visits, improper quality and quantity of feedbacks, improper quality of communicating the feedback.
In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its de... more In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its development, and its relationship with language learning are examined. The process of trying to determine the term 'identity' is complex. Many people have attempted to define the term identity. There is a lack of consensus among researchers on what 'identity' means, although there are many similarities among researches across different disciplines. Researchers define identity in different ways with common relationship. This review paper outlines the studies conducted by researchers in recent years in order to examine identity from the poststructuralist perspective. Finally, two recent paradigms on identity as well as different types of bilingualism are discussed in detail. Index Terms-identity, the monocultural cognitive paradigm, the constructivism paradigm, bilingualism, subtractive identity change, additive identity change, productive identity change, hybrid identity change
This paper reports on one aspect of a qualitative study conducted in an EFL setting, of the perce... more This paper reports on one aspect of a qualitative study conducted in an EFL setting, of the perception of writing attitudes of 65 EFL students in the University of Isfahan. An open-ended questionnaire was administered to 65 undergraduates to examine firstly what the Iranian EFL students' attitudes towards writing in general are; secondly, whether Iranian EFL students are active writers, If yes, in which language; thirdly, whether Iranian EFL students feel any difference between expressing ideas while writing in English and Persian.
Notwithstanding the obligation of courses such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in the Iran... more Notwithstanding the obligation of courses such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in the Iranian university curriculum, exploring the language academic needs and abilities of students of social and natural sciences has been untouched. Focused on the students’ perspectives, this study aims to identify the present and target situation academic language needs of Iranian undergraduate students of social vs. natural sciences in a comparative manner. A total of 260 undergraduate students studying natural sciences (n=117) and social sciences (n=143) at Sharif University of Technology and Shahid Beheshti University participated in this study by responding to a validated questionnaire on language needs self-assessment. Regarding the present language abilities, the natural sciences students considered themselves as much more competent in the English language compared to the social sciences students. However, the target language needs of both groups were roughly similar. Besides, both groups believed that the EAP courses should be oriented more towards English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Finally, while the majority of the natural sciences students asserted that the number of credits offered for the EAP courses was not enough, the comments made by the social sciences students were contrary. The paper concludes with a suggestion to revise the present program in order to boost the effectiveness of the EAP course and a discussion of implications for instructors and material designers.
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 2021
PurposeAlthough English for academic purposes (EAP) courses are vital components of engineering d... more PurposeAlthough English for academic purposes (EAP) courses are vital components of engineering disciplines in the universities of Iran, studies investigating engineering students' English language needs are infrequent, and even more infrequent are studies comparing how the students of different engineering disciplines vary in their English language needs. Research demonstrates that students of different disciplines have different language needs, which requires competency in different language skills (Soruç et al., 2018). However, in the majority of Iranian universities, students of different engineering disciplines are taught similar subskills, through similar teaching methodologies and textbooks. With the twofold purpose of identification and comparison of the students' language needs and weaknesses, this study focuses on the perceptions of Iranian students of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels of their present lang...
The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in t... more The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in two university genres: textbooks (TBs) and research articles (RAs) on applied linguistics. It aims to identify the LBs used in the two genres, compare them on the basis of their functional type and frequency and explore how they are related to genre. To this end, fourword LBs were identified in two corpora drawn from applied linguistics TBs and RAs. The comparative analysis revealed that there are interesting differences between the two genres in terms of discourse functions: the occurrence of LBs in the TBs was lower than in the RAs; attitudinal/modality LBs occurred more frequently in the TBs than in the RAs; epistemic LBs occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; discourse organizers occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; and time, place and text reference LBs occurred almost twice as frequently in the RAs. The findings build on research into the variations of ...
Terminology
Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in form... more Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in formal academic contexts with a high frequency across scientific disciplines (Farrell 1990). These are referred to as academic vocabulary. Recent findings do not support the adequacy of a single academic wordlist which can equally meet the needs of students of all disciplines (Durrant 2016), and this has inspired researchers to develop wordlists specific to each discipline. Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics is a discipline which often embraces a high number of non-English speaking students for whom it is a demanding task to engage in academic communication without having access to a ready-made resource. In the present study, a 10,781,188-word corpus based on textbooks taught in thirteen subject areas of this field was compiled. The corpus was characterized by a specified genre and time-span, and a large representative scope. It was used to draw up a list of academic words (= terminol...
HOW
This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a for... more This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language learners experience any reversal conceptual transfer and whether they construct two identities as a result of learning a foreign language. The findings from the open-ended questionnaires distributed among 65 undergraduates at the University of Isfahan as well as 45 interviews conducted in a private language school reveal that most of the participants feel they have partly experienced reversal conceptual transfer. However, most of them claimed not to have constructed a new foreign language identity in English, while those who did had a more positive attitude towards their English identity.
Higher Education of Social Science, Sep 26, 2014
The present study investigates how effective it is to teach listening comprehension strategies fo... more The present study investigates how effective it is to teach listening comprehension strategies for High-Proficiency and Low-Proficiency Iranian EFL Learners. Two intact classes were selected randomly from a private language institute in Iran. An advanced-level class (n= 33) was chosen as the High-Proficiency group, and a Lowerintermediate class (n=32) was selected as the Low-Proficiency group. Before the start of the semester, both classes were pretested. During the intervention time, the strategies-based approach was adopted by the researcher while teaching the listening comprehension section of the regular curriculum in both classes. At the end of the term, both classes were post-tested. The t-test observed for the difference in the paired means of the scores obtained from the pretests and post-tests turned out to be insignificant for the Lower-intermediate class, while in the paired means comparison of the advanced class the results were revealed as significant.
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2013
International Journal of Research, 2020
Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in t... more The present article is a corpus-based descriptive/comparative study of lexical bundles (LBs) in two university genres: textbooks (TBs) and research articles (RAs) on applied linguistics. It aims to identify the LBs used in the two genres, compare them on the basis of their functional type and frequency and explore how they are related to genre. To this end, four-word LBs were identified in two corpora drawn from applied linguistics TBs and RAs. The comparative analysis revealed that there are interesting differences between the two genres in terms of discourse functions: the occurrence of LBs in the TBs was lower than in the RAs; attitudinal/modality LBs occurred more frequently in the TBs than in the RAs; epistemic LBs occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; discourse organizers occurred more frequently in the RAs than in the TBs; and time, place and text reference LBs occurred almost twice as frequently in the RAs. The findings build on research into the variations of...
The present paper draws together the existing, but largely scattered, research findings on the po... more The present paper draws together the existing, but largely scattered, research findings on the policy of English language teaching (ELT) in post-Revolutionary Iran. It begins with a brief history of ELT in Iran, then it deals with the major policies adopted and their consequences. It is followed by how ELT policies came under reform in 2013, inspired by the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. The rest of the paper examines the underlying reasons why the reform failed to work as expected. To this end, a critical analysis of the missing infrastructures prerequisite to the reform is presented. These include the low budget allotted at the planning and implementation levels; teachers’ unpreparedness to teach and assess based on the new approach, due to lack of educational, and economic empowerment; inefficiency of the newly-designed textbooks; the regime of school accountability; heterogeneous classes; inadequate time; extreme class sizes; and students’ demotivation to use En...
July/December
In this reflective paper, we review the currently-used word classification system proposed by lin... more In this reflective paper, we review the currently-used word classification system proposed by linguist Paul Nation (2013, 2015) and the position of the academic vocabulary in this system. Different lexical layers in this system are explained as well as the underlying assumptions. Then, taking a critical position, we raise a number of criticisms against three different aspects of Nation’s classification. The first criticism involves the fact that the system has sacrificed function for form in developing the lexical layers. The second focuses on the problem of equating ‘academic words’ with Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) and ‘high-frequency words’ with West’s (1953) General Service List (GSL). Finally, the system is criticized for the lack of an independent lexical layer for discipline-specific academic vocabulary by ignoring disciplinary variation at the level of academic words. The critical points raised in the paper can be useful for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) m...
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2014
In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its de... more In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its development, and its relationship with language learning are examined. The process of trying to determine the term 'identity' is complex. Many people have attempted to define the term identity. There is a lack of consensus among researchers on what 'identity' means, although there are many similarities among researches across different disciplines. Researchers define identity in different ways with common relationship. This review paper outlines the studies conducted by researchers in recent years in order to examine identity from the poststructuralist perspective. Finally, two recent paradigms on identity as well as different types of bilingualism are discussed in detail. Index Terms-identity, the monocultural cognitive paradigm, the constructivism paradigm, bilingualism, subtractive identity change, additive identity change, productive identity change, hybrid identity change I. WHAT IS IDENTITY? Prior to discussing the relationship between language and identity, it is necessary to understand the meaning of the term 'identity' from the viewpoint of different researchers and scholars along with factors contributing to its construction. The meaning of the term identity has evolved from seeing it as a stable core self (Hall, 1996) to dynamic, contradictory, and multiple dimensions of a person (see Block, 2006, 2007a; Pavlenko, 2002). There is a lot of definitional confusion in the literature, with some authors offering multiple definitions for single terms, and other authors conflating two or more terms and using them (Menard-Warwick, 2005). According to Ha (2008) the West and the East conceive the notion of identity differently. While Western scholars' perception of identity is considered "hybrid and multiple" (p. 64), Eastern scholars regard it as a sense of belonging. Eakin (1999) uses the term identity together with subject, self, and person, and defines it as "terms that seem inevitably to spin in elliptical orbits around any attempt to conceptualize human beings" (p.9). Wu (2011) argues that identity is the way we view ourselves and are viewed by others and it is inextricably tied to the social contexts out of which it arises. It is, furthermore, constructed through a mixture of social practices in which individuals are involved in their daily lives. Identity, as Ige (2010) puts it, is unarguably a reflection of the various ways in which people understand themselves in relation to others. Identity is sometimes considered as synonymous with ideology. However, identity is not merely ideology; rather ideology leads to identity (McAdams, 1985). According to Norton (2000) identity refers to "how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future" (p. 5). Danielewics (2001) notes that identity refers to "our understanding of who we are and who we think other people are" (p. 10). Haneda (2005), on the other hand, considers the following as elements of identity: "(a) membership in a community in which people define who they are by the familiar and the unfamiliar, (b) a learning trajectory in which they define themselves by past experiences and envisioned futures, (c) a nexus of multimembership in which people reconcile their various forms of membership into one coherent sense of self, and (d) a relation between local and glob" (p. 273). II. IDENTITY AS BOTH A DIFFERENTIATOR AND ASSIMILATOR Identity includes both the contradictory attempts to-differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory‖ (Bamberg, 2010, p. 1). In other words, when we define a certain identity for ourselves, we are in some way assimilating ourselves to a particular group or class, and at the same time, we are differentiating ourselves from others who do not belong to that group or class, although the differentiating role played by identity far outweighs its integrating one. That is why Woodword (2002) claims that identity is essentially about differentiation. There are, yet, other scholars such as Joseph (2004), who argue that the process of identity construction can be like a
TEFLIN Journal - A publication on the teaching and learning of English
In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopti... more In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopting a comparative perspective, then, the merits and demerits of the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) and its competing counterpart the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) are presented. We also explore whether the AWL can still be considered as “the best list” (Nation, 2001, p. 12) for improving academic words, or whether its counterpart is reasonably “the most current, accurate, and comprehensive list” (Gardner & Davies, 2014, p. 325). The comparison was made in terms of twelve aspects: corpus size, types of corpus texts, sources of corpus texts, text balance, disciplines included, counting unit, wordlist items, method for excluding highfrequency words, minimum frequency, method for excluding technical words, sequence of list items and lexical coverage. The comparison reveals that the AVL is far from complete and cannot replace the AWL. The results of the comp...
International Journal of Leadership in Education
The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about cla... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about classroom observation. This multiple- case study interviewed five teachers from different private language schools in Iran. The themes emerging from in-depth interviews suggest that the negative attitudes could be related to the observer effect, teacher’s performance anxiety, lack of external motivation, ambiguity of the purpose of observation, the hierarchical nature of teacher–supervisor relationship, job insecurity and lack of sense of belonging, disregarding the developmental level of the supervisee, accompanying observation with no other techniques, lack of teacher autonomy, improper quality, quantity, and frequency of the visits, improper quality and quantity of feedbacks, improper quality of communicating the feedback.
Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication, 2020
Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in form... more Somewhere between technical and general vocabulary are located those words which are used in formal academic contexts with a high frequency across scientific disciplines (Farrell 1990). These are referred to as academic vocabulary. Recent findings do not support the adequacy of a single academic wordlist which can equally meet the needs of students of all disciplines (Durrant 2016), and this has inspired researchers to develop wordlists specific to each discipline. Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics is a discipline which often embraces a high number of non-English speaking students for whom it is a demanding task to engage in academic communication without having access to a ready-made resource. In the present study, a 10,781,188-word corpus based on textbooks taught in thirteen subject areas of this field was compiled. The corpus was characterized by a specified genre and time-span, and a large representative scope. It was used to draw up a list of academic words (= terminology) for students of this field. The wordlist, which is accompanied by a list of collocations, accounts for approximately 7.1% of the coverage in the corpus. The findings build on the trend toward generation of field-specific academic wordlists, which have significant implications for students, instructors, material developers and researchers.
International Journal of Leadership in Education, 2020
The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about cla... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons behind teachers’ negative attitudes about classroom observation. This multiple- case study interviewed five teachers from different private language schools in Iran. The themes emerging from in-depth interviews suggest that the negative attitudes could be related to the observer effect, teacher’s performance anxiety, lack of external motivation, ambiguity of the purpose of observation, the hierarchical nature of teacher–supervisor relationship, job insecurity and lack of sense of belonging, disregarding the developmental level of the supervisee, accompanying observation with no other techniques, lack of teacher autonomy, improper quality, quantity, and frequency of the visits, improper quality and quantity of feedbacks, improper quality of communicating the feedback.
In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its de... more In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its development, and its relationship with language learning are examined. The process of trying to determine the term 'identity' is complex. Many people have attempted to define the term identity. There is a lack of consensus among researchers on what 'identity' means, although there are many similarities among researches across different disciplines. Researchers define identity in different ways with common relationship. This review paper outlines the studies conducted by researchers in recent years in order to examine identity from the poststructuralist perspective. Finally, two recent paradigms on identity as well as different types of bilingualism are discussed in detail. Index Terms-identity, the monocultural cognitive paradigm, the constructivism paradigm, bilingualism, subtractive identity change, additive identity change, productive identity change, hybrid identity change
This paper reports on one aspect of a qualitative study conducted in an EFL setting, of the perce... more This paper reports on one aspect of a qualitative study conducted in an EFL setting, of the perception of writing attitudes of 65 EFL students in the University of Isfahan. An open-ended questionnaire was administered to 65 undergraduates to examine firstly what the Iranian EFL students' attitudes towards writing in general are; secondly, whether Iranian EFL students are active writers, If yes, in which language; thirdly, whether Iranian EFL students feel any difference between expressing ideas while writing in English and Persian.
Notwithstanding the obligation of courses such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in the Iran... more Notwithstanding the obligation of courses such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in the Iranian university curriculum, exploring the language academic needs and abilities of students of social and natural sciences has been untouched. Focused on the students’ perspectives, this study aims to identify the present and target situation academic language needs of Iranian undergraduate students of social vs. natural sciences in a comparative manner. A total of 260 undergraduate students studying natural sciences (n=117) and social sciences (n=143) at Sharif University of Technology and Shahid Beheshti University participated in this study by responding to a validated questionnaire on language needs self-assessment. Regarding the present language abilities, the natural sciences students considered themselves as much more competent in the English language compared to the social sciences students. However, the target language needs of both groups were roughly similar. Besides, both groups believed that the EAP courses should be oriented more towards English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Finally, while the majority of the natural sciences students asserted that the number of credits offered for the EAP courses was not enough, the comments made by the social sciences students were contrary. The paper concludes with a suggestion to revise the present program in order to boost the effectiveness of the EAP course and a discussion of implications for instructors and material designers.